Summer Vacation: Day 3

Sunday morning = Sunday brunch right?...not here. We drove around for 1/2 an hour and found one restaurant and the wait was huge. We decided to turn around and head to a BBQ place we wanted to try; Just Keep Smokin. It was alright. Their meat was very smoky. Needed less grease and more bbq sauce for my taste. After filling our bellies, we headed for Ceder Creek National Forest and went on nature trail. The kids tried the different exercises along the way. Tommy had his first injury by falling at the end of the trail as we headed back to the car. We then headed back to the cabin for a relaxing afternoon.

Summer Vacation: Day 2

We decided to stay inside today to recoup from out drive. Our day consisted of unpacking, grocery shopping, and going on a nature walk around our cabins.

Our cabin is located at the top of a mountain. It over looks the Sierra Blanca Mountain and the lake at the Resort of the Mountain Gods. It is very beautiful. Granted, we have the go down half a flight of stairs and up another flight of stairs to get to our door (which is not fun w/ an almost 2 year old) but it is a beautiful view. The drive up to the cabin takes about 5 minutes and includes a lot of windy curves and straight up roads. There are random cabins placed along the road. One is for sale for a measly $600,000 if you are interested.

In the morning, we went down to the main house to have some breakfast and almost ran into some deer. They were just hanging out in our parking lot area. Later on in the day we spotted them again with some wild turkey friends.

After naps, the kids started getting a little rambunctious for our cabin so we went for a nature walk. There was a little trail outside our window so we fallowed it around the perimeter of all the cabins and then it swooped down into a makeshift dirt road. We collected a few pine cones for a craft later. We made walking sticks and even saw a creepy crawly caterpillar.

After we went shopping and the walk for the week, we took on making a craft: peanut butter pine cones. The kids did great with this and we hung them outside our big window. We had a nice family meal and snuggled in for the night.

Summer Vacation: Day 1

Our grand adventure for the summer began with a very long drive. There were two ways to get to Riadoso, New Mexico. We could spend 8 hrs going down through Tucson and upthrough the lower part of NM which is all dessert or we could spend 10 hrs going though Show Low and the White Mountains. We decided to take the longer trip and have green surround us. And when I say long...I mean....l.o.n.g. It ended up taking almost 11 hours with all of the stops we took and the little towns we drove through where the speed limit would drop down to 35 mph.

Our day consisted of snack eating, movie watching, mooing at cows, listening to music, dancing in our seats, fighting over the toys in the back seat, and nap taking. We began our animal watching and saw a lot of cows and horses.