Mesa Verde

Happy Fall Back Day! I hope everyone has turned their clocks back and enjoyed their extra hour of sleep, that is unless your kids get up all through the night and at the crack of dawn anyway. Yes I am speaking from experience. We have had a wonderful fall week, it starts out in the 40's and climbs up to around 70. It has been beautiful, but it looks like this next week we'll be having some storms. It was another week full of trips to the park trying to get out and enjoy the weather before it changes. When I was looking at the weather report it looks like we get the coldest in all of NM, or at least we are one of the coolest places in NM. Down south they're still having 80+ degree weather. So maybe we'll have to migrate down south for a weekend when it gets too cold here. We've never been able to drive a few hours south and heat up before it might be nice.

This week Alana practiced her few words that she tries to make, of course daddy is the one that most closely resembles the acutal word. Yes I am proud of that. When she hears the door open and close when I get home she starts saying Daddy Daddy and walking down the hall towards me. The other day she wouldn't leave Janelle alone, and she was trying to get dinner ready. Janelle said Daddy? but I wasn't home, this started the routine of Alana walking away from Janelle chanting Daddy Daddy, a mean but effective trick.

Dax had a hard lesson to learn this week at dinner time. He is kind of a picky eater unless he has chicken nuggets, taquitos, taco meat, spaghetti, peanut butter and honey sandwich, or Marie Calendars chicken alfredo in front of him. So we were getting ready to take the kids to the park but we said you had to eat your dinner to be able to go. So of course Dax went into stuborn mode (I don't know where he gets that from, I fear that he got a double dose of that). Anyway he didn't eat any of his ham and didn't get to go to the park with Dayna and Alana. It was kind of sad because Dayna kept looing for him, hoping that he would eat and then meet us there. But he didn't and he missed out so hopefully he'll eat next time so he can play with his best friend Dayna. They play really well together, of course they are brother and sister so there are plenty of rough moments but all in all they do really well.

We are excited for Dayna's 6th b-day this week. It should be a lot of fun. She has invited a good group of friends and Janelle has lined up a magic show, animal balloon guy and face painter. I actually think it might all be the same guy or maybe two, but they'll be busy

 Saturday we went to Mesa Verde National Park and the Kings Decided to come with us. It was another beautiful day, it is about a two hour drive and well worth it. I guess the park is open year round but there are certain dwellings that you have to have a guide to go up and see and this was the last day for tours of "Cliff Palace" the largest of the villages.

 There are hundreds of these cliff dwellings throughout the canyon. Back in the 1800s they were discovered by some Quaker Cattle farmers that became good friends with the Ute indians. The Utes knew that this family would need some more land for their cattle to graze and since they were such good friends with this family they offered their land to let the animals graze on. But they warned the family that there were villages in the cliffs that must have been built by flying people, and the villages were haunted. Of course the cattle farmers didn't believe any of it and started exploring everything themselves. They discovered hundreds of the dwellings and gathered lots of artifacts.

 It is now a national park and it is pretty amazing. We got to go up to two of the villages one named "The Tree House" you don't need a tour guide to go see that one, the other being "Cliff Palace". We brought sack lunches and really enjoyed a beautiful day outdoors with family and friends. The kids did pretty good, I wouldn't be surprised if they have a few kids injured every year from falling off the sides of some of the narrow walkways we had to take. But we made it home safe and sound.

                                         On the way home we saw several groups of wild horses.

                                        The only one willing to get out of the car with daddy for a photo shot!

 Dayna is so proud that she can now do the monkey bars with having to put both hands on the bar to go on to the next.  she is swing away like a little monkey.

 these girls are such close friends it is fun.  we are so lucky to have our kids get a long so well.

 Janelle and I got to go out with three other couples for a date night o Friday. We don't get a baby sitter very often but Janelle had gotten one for us and we went out with the Shepherds, Kings, and Buxtons. We all work with the same practice but Buxton and King work at a different office most of the week. We went to a local Chinese restaurant called "Wonderful House". It was a lot of fun, we ordered family style and everyone shared their order with one another. We topped the night off with a "Gotta Have it" portion of Cold Stone "Cookie Doughn't you want some" chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. It was a fun night!