Aquarium and Botanical Garden Fun

We took a super fun visit to the Albuquerque Aquarium the day after Thanksgiving. It was very fun. They have a lot of great fish and tanks that surround you to sit and watch them swim by.

Wyatt even pretended to drive a boat.

 We checked out the outside fish dock.

 And spent a long time watching the sting rays circle and try to splash us.

 I loved the albino turtle, very cool.

 The Botanical Garden was right next store, and while there weren't many plants to see this time of year, there were plenty of other fun things for the kids to climb and play on. Henry was willing to ham it up for me to take his photo.

Gavin trying it enjoy a snack Syd the Sloth style.

 We also wandered all the way to the end of the garden in search of this tractor. It brings back a lot of memories for Vatti since it is like the one he had when we willed on the farm. Of course, the boys love to hear all of those stories and climb up and pretend to drive like they were on the farm.

 We ran into a bit of an issue when Vatti decided to pretend to crank up the engine, since we assumed that this was not a tractor that was used very often. Then I started to smell gas and we saw some stuff dripping on the ground, so we quit doing that pretty quickly.

 We made a last fun stop at Old Town to pick up some snazzy southwest souvenirs, and of course try on some sombreros. 

And some Marshall loose cannons posing with a cannon.

 We wore out both the youngest and the oldest, they took a little snooze on the way home.

 Our last night we enjoyed some tasty mexican food and even a little apple juice out of straw cups, while wearing Wyatt's fancy new hat.

Albuquerque Thanksgiving

We had such a good Thanksgiving week in Albuquerque. The weather was great and we got to spend plenty of time outside. 

Wyatt had some great fun trying his hand at tennis.

 I got to go on a couple of nice runs, even one with my dad.

 The kids played with toys and cousins and even dogs. They spent so much time in the backyard with the two dogs, it was amazing we got them to do anything else.

For Thanksgiving, Duane put together the materials to make some super cute and tasty turkey treats. The kids all loved it.

 Duane was on turkey duty that weekend and made us a tasty deep fried bird. Caleb also assisted him with the muscles to get it done... and we didn't even burn down the house.

 We also had a fun morning exploring the Petroglyph national monument. It was all located on some volcano rocks. The trails were rough, but perfect bouldering for the kids. And a very nice sunny day.

Mesa Verde National Park

The next stop on our journey was in Cortez, Colorado and on the Mesa Verde National Park. There was more snow and ice overnight. We arrived at the visitors center at the gate and were told that most of the roads were closed and might not open that day. We were pretty determined to see this part, so we headed for the entry, to find out the road conditions. We were able to go through with all weather tires, so we made the slow trek to the Spruce Tree House. There was a lot of snow and ice, but the roads were passable with a little winter driving experience.

All of the trees and bushes were covered with snow and frost on all sides like they had been dipped in a snow cloud. It was beautiful, and the day was clear and blue.

We made it to the next visitor's center and had to wait a few minutes for the trail to the Spruce Tree House to open. It was a short paved hike, but the park rangers apparently like to be very cautious about allowing people near the caves. It was amazing to get our first view of the dwellings.

The boys loved this hike and found plenty of places to climb in and also knock snow on each other.

We were able to climb down into a keva. Gavin and Henry went down several times.

We weren't allowed to go inside the dwelling, but it was cool to get close to them and try to imagine what life must have been like there.

A park ranger on this trail told us that Mesa Verde gets about 18 inches of total precipitation a year, and they had gotten 3 inches of snow the year before. Just our luck. It was nice that there wasn't much of a crowd and we got some beautiful pictures.

After the Spruce Treehouse, we had to wait a while longer for the Mesa View Loop road to open, so the boys spent some time throwing snowball and building snowmen. Finn was loving it.

There was so much to see on the Mesa View Loop, it was pretty amazing to see these structures just pop out of the side of the cliff.

We really enjoyed this stop and can't wait to go back in better weather and take our boys to climb into some of the dwellings when they are all old enough to avoid falling off the cliffs.