Vacation again

When we last left our band of travelers they were in the Arizona Painted Desert. Their born of the heart babies were safe and sound, and most importantly, they were out of western New Mexico.

We were in a very beautiful old hotel overlooking the painted desert. It had never been used as a hotel, seems like in the olden days when a war happened it affected us back home. They closed the hotel because people vacationed less, and they turned it into a ranger station. It was very beautiful.

After that we wandered around the park. We saw petroglyphs that looked like a stork carrying a baby. See it's true. We saw petrified logs all over the place. Creation side note. They were left over from THE flood, Grand Canyon was made by THE flood, not a billion, trillion years, and all the logs ended up down stream and turned into rock. Pretty cool huh?

It was a very windy day, very, very windy. I cannot stress the windiness enough. There were several little side treks we could have made, but our eight year old fell over more than once from the wind, so we looked from the car.

The day ended much better than it began, we contemplated staying in Gallup again and seeing if they'd do any ballooning on Sunday, we chose not too. It was snowing and we just wanted to get as close to ABQ as possible, at this point I could have cared less about Gallup and balloons. We ended up in Grants, we went the Route 66 way into town. As my dad would have said, they'd already rolled up the sidewalks. It looked like a ghost town. Still we could have stayed in a "hotel" for $25, and chose not to. We went to the newer, more evil, Super Walmart end of town. Found a hotel for $65. Wondering, but not caring how they were making money, we enjoyed a semi quiet evening in. The boys swam for two hours or so, the big middle boy really enjoyed hanging with his big brother. Big brother had nothing cooler to do, so it turned into a nice moment.

Sunday morning we woke up and high tailed it back to ABQ. We were planning on going to church. We'd found a megachurch listing website, and found a couple in ABQ we thought might be interesting. One was far away, the other, we couldn't find the service times on their website. We did see the building from the road on our way to an Albertson's with a bakery, and we saw the cops directing traffic after one service, we were however too late to be fashionably late, (after we got donuts), and decided that God would be ok with us hangin as a family.

We called my home away from home and they let us check in three hours early. Dale was happy to see me again. He called me by name and gave me my extra blankets, without my asking. I don't mind computer profiles when they are helpful and useful to me. I can't say enough nice things about the Residence Inn, and Albuquerque in general. We finished out the day going to a rock wall and the Outback. I was very proud of myself, getting all the way up several walls. I am terrible at trying new things. Turns out I actually like trying new things, and may do it more in the future. Of course new things can also be bad, but as I learned they don't last forever.

Monday morning we flew out, but not before we went to the rental car place twice. We forgot to fill 'er up, and had to go do that, but still made it in plenty of time. No lengthy airport delays, no missed connections, no drama to speak of.

We got home, got the babies, baby boy cried, they pointed out every Christmas light on the way home. Our little middle boy promised to behave, (how sad) and life got back to normal. I'm already looking forward to my next trip to Albuquerque.