The Botanical Gardens

I love Botanical Gardens! I love them everywhere I go. It is not quite spring yet so probably too early to go see the gardens but we went anyway because we have never been to these ones! (we have been here 2 whole years!!! Slackers) I didn't really know there was a botanical garden here. This one is fun for children too because they have miniature trains!! Huge tracks with bridges and all kinds of fun things and they are all outside. They even had a Thomas train and little town. My favorite part about the trains was the little fake water fall/river/whatever you perceive it to be.

I was in love with the rocks. I couldn't figure out what they were. I don't think they are rocks because they are too beautiful. I imagine its big chunks of roughed up glass made to look like rocks? Whatever they are I want them in my garden just for looks, although I am sure they are way too expensive. Those colors are my favorite color scheme. They remind me of the ocean. To get back to the post now Eva was running ahead all the time so at one point I was with Jamison and watching the thomas trains and I look over and see this:

Daniel wasn't with her as you can see. She ran ahead and hopped up on the fence for a better view of Thomas, and invited herself to join the family in the picture. She has a lot of energy. Here she is taking a rest on the rock, I wanted to show you that Daniel chose this outfit.
They also had this castle for children where you could go in and explore the world. It was like we had been shrunk and put into a giant vegetable garden. There were giant carrots, pumpkins, peas, bees, ants, pinecones and all kinds of fun things. Here is Alexander at the entrance of the castle. One thing I have noticed about New Mexico is that there are so many bright and beautiful tile mosaics. I am usually not a fan of them but they have some many fun ones here.

Here is Alexander impersonating Lady Gaga.
Just kidding
They were actually supposed to be dragon Eggs and he said he was a dragon baby.

We then went into a giant greenhouse.
It was nice and humid with lots of beautiful plants.
Alexander was tired and ready to go by this point.

But we saw some beautiful bright flowers.

We pushed our luck and went to see some of the outdoors gardens. They had many different styles that were amazing. Eva was running from place to place (her preferred way to get places) and fell on her face, literally.

Poor girl already has band-aids galore from her mysterious skin condition and now she has cuts and things.

We had a fun packed day and hope to keep up the momentum with going places whenever we get a chance.

Miriam


update: Eva has already scratched off all the scabs. I am so worried she is going to have so many scars on he face from the skin thing. Can you think of any ways to stop a child who likes to scratch and pick at things to stop? We have tried a lot of things and they never seem to heal because she wont leave them alone. Her mysterious skin thing is all healed up I think but she has many scars.

Albuquerque Aquarium

It finally feels like spring, at least it did for a few days so we went to the Aquarium in Albuquerque. It was on the smaller side but still fun and probably the perfect size for small children.

They had an exhibit with jelly fish which was great with all the glowing.

They had some tortoises which were really cool. We never saw any while we were in Guam, probably one of the things I wished we would have seen. There were two of them and they were hilarious. They kept coming right up to the glass like they were staring at us and they just sat there and stared through the glass.

I saw this picture when we got home.
A really ugly fish that looks like he is eating a yellow fish. It made me laugh

It was all carpeted so people were just all sitting around the big tank with the sharks in it just watching. It was rather peaceful. We got a bit homesick for Guam because we had seen many of the fish on our many trips to the beach. Here is one last shot of Jamison. I noticed I never take any pictures of him on our little day adventures.
He just sits and stares at whoever is pushing him and tries to get their attention and tries to make them smile. Anyway that was our day at the Aquarium it was part of our sleepover madness. We also went to the botanical gardens but I will post that next.

May the Spring come and the Winter leave for the year.

Miriam

Alexander's Birthday part 1

We went to the zoo for Alexander's Birthday. We were going to go to the circus but we figured the zoo was a better option for 2 adults and 3 children (less stressful with wrangling children) Alexander was very excited to go. We woke up Saturday morning packed a lunch and left for the zoo. I gave Alexander a birthday boy badge that had blinking lights on it and he LOVED it and wore it all day, even with his pjs later in the evening. When we got there he really wanted to see the giraffes. He just kept asking where they were and wanted to move along until we got there.

Here he is finally seeing the giraffes (look closely and you can see a giraffe in the picture)
We saw all the animals and there were people at many of the animal places who were informers about the animals (this wasn't the case last time we came). The animals were a lot more lively than I have ever seen them. The gorillas were even throwing poop at us! The Seals were barking and swimming like crazy. It was pretty great. A zoo lady told me it was because it was so early in the morning. When we got to the Polar Bear exhibit they were very active too. They kept diving in the water and we happened to be underneath so see it and we caught some photos:

Here it is freshly diving in.

