Friday, April 15, 2011

Our Dove

This little momma dove built a nest right outside our back door. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time, but now that the weather is improving and the door is getting opened and closed a lot more often, she may be regretting her choice in location. I am thinking that if she hasn't laid the eggs yet, she may be relocating.

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Playgroup Egg Hunt

We have hosted an egg hunt in the backyard for our playgroup for the past three years. This was our last one, since Jack is going to kindergarten in the fall. We had a low turn out (partly due to wind, maybe?) but we still had a super good time.

Our friend Luke almost had to miss out because his little brothers were sick, but happily, his mom dropped him off and he got to join in the fun.
Here's Josh finding an egg under a tree. Miss Rebekah hid the eggs and she did a super good job. They were hidden well enough to keep the kids busy for quite a while, but it wasn't too difficult so as to be frustrating.
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Showing off all the eggs they found! They had awesome treats inside, including lots of stickers, tiny dinosaurs, bouncy balls, spiky balls, and jelly beans. The kids seemed super pleased with their haul.
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Sunday, April 03, 2011

White Sands!

This spring we met Jim & Jenny and their kids at White Sands National Monument, near Alamogordo. It took us about 4.5 hours to get there from Rio Rancho. The weather was perfect! There was some wind but not enough to stop us from having a great time. And the temperature was perfect. The sand felt cool and we walked around barefoot most of the time.
Outside the visitor's center. It was SO bright there, sunglasses were an absolute must. It seemed bright to me from inside our darkly tinted car, wearing sunglasses. It was so bright I actually could not see the screen on the camera, so had no idea what the pictures looked like until we got home.
Getting ready to go sledding! The plastic sleds we brought turned out to be useless! But Jenny had enough big red disks for all the kids, and they were perfect for the sand. It was hard to get going very quickly, but they soon learned that if they travelled in each other's paths, they could gain more speed.
A view from the top! At this point, I had a lot of while sand down the seat of my jeans! Mason mentioned later on that although you are not allowed to take sand with you, this is actually impossible, as quite a bit of it sticks to you or gets trapped in your clothing.


Looks pretty steep!
Here we are posing at the top of a dune before sledding down.

These things are just huge and amazing, most seemed about 3 or 4 stories high.

AnneMarie spent a lot of the time climbing the dunes on her own, enjoying the beauty of the scenery.


It was quite a hike up to the top but even the grown-ups got into it!
After White Sands we went to check out the space museum in Alamogordo. Here Mason poses with a life-size statue of Ham, a monkey who went to outer space. He is actually bured there at the museum!
A former Goddard Rocket! :)
The Space Museum was really cool for Garrett (12), but the younger kids did not really appreciate it! We'll go back again when they're older.

Dinner at Casa Blanca in Ruidoso.
AnneMarie, Mason and Garrett went roller skating. I didn't really get any good action pics, but here are the two buddies posing ... they are all pink in the cheeks because they were really pushing themselves! AnneMarie was wearing low cut socks and the skates were hurting her ankles, so she asked Grandma Nancy if she could wear her socks! Grandma sweetly obliged and AnneMarie was able to skate for another hour.
Noah and Jack did not really want to stop eating pizza and pose for this photo, but I wanted to get them in their matching souvenier t-shirts! All in all, a great weekend away, our first since Nathan got sick. It was a success.