Visitor Part III

Sunday Mom came to church with us...and then we went home to Roast Dinner. We must have been so hungry (and it probably smelled so dang good) that we didn't get any pictures of any of it! BUT, Mom and I had a special V-Day treat planned but ran out of time, so we made it for sunday. Can you guess what it is? It was SO delicious!

Don't let this picture fool you, we ALL licked our bowls. I just happened to be the one with the camera.

Then, we went for a trip up the Sandia Peak Tram. The worlds LONGEST Tram...and boy is it long! We got a really pretty view of the city and hoped to show Mom one of Albuquerque's finest sunsets, but it just so happened to be a little clowdy this day (unusual) so we sort of missed out on that one. The tram is for sure a must for anyone who visits Albuquerque. There is also a restaurant up at the top but A) We had just stuffed ourselves with dinner B) It was Sunday C) You can't do EVERYTHING in one weekend!

Behind is is Albuquerque. It's not quite dark enough to see the pretyt lights and everything...but by then, my battery was dead. UGH.

Then we went home and ate the rest of our dessert. Yeah, we just couldn't help ourselves!

Visitor Part II

Gary and I celebrated Valentine's day with my Mom here. What a treat for us! First thing in the morning we got up and met some friends at the Bosque School to run the Sweetheart 5K run. It was quite cold...but still SO SO fun!

Then it was home for some buttermilk pancakes for breakfast! YUMMERS! Notice the extent of my Valentine's Day decor. Lame, I know.

Then we got ready and headed out to Old Town. Another place I'd love to take anyone else who should decide to come visit!!!! It's got tons of shops and stores. It's fun to just walk around and look at everything. AND, every other store sells Turquoise Jewelry which is always fun to look at and now I'm on the hunt for some cute earrings with a specific type of Turquoise called Sleeping Beauty Turquoise.Since we had gone out for dinner the night before, we decided to avoid the crowds and stay home and make dinner. My Mom brought me a sourdough start, so we made Sourdough Pizza and it was fabulous!Then we decided to go to a movie. We couldn't decide which one to go see so we voted. It didn't really work out so well since the only one who actually picked a movie didn't even know the name of the movie. We all got a good laugh over this one. She (Mom) meant "Taken" but it was sold out, so we actually ended up seeing "Bride Wars" I thought it was cute...enough. There was a good 5 minutes during this show where I was laughing so hard my stomach hurt and I couldn't stop! LOVE it when that happens! :)Gary is very proud of the practical gifts he gives me for V-Day (secretly, I love it too). Our first V-Day was a butter dish, then last V-Day it was a pitcher...this year...a recipe book. I was really excited because I saw this recipe book a while ago and told him I wanted it. He remembered! -I guess you wouldn't really know which recipe book I'm talking about since it's actually wrapped in this picture. Trust me, it's a good one and I'm sure I'll be posting some recipes from it on the recipe blog!

We have a visitor! (Part I)

So, my Mom flew into town. No, she wasn't passing through...she came to stay and visit! It was fun! We did a lot of things that I haven't even done yet, so it was quite adventurous! First thing: Rode the brand new train up to Santa Fe. HIGHLY recommend doing this. In fact, I can't wait to take Gary! (He was working) - And YES, that, my friends, is a double decker train! It was AWESOME! We walked around and window shopped our way up to the Plaza (about a mile from the Train Station). Low and behold, the first thing I saw! A whole long row of Turquoise! Yummy! These are all Native Americans who sell their 'stuff' each day. They told us that there are strict rules to who can sell along this building. 1) They HAVE to be Native American 2) They HAVE to hand make their own stuff that they sell. Pretty sure everyone filled #1, but my Mom and I doubt that they ALL hand made everything they sold. Sure, someone did...just not them! Either way, there was some fabulous stuff there.

Here's a better view. There were TONS of them just chillin and trying to sell. don't worry, we bartered deals from everyone we bought from! :)We went into a few museums (there are all over Santa Fe) with some discount passes that got us in for free! But there were others we had to pay, this one in particular was one we wanted to visit, but we would have spent about 45 minutes in there walking through, and they were charging about the price of my big toe. I decided I'd rather keep my toe, so here is our picture of the only painting we saw at this one.

