Balloon Fiesta '10

After a too-short Summer, the Balloon Fiesta is the most prominent sign that Fall is here!! I say this because even in late October, temperatures have still been in the 70s, so the leaves haven't changed and it doesn't FEEL like fall. However, the cooler mornings provide the best weather for balloon launches, which means Balloon Fiesta time! This year, we had the pleasure of having my parents come to town to spend a long weekend with us and attend the Fiesta. They flew in on Thursday evening and stayed until the following Tuesday, able to entertain themselves around town while Cari and I worked on Friday and Monday. We went to the Fiesta on Friday night, which was the "Special Shapes Glowdeo." During this event, the special shapes balloons (kangaroo, Spongebob, etc) stay on the ground, but light up at various times. The result is awesome, especially at night. There were tons of people there, but we enjoyed taking pictures, walking around, and eating great/unhealthy food. After the glow, there was a fireworks show, which was beyond expectations.

Not 10 hours later, we were back at the park, bright and early on Saturday morning for the mass ascension. Last year, Cari and I waited until the last day to go see this event, and it was unfortunately canceled. So, we chose to go on Saturday just in case. This was a great decision since the weather was fantastic! After watching over 100 balloons launch and taking lots of pictures, we enjoyed a nice greasy breakfast before heading home. The traffic was a little worse, and the LONG walk to our car + getting up super early wiped us out. So, we hung around the house for the day and watched Carolina play football on TV. Saturday night, we enjoyed an excellent dinner at El Pinto and watched the Balloon Fiesta fireworks again from the restaurant parking lot afterwards.

Sunday consisted of getting up early to watch the balloons launch one last time from the dog park, going to church, an early victorious soccer game, lunch at The Grove, hanging around here/nap time, movies, dinner at Scarpas, and back for more football on TV. We also enjoyed a chill evening Monday night after work, with incredible homemade green chile chicken enchiladas compliments of my wife. :) Overall, it was a great visit with family, and an excellent time at the Balloon Fiesta. We can't wait to go home and see family again for Christmas. Thanks for coming out, Mom and Dad!!

Breckenridge, CO

Well, I’m starting to consider renaming the blog. Obviously, we’ve traveled a lot since last April. Instead of limiting the blog to adventures in New Mexico, I’m thinking “Adventures of the Southwest” would be more appropriate. Please feel free to comment with any suggestions/opinions. In the meantime, I will try to detail our most recent adventure.

Over Labor Day, we decided to just go somewhere since we both had Monday off. Given the long weekend, we wanted to choose a destination that was far enough to need 3 days, but not TOO far. So naturally, Colorado was the optimal choice! We settled on Breckenridge, which is known for it’s skiing, but has plenty of outdoor activities during the summer as well. After a little trouble with finding a boarding location for Belle (due to her seizures), we finally got her settled in Friday afternoon and took off about 5:30 a.m. on Saturday.

The drive up was beautiful. We crossed various terrains, starting with the deserts of central New Mexico to the rocks/mesas/trees of northern New Mexico. We found out a few days in advance that the Great Sand Dunes National Park in Colorado was relatively on our way, and made plans to stop on the way to Breckenridge. I’m glad we did, as it was one of the most incredible natural sights I’ve ever seen. The park consists of multiple square miles of HUGE sand dunes, formed right in front of the Rocky Mountains. We took quite a few pictures and attempted to hike to the top of a few of the higher ridges. The hiking portion turned out to be quite a bit more difficult that we thought. Taking one step in the sand and then sliding back half a step didn’t help the fatigue factor. We didn’t go as high as we wanted, but still hiked a little over a mile (some points climbing sand dunes at a 60 degree angle). The views were incredible and it was definitely rewarding. After lunch at a local restaurant, we were worn out, but back on the road!

The remainder of the drive was, again, beautiful. After a significant amount of plains, we were finally in the mountains, weaving around 10 mph turns and hitting elevations of over 13,000 feet. We arrived in Breckenridge on Saturday afternoon and instantly fell in love. It’s a cute, quaint town with shops and people (tourists?) everywhere, and it felt like a “ski town.” We checked into our hotel, the Skiway Lodge, and again, fell in love. It used to be a Bed and Breakfast, but has since been turned into an Inn. About 2 blocks from the main street, it’s convenient and cozy. We highly recommend it for anyone making a trip to the area.

The following day was hiking day! We found a nice sounding hike online that we decided to try and tackle. There were a couple points where we could hike to and then turn around, so we went for it and just decided to see how long we could go. We ended up trekking to Lower Mohawk Lake, which was 3 miles from the trailhead. Most of the hike was pretty easy and relaxing, but the end was very difficult, especially for being around 11,000 feet. Overall, we hiked for about 5 hours, including 6 miles and 2,000 + feet elevation gain. The views were breathtaking…please check out Facebook for pictures. We were too tired to do anything else, so we had a late lunch/early dinner, walked around an art festival in downtown Breckenridge, and went back to the lodge to relax for the evening.

Departure day already. We got up fairly early, packed, and drove to Sapphire Point in Dillon, CO (about 10 miles north of Breckenridge). Luckily, this only involved driving, not hiking. The point overlooks Dillon Reservoir, which is HUGE. We took some pictures, enjoyed the great views of the mountains and perfectly blue water, and piled back in the car. After a quick exploration of Dillon, we headed to Denver (about 70 miles east of our current location). We found out the day prior that the Taste of Colorado (a large crafts and food festival) was happening over Labor Day in Denver, so we decided to check it out. It would be a little longer trip home, but it was worth it, as we’d never seen Denver. The city seemed nice, and the Taste was great. We enjoyed some fabulous food (BBQ, pizza, mac & cheese, deserts, etc) amongst an EXTREMELY crowded downtown. After experiencing what Denver had to offer, we hopped back in the car and got on the Interstate and headed back!

Overall, it was an incredible trip. Colorado is pretty much the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen and has so much to see and experience. We enjoyed getting away from everyday life and spending time in the great outdoors that our Lord so graciously provided for us to explore. Hope everyone is doing well…keep checking back for updates!!

Family Visits

You might be wondering where the "usual" title picture is on this post. Well, we've taken so many lately, that in order to clear space on the laptop, all of our pictures have been transferred to an external hard drive. So, you'll have to check out Facebook for all of our recent photos!

..Where to begin...this summer has treated us extremely well, and we hope the same for all of you. The heat hasn't been too unbearable (again, the lack of humidity makes 97 degrees feel like 95) and things are really starting to cool down. The weather has been beautiful, and I know I personally have not missed the 105 + heat index that we've seen far too often on the east coast. Speaking of east coast, this summer has been FULL of visitors from there!! We've done the usual summer activities, including baseball games, movies, eating out/grilling, etc, but the highlight has been the plethora of family and friends that have sacrificed their time and money to fly out and visit us. God has shown us great love and support through everyone who has come to visit...thank you everyone!

The benefit of having people come visit during the summer is that Cari is