So Many things to Love about New Mexico

We arrived in the summer, so it was obvious that there would be a lot of sunshine here, but I had no idea that there would be so many pretty rainbows too.  Many days there was a very brief rain shower in the afternoon or early evening and there would be these beautiful rainbows afterwards.

 Many times there would be double rainbows and they are all so brilliant!  This place and it's sunshine has blown us away.  I have never lived somewhere with so much of it!!  You have to wear sunglasses constantly.

 We went to the 4th of July celebration soon after we arrived.  Albuquerque is actually big enough to have bands playing that we have actually heard of.  They also had some fun fireworks!  But the lines at all the booths were ridiculous so we didn't get anything to eat.  Big does mean lots of people!

 Balloons!  We see them out our windows and on our runs every morning. They are so pretty and make me happy.

 They have a real life state fair!  With performances like these pogo guys (this one was from Russia) to real concerts and a honest to goodness official rodeo.

 They had sponsors like the dairy guys where you could pretend to milk a cow

 They had rows of places to eat and lots of buildings with people selling stuff and competing!

 This was a little place inside one of the building where they were racing pigs.  It was a cowboy exhibit where you played horse shoes, saddled a horse

 milked a cow- hee hee, I had to take a picture of that sign!  It was so tempting to drink the cow water!

 And make rope!

 They also had a little exhibit of Aussie animals.  See the Albino Kangaroo?

 We finally get to have our trampoline up again.  The boys are ecstatic!  Sam is learning a layout full twist right now and Joe has perfected his front flip.

We got to go watch a Lobos versus Boise state game.  College football is fun. 

Max's class got to go to the balloon museum.  They made their own balloons using a tutorial online.

Then when they got to the museum they had these stations where they filled them up with hot air 

 and let them fly!

 Then the kids caught them and if they need repairs, they went to a repair station and then they did it all over again!  The kids had a ton of fun.

The balloon festival is amazing!

 These two balloons- Darth and Yoda were obviously owned by the Lucas company.  They had all these guys dressed up that were just there to interact with the crowd and take pictures with them as the balloons filled up.

They even sent two balloons off from Max's school yard one day.  You just had to get up a little early to come see it.

 This is an English bobby.  He had a robber that he floated with most of the time.

 A Heffalump!  The kids didn't even know what a Heffalump was!

I know some people think I don't like Albuquerque much, because of the difficulties we have had in this move.  Everything has taken 3 times as long.  The schools are crazy about their registrations.  I had to go in 3 times for Max and Sam until they decided I was finished and twice for Joe.  I have had to fight the high school over issues with sports and grades and AP credit.  The closing of the house took over a month, just because that is how long it takes to approve people for loans here.  The ward is huge and full of mostly Utah transplants that have never moved in their lives until now and find it extremely hard and cry about it often, or have lived here their whole lives and have family and friends all over the place.  They are also very young- very young!  It's hard to feel wanted, needed or even a part of a ward like that.  But in the end, I am trying to keep a positive attitude.  I think the stuff with the schools is finally worked out!  I got to advocate with them for military children and that was a good thing.  I am loving the sun and all the outdoors stuff.  We are playing tennis and running and riding bikes on the many trails.  We have hiked the Sandias.  Life is good- for now.

2 Month Photo Blog

 Max on a Motorcycle.  This is up at Ramstein.

 Max's school field trip down to Ritter sport.  They got to make 2 chocolate bars and learn about how chocolate is made.  Max put crispy rice and pop rocks in his chocolate.  It actually wasn't half bad.

 Went to a friends house and learned how to flood cookies.  Love learning something new!

 Crazy baking for Valentine's day.  Max wanted me to make chocolate strawberries for his class. I made a big cookie instead and then some cake pops, but they didn't turn out awesome so I relented and did the strawberries.  Also I made a bunch of other stuff for us and other people.

We may only have one more year of this Valentine's thing.  Rob and I have never done much with the holiday- even though I did decide to bake up a storm this year.  I think we may have even forgotten there was a holiday, except that the little ones always did Valentine's cards for their classmates.  Max is the last one doing that now.  

 Getting serious about moving.  Went through some of our stuff and sold some of it- gave away the rest.

Bought some stickers for my nails- I feel like I am 5.  But really these Jamberry nails are great.  Polish lasts me not even a day before it's ruined and looks horrible.  These last for 7-10 days on me.  I think they are actually supposed to last about 2 weeks, but I am so hard on my nails.  I don't bite them or anything.  It's just my regular every day routines.  My nails are so paper thin and break all the time.  The stickers seem to help protect them. I might be spending a little more money on nail stuff now!

