New Mexico Day 1 and 2

A few months ago, as we considered what to do during our Christmas break, I realized that it had literally been years since we'd had a break where we didn't travel somewhere or have visitors.  I love to travel and visit friends and family, and I love to have visitors.  But I also like to occasionally have a break to do stuff around the house.  And when I say stuff, I mean projects like decluttering the garage, shampooing the carpets, stuff like that.  The kinds of things that make my house more livable.

So when my parents and my mother-in-law asked about visiting during the Christmas break, I respectfully requested a postponement.  I just wanted to be at home during the break, with no visitors and the free time to leisurely putt around the house and get some odds and ends done.

However, the kids really wanted to play in the snow.  It is usually our custom to spend a couple of days in Flagstaff to do a little sledding, but we also had an invitation to visit my uncle and aunt in New Mexico.  When the choice was staying in a cruddy hotel for a night in Flagstaff, or staying for a few days at my uncle's house, they wanted New Mexico.  And with gas so cheap right now, I couldn't put up too much of an argument.  

So I gave in to my kids and on Monday, mere hours after the Grand Canyon Baha'i Conference ended, we were packing for New Mexico.

We didn't leave Phoenix until after 5 pm, but we made pretty good time and the kids (and Cristina) could sleep through a good chunk of the drive.  I almost ran out of gas as we neared Tijeras, but luckily, our GPS guided us to a 24 hour gas station about 3 miles off the beaten path.  For the record, I can make it from Payson, Arizona to Tijeras, NM on one tank of gas.  Barely.  So there's that.

We got to Uncle Doug and Aunt Lynn's house around 2 am.  All the kids had woken up during the stop for gas, so they were all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for a little while, until we could finally get to bed.

Day 2:  After somewhat of a sleep-in, we got started with our day.  There were several inches of snow on the ground, so the kids got dressed and did a little playing, until their boots got full of snow and they had to come in to thaw out by the fire.  

After a lunch of pizza, we packed up some dinner sandwiches and headed to the Explora museum in Albuquerque.  We went to this hands-on museum when we were here last year, but the kids loved it so much they wanted a repeat trip.  Since our Arizona Science Center annual passes give us entry into Explora as well, it was definitely on our list of "must do's."  In fact, it's another reason the kids lobbied so hard for New Mexico vs. Flagstaff.

We spent a few hours at Explora, ate our turkey sandwiches as the museum was closing at 6 pm, then drove to the botanical gardens for their annual "river of lights."  From November through December 30, the gardens are decorated with thousands of lights in the shapes of everything from animals to plants to cars and planes.  The temperature was rather chilly to us, although Uncle Doug commented on what a nice evening it was for Albuquerque.  We spent about an hour and half walking through the lights.

Inside a giant pumpkin.  Note the "pumpkin guts" and seeds hanging down.

Back at home we had hot chocolate and popcorn.  I laid down with Alex and Bella and fell asleep with them around 10 pm.