Catching up? No Chance!

We have been babysitting for a long time now, and Sam and Lilyanne are just delightful! The four older ones are good guys as well.  Lily thinks she has it made when they are all together.  JoJo dotes on her, Vic flirts back when she flirts with him, and her brothers are totally smitten.

   Don and I still go places, just not for very long!  On a summer trip to Colorado we made time to stay at the Inn of the Governors in Santa Fe and then visit Tent Rocks National Monument out at Cochiti Pueblo.  It all comes down to making good use of free time when you can squeeze in some of it! Don also got to put his welding skills back into use with some artwork and some skilled utilitarian work(built a trailer)!

This weekend we will visit a college friend who has built a COMPLETELY UNIQUE house/dugout out on the plains of Texas. I am not sure pictures will do it justice--they may or may not follow, but our old wad of friends will definitely appear here!

Birds and Friends......priceless

We took a long look at the Very Large Array, then continued on to Pie Town for a cup of coffee and, of course, PIE!
The available ones were Apple with green chile and pinon nuts, cranberry apple, a caramel one, chocolate meringue, pecan with something.....nothing to do but try the apple green chile.  It was good, but Jany and I will change the variety of nuts when we get around to making it, we think!

A cold and beautiful morning for watching the birds at the Bosque del Apache--such clamor.  The Snow Geese honk and the Cranes, well they seem to creak....

A little early for the "been there, done that" pictures, but we had to shoot them!  By full light we were on top of Monjeau looking at Sierra Blanca from the fire tower.....

Our traditional "does this Array make our butts look big"..........everyone probably has some silly tradition, we are no different.

The gang's all here!

It was so cold in Fort Worth I found it hard to shed my coat in a place as big as Billy Bob's....Wandering around outside in that cold sunshine was beautiful, and definitely CRISP!

Stockyards in Fort Worth

It doesn't take long to get a group together--we got a call from Martindales in NC saying,"Let's meet at the Stockyards Christmas afternoon"  ..This way Jill got to meet our Martindales, and vice versa!  Jany had met them when we lived there.  We had a great time just being together for a few days!  I thought I would post a "sisters" shot, then I will go get the whole crowd.  This happened in the winter of '09, but I have been thinking of them all recently, and felt like posting was worthwhile!

October snow

Of course it didn't look like this, but we did get enough to water the place!  There was frost on the windshields, but the plant life looks okay still.  I found some snow boots, and Sam stomped footprints for a mile in a spiral, according to Casey.  Something about the first snow!  I always want it to be a good batch for snow ice cream, but this melted much too fast.  Please may there be others this winter that will make wonderful ice cream!

Tomorrow we will go to Albuquerque and rescue my sewing machine.  Now that there is a little girl in the crowd, it seems perfectly natural to start sewing little cute stuff again!

Steeped in nostalgia----

After a great deal of "intending to"..this weekend several of us who are cousins, but lived far enough apart we never got to interact as cousins GOT TOGETHER!  Carolyn and David gathered up her parents and drove to Portales.  They drove around a bit and looked for familiar places, and eleven of us met for lunch at El Rancho.  After lunch and a bit of riding around looking for more places they remembered, they all came here and we shared biscotti and pinon coffee and lots more memories.  We were able to fill in blanks on each other's information..We hope we will do this again sooner than 40 years!!!

Balloon-ey!

The weather was finally fabulous! The parking was used up before we got in, but we managed to park at the Little League complex right nearby, and walked into the grounds through the VIP and RV area. We saw so-o-o-o- many fine balloons! Sammy liked Spider pig, but there were so many nifty ones....Don and Lilyanne are watching the zebra come down...

We had a picnic lunch at the car before we started home, and wandered up to Tramway and out of town. With a brief stop in Yeso for baby maintenance" we got home in time for the kids to go home and feed the dogs on time. We do a lot of our sightseeing at a fast hike, but that's just the way we roll.