You can even see him breathing out the air in the water in this one. I liked watching the polar bears because of all the swimming but I usually don't like the Polar bears because everytime we have gone they pace back and forth and I feel like they are antsy and are just waiting for someone to fall down the creavice so they can eat them! I guess its built into my blood to fear the Polar bear (being Icelandic and all). Anyway they make me nervous. Here is Alexander while we were looking at the Polar Bears from the top:

Here is a cougar look at me, the other one was eating some giant bone with meat on it I didn't want to show that photo though.
Here are the kids on a giant brass hyena (or not I can't remember what it is)

here they are on the giant chair thing.
Eva was all over the place but having a blast. She did this pose all on her own so I took a picture. Yeah those are band-aids on her face.
Here was the main event! There is this huge play ground there and the kids love it. I mean kids from all around know this is at the zoo and want to play there.
Alexander was so happy. He had a great birthday and I will do another post about it. He also brought his camera to the zoo looking for Animals to capture on film (or memory card)

The Rodeo

We went to a rodeo on Friday night. It was my first rodeo ever and of course the kids' first rodeo too. Daniel was shocked I had never been to one. It was inside and right by our house and it sounded like a great idea. We were also able to get box seats which made it much easier with little kids. I have to admit it was a lot of fun minus the announcer ( he was a little backwards) We put on our pretend cowboy clothes. Alexander put his boots on and Eva had her riding boots. We got some good pictures too.

My favorite event was the bull riding.
It just looked so scary and it took a lot of practice I am guessing.

Daniel took this picture. That was an angry bull

This was the event where the little girls ride around the barrels.
They were sooo good and they looked like they were 8 years old

This was probably my least favorite event when they rope the calf's. It was just sad to see some of them go down, although less than half of the competitors were able to rope them. Either it was an off night or its just a really difficult event.

Here are the kids all wearing Alexander's cowboy hat.

Jamison did really well and fell asleep half way through it even though it was extremely loud from the announcer

Eva didn't pay much attention to what was going on.
She was too busy running around.

Here is Alexander the old cowboy.
He was looking forward to this all day and I think he really liked it.

It was a fun family Event and I would definitely go again. Oh and there were many cowboys from Canada and Utah I expected the one's from Utah but was surprised by the Canadians. There was even one from New Jersey!

The negative side to this was the Daniel kept blasting country music all day Saturday when we were cleaning the house. I am not a fan of the country music so yeah you get the picture.

The pumpkin Patch

We have been trying to usher in Halloween spirit around here so I did my autumn cleaning and got some decorations out and it was great. Then we went to the pumpkin patch that someone created right by Target :) It was spur of the moment so I forgot the camera! However Daniel's new phone has a camera on it (well better than my camera's phone) so we got some pictures of the evening. We went at twilight and it was just a beautiful night.

Jamison slept the whole time in his bear suit/ Halloween costume[This is the one photo from my phone]

Then there was a fun rubber ducky race

There was a fun little corn maze which Daniel Alexander and Eva took advantage of

Then there was a haystack maze. This is the one the kids enjoyed the most. I liked it because I could see them and just stand at the beginning of the maze with Jamison and they just ran and ran and ran some more. It was cute.I made them stand still and take this photo :)

It was a fun evening and I love Halloween.

Balloon Fiesta/ Conference Weekend final

The weekend was Fantastic. We really enjoyed having family come visit us and the kids were in la la land. Just a warning there are going to be many photos in this post.

Balloon Fiesta was a blast even with the early wake up call.


So many Giants and people watching them fly away. The funniest thing I saw the whole time was the Darth Vader Balloon.


It was there last year but this year they went all out and had this guy


in front of it and these guys
guarding it. They were only missing the music.

Eva and Alexander enjoyed the balloons for probably 30 minutes and then just played with Garrett the entire time. Garrett is officially Alexander's favorite person at the moment.you can see Alexander look up at Garrett in amazement, by the way this is pretty much what happened most of the weekend. Eva and Alexander followed Garrett around and Mallory held Jamison. I think Mallory was Jamison's favorite because she always got him to be calm.

This was Jamison the whole morning. He just slept and we were happy.

Beckam found a balloon he liked

We were all a bit tired so we sat around waiting for donuts :)

Eva dressed for warmer weather.
We lucked out this year and got some pretty warm weather
(last year we were freezing and Eva was screaming because of cold hands so we over compensated this year)

Showing how close we got to the balloons
Here is the balloon they were standing in front of.
This is my favorite shot because of the moon.

And this is the final shot.
I think its the funniest shot of the day.
Alexander was being a frog and I caught it.

Conference was another story. Our internet went out on Friday night and stayed out until Monday morning. How LAME is that. We felt so bad because we only got bits and peices of conference so now everyone will have to watch it on their own. This is my favorite time of year. The weather turns cooler the colors change and conference gives that boost we all need.

That was our weekend with our fun visitors now its back to regular life which is going to be great with the holidays coming.

Miriam