Texas!

We are alive and in San Antonio. Turns out we’re not good at keeping up a blog. I plan to update it soon so we can remember all the cool things we’ve done but for now, this photo will have to do.

Petroglyphs, Family, Friends, and Petrified Trees by Arianne

Petroglyph National Monument is one of the largest petroglyph sites in North America and it’s right here in Albuquerque! We only got to walk one trail but even so we saw dozens of glyphs. It was very cool.

It was wonderful to get a visit from my sister and 2 of her boys one weekend.

Wheelbarrow arch!

(The Rio Grande valley is gorgeous.)

We had to make a quick trip to Prescott for a full day of doctor and dentist appointments. We were grateful we got to see some of our favorite friends! On the way home we stopped at Petrified Forest National Park and walked through the Crystal Forest. Can’t believe these trees are soooo old! Some of them were incredibly tall. We were amazed to see how many petrified trees there are here.

Piedras Lisa by Arianne

Our favorite hike in Albuquerque! Sliding down all the slippery rocks is super fun and you get a beautiful view of all of Albuquerque.

Around Albuquerque by Arianne

We’ve had fun exploring Albuquerque. Last weekend we checked out OffCenter Arts where we listened to live music, ate cake, made some maracas, and tried out screen printing. The staff were amazing with our kids.

The Albuquerque Aquarium and Botanical Gardens are fantastic. (We love the zoo too, but the penguins have been off exhibit while we’ve been here and they’re our favorite part!)

Inside a giant pumpkin!

Weird maze inside the magical forest.

Japanese gardens

We like to look at Atlas Obscura for unique things to see in new places and found this Chainsaw Scupture Garden, carved from burned-out cottonwoods after a bad fire along the Rio Grande in 2003. They were pretty impressive and the cottonwoods were gorgeous.

Tinkertown, Sandia Cave and Travertine Falls by Arianne

The Sandia Mountains just east of Albuquerque are full of fun day trips.

Tinkertown is a delightful little museum full of miniature carved figures all made by one man over many years. We could have spent hours in there looking at all of the details. It was super unique and really fun.

Sandia Cave was at the end of a short hike and a tall spiral staircase perched on the very edge of a cliff. Also super unique and very fun.

Going up

At the top of the stairs - overlook from the mouth of the cave.

Headed back down

We did a little hike to Travertine Falls - didn’t see any falls but saw some cool caves, a village of wikieups, and Wren and Townes spotted some real fossils on the trail!

Explora by Juniper

We used our reciprocal membership to visit Explora in Albuquerque. At Explora there was a really cool room. We call it the Bubble Room. There are a bunch of bubble-related things you can do. My favorite thing was this big table filled with bubble juice, and there were these long sticks with circles on the end so you could make gigantic bubbles.

And there was a place with a bunch of kitchen materials like plastic plates and stuff, and you could make bubble food. That was Margot’s favorite part.

There was also a big half circle table with strings going up from it attached to a half circle piece, and when you dip it in the bubble juice and lift it up it creates big sheets of bubbles that look like windows. Here is a really cool picture of Birdie doing it.

This is a heat sensing camera but it really depends on what the coldest or hottest item is in the room. Here Else is holding an ice pack so it made everything else seem warmer.

There were these tubes that blew air and you can pretty much see what Elsie’s doing.

Birdie making balls float with her evil chant.

Tornado.

Zion National Park by Townes

We went to Zion National Park. (The big girls are in 4th grade and each get a free National Parks pass this year!) It was pretty. We went on a hike to see the Emerald Pools. There were three of them: Lower, Middle and Upper. We could see a waterfall from the lowest one, and from the middle one we could see where the water came down. At the upper pool we watched daddy juggle balls of mud and I threw balls of mud at the rocks near the upper pool.

We went on a bus and our bus driver was Russ and he sounded like he spoke gibberish. I loved Russ.

We also saw a weird tree. It had a hole in it. It was like a stump with leaves growing out of the top.