Then we rode home and met Gary for dinner at one of our favorite New Mexico/Albuquerque restaurants called El Pinto. Come visit us and we'll take YOU there too! It was yummy...well, you should probably ask my Mom what SHE thought to get a better (unbiased) opinion.

More tomorrow on all the fun we had while Mom was here!

You Likey?

The other day I decided to have myself a craft day. This is what I made...

Socorro

There is a town about an hour and a half south of Albuquerque called Socorro. A few of us decided to take a mini vaca down there last weekend. Why do you ask? Well, 25 minutes south of Socorro is a small town (with no hotels) called San Antonio where there is a place called the Bosque del Apache Wildlife Refuge. In short: Bird Refuge (and other animals too, I suppose). We heard that during the winter months these huge cranes and geese migrate there and if you go early enough in the morning you can watch them fly away for the day. Big deal right? Well, everyone was telling us that it was SO cool because they fly away at the SAME time! We decided that we had to see it...so off we went.


Of course we also did our research on restaurants down there. First stop for dinner was the Infamous Owl Bar and Cafe in San Antonio. We'd got lots of recommendations for this joint. I had to take a picture of our meals because, I don't think one of us got something without green chilies on it. If you ever come visit New Mexico you'll get used to it. Gary's meal looked a little scary, those beans with a scoop of green chilies on top, yeah, I didn't eat any of that.

This is my Green Chili Burger I ordered. It was really yummy. I think I'm starting to really enjoy this green chili thing they've got going down here. They just might be on to something! (Yes, that green stuff that looks like relish, is not relish, it's green chili)

Another neat thing about this Owl Bar & Cafe is you can write on a dollar bill and pin it to the wall. They don't take them down until the end of the year and when they do, they donate them all to charity. Last year they had $18,000. Although, there were quite a few dollar bills on the walls, I'm sure they looked a little bare compared to December 31st of last year!

After dinner we walked next door to this OLD OLD Gas station (and town store) for ice cream.

Here's Gary and his buddies

Then we went back our hotel...everyone put their kids down and then came over to the party room! (The room with no kids) And we played lots of card games and ate lots of junk food!

It's possible that we might have played games a little too late because we had to be up at 5:00am the next morning, so as to not miss the 'show'

This is my first picture just as the sun was starting to come up...you can kind of see the birds all out on the lake. They sleep out on the lake to keep safe from 'monsters' or other animals that might want to eat them.

At the refuge, they have this deck you can walk out on to wait and watch...Did I mention it was 6:00am and FREEZING cold? I really should have remembered my jacket!

All of a sudden, all these geese flew away off the lake all at the same time! There were over 22,000 of them! It was SO cool...like a ceiling of birds above us and the sound of all their wings flapping was really neat as well!

New Mexico has really pretty sunrises and sunsets...everyone should experience them at some point during their life. This morning was no different.

The cranes decided to sleep in! :) - If you notice, there are little patches of groups of cranes. I thought it was interesting that they all didn't hang out together like the geese did. We later learned that each group is a family and they stick together and sleep together as families.

The picture below was funny. The two cranes to the left decided to take off walking. Well, they are all on a thin sheet of ice and at first as they were walking, their feet kept falling through the ice with each step and then they started flapping their HUGE wings to help them keep balance but then they started sliding across the ice with their feet out in front of them. It was cute!

Eventually one or two at a time would fly away, we stuck around and watched for a while but someone should really let the cranes know that the geese put on a much better show than they did. :)

Where did the birds fly you ask? Oh, about 500 yards away to a big huge field where food is provided for them (Remember: REFUGE) They hang out and eat in these fields all day and then at sunset, they fly back to the water.

Here are the guys at the visitor center getting a little R&R.

We decided to check out of our hotel and hit a park for a little bit to let the kids play for a bit...this particular park happened to have a major horse shoe pit set up WITH BLEACHERS! We thought it was funny...but deep inside I kind of wish I could go watch the tournaments that I'm sure is held there each summer!

Then we went to eat at another recommended restaurant given to us...I really liked this one. Of course, notice the green chilies on my food...it was really yummy!