 Sam's European Football Championship ring came in.  Very cool!

 The tulips are out.  Love them!  As soon as I saw they were starting to go on sale, I had to buy some.

 For Leap Year Day we had pond water (margarita mix and sprite) and

 Frog legs and green fields (friend chicken breast strips and salad) for dinner.

I also made an avocado and tomato salad which would have been way better without all the onion!

Notice there are no pictures of my birthday.  That's because we didn't do much this year.  It was Ok, though.  For some reason I wasn't up for much.  Rob and the boys made dinner and I bought a cheesecake for dessert.  

Klondike Derby Time

One of the most fun things this ward does is participate in the Klondike derby in Kandersteg,
Switzerland.

Lots of families come down with the scouts and we all hang out while the scouts participate in all kinds of snow, survival and scouting exercises.  The boys took second this year.

We ended up in 2 different houses, because there just wasn't room enough for everyone that wanted to come.  We did all have dinner together and play games together at least once, however.  Every night we had kind of a potluck.  At least we ended up sharing our food with lots of scouts- as we were in the house with the scouts.  Luckily, I brought tons, since I figured that might happen.

When we pulled into town the first night, we were a little depressed.  There wasn't any snow!  It ended up snowing that night and the entire next day.  The scouts had 3 teams and 3 sleds that they used throughout the day.

We went out and watched for a little while.  We watched them have to find a baby in the snow and treat it's injuries.  The group before them had the baby all wrapped up in an emergency blanket and someone had taken off their coat and wrapped it around it.  Our boys, used a scarf to tie the baby to a shovel- as a backboard- and didn't do anything else in the way of hypothermia.  They ended up getting the same points.  Hmmm.  When the other group was done, they placed the baby back where it belonged.  Ours threw the baby with the shovel.

We also went walking downtown.  We had a wonderful talk with a lady all about languages and the festival that started that weekend.  They went around in old fashioned clothing and used old fashioned skates and sleds during the festival.
Sunday, we had a nice devotional and then went with a bunch of other to the ski hill to sled.  European sledding is crazy- steep, long with some hairpin turns.  Wipe outs are normal.  They recommend you wear a helmet.  We declined. You take the gondola up to the top of the hill and then you walk and sled and walk and sled until you get to the steep part that takes you all the way to the bottom.

Because of the new fallen snow, the powder showered us like crazy as we went down on the first run, freezing us to death.  We got some more gear and wrapped up tighter for the next run.  Just as we hit the steep hill part, there was a big back up of scouts in a tour group.  Some of them obviously weren't used to how steep it would be and somehow someone stopped in the middle of one of the steepest parts.  How you do that, I will never know.  But it caused our group to pile up on top of him.  One of the runners was up and I slammed right into it with my left leg.  That hurt a lot.  I ended up getting back on to my sled and made it to the bottom.  By then it was time for lunch, so we walked to our van and sat down to eat.  I decided to look at the leg.  Rob said, "no, don't look at it!"  I did anyways.  As soon as I pulled up my ski pants, I saw the blood seeping through.  Sure enough- I needed stitches.

We taped it together as well as we could.  I was determined to do more runs.  Sledding is just as expensive as skiing there, since you use the same lift.  But as soon as I got up, I almost fainted.  I tried several times to sit and then get up again and each time I almost fainted or threw up.  Finally, I let them take me back to the cabin.  We stopped at the scout hut and the doctor- one of the Laundstuhl doctors took a look.  He told me that I needed 4 stitches or if I didn't mind a scar- steri strips.  He was just leaving for a scout outing and wouldn't be back until 4:30 pm, so I chose the steri strips.  He gave me the supplies and I did it myself.  After that, I had to lie down for a good hour.  Joseph stopped sledding the same time as me.  He had gone off the side of a cliff once and over the sides of hills a couple of times.  Max and Sam quit soon after.  Sam never dresses warm enough, no matter how much we try to get him to.

Emma was the only one that got the whole 6 runs in with Rob.  It takes about an hour to complete each run, so you really can only get 6 done in a day.
We also celebrated Emma's and my birthday while we were there.  Emma is 19-1.

On the way home we stopped in Zurich for some fresh Lindt chocolate at the chocolate factory.

We enjoyed our trip, despite the injuries and cold.

Switzerland is a beautiful place!  We enjoyed our adopted son for the weekend, too.