Monday, June 25, 2007

Madeline had a day at La Casita this Thursday, she had a lovely time from all reports. I had a haircut and brought some sandals. I could have done so much more. I'd forgotten how much you can get done by yourself! But it was strange not to have at least one little companion with me.

We had a La Leche League Leaders meeting at my place on Friday, so Liam stayed home to play with some friends, we had twelve children here, and they had a great time and required very little supervision. Ages from 15 years - 18mths. We even managed to talk about some LLL stuff in between all the catching up and other important stuff.

Richard returned from his trip on Friday night so Saturday we packed a picnic and headed back to Peco's National Monument. We went here on one of our first weekends in New Mexico but we hadn't really looked around the ruins of the pueblo.
Sunday we went to a Greek festival, they had food, music and dancing Madeline really enjoyed the dancing.

Monday, June 18, 2007

the other weekends that I haven't mentioned

We have been away every weekend since memorial day, I mentioned the Villanueva trip on memorial weekend, the weekend after we left Santa Fe on friday night and headed for Elephant Butte Lake, like heading to Taupo really, large lake in the middle of the state. Lots of people were there camping and preparing for fishing/waterskiing type activities.

We drove in about 8.30pm and left early next morning - it was hot here and exposed. We were heading west to Gila National Monument, it was about another two or three hours drive from here. It's an old mining area and there are little towns which still have one or two shops operating, thou mostly as cafes now.

The National Monument is within a National forest so there's heaps of camping around about. The monument is based on some cliff dwellings from the Mogollon culture. Naturally we completed the Junior ranger program, but this place is different, they have a junior, junior ranger program, so Madeline did that and got a badge too.
The campground was nice and there was a fifteen minute walk to another cliff dwelling just behind it so we did that in the morning after we'd packed up. We had quite a drive to get home but we broke it up with a stop at a campground which Liam was able to find some bouldering to do so the kids got a good leg stretch after several hours in the car and with several more to come. We drove through the very large array and took some pictures and read the signs but didn't go to the visitor centre. We stopped in Socorro and got chocolate and ice creams, for some time Madeline had been asking for chocolate but otherwise was bored and pretty well behaved. Liam was asleep. Our trip was something like this.

Last weekend we camped much closer to home in the Hyde State Park about 20min drive towards the ski basin from Santa Fe. We went with friends from school and so had a collection of kids who played in the river near where we camped they built a dam (naturally) and floated various things from the bridge upstream down to the dam. We walked up to a waterfall nearby which was pretty and had water in it which is not always the case in these parts. In the evening we had a spectacular thunder and hail storm, but the state parks in NM have these really nice shelters so we were able to watch and stay dry.
We'd noticed a blocked inlet and an outlet pipe into the area we'd put our tents up and in the morning when I found a map we discovered we'd camped in the ice skating pond!

Big and small

I have this email that comes to me once a week and reminds me that I'm pregnant (they think they're telling me about each week but...) somedays I have these oh thats right I am pregnant moments. So apparently they caculate me to be twenty four weeks and the baby is 21cm long. I'm feeling lots of wriggling from in there but mostly people don't pick that
I'm pregnant but none of my clothes fit, and I have let out the adjustment on my preggy jeans severl times now.
This weekend, husbandless, the rest of the family went to a picnic that my midwife hosts at a park once a year. Liam and Madeline played really hard for three hours with the other kids and I got to talk to some adults some of whom had very small babies. We had a nice picnic and I collected some maternity tops and newborn clothing from the swap pile. I had nothing to contribute having already passed anything we are not using or expecting to need next winter.
I do now feel like there are a couple of options on what to dress this baby in when it arrives. I'm glad I collected up woolen things when we were in NZ 'cause there don't seem to be the same sorts of things here.

Sunday needed an activity, the day always proceeds smoother with a bit of a plan or direction. Liam was keen to visit 'Stan' and although initailly reluctant to drive to Alberquerque again (we took Richard to the airport yesterday) it wasn't a bad choice of activity. Madeline was also into a dino-saur visit and we had some dynatheatre passes we could use to see one of their films. So we loaded up and headed down to Alberquerque, we had lunch at the museum cafe, bith kids demolished their pizza which weren't small and I had a delicious chicken and green chille baked potato with guacamole, it had cheese it it and whipped butter yum! Then it was on to see 'Stan' in his central position in the museum atrium. We continued though the walk through time backwards, then forwards and finished up with a trip down the Nile river in Mystery of the Nile in the dynatheatre. We emberged into a very warm afternoon with the car saying it was 103 F but I think it reads a little high. The water I had left in the car would have made an acceptably temperatured cup of tea. Santa Fe wasa much more pleasant 90 F when we returned. Were forecast 90 F (about 32 C) for most of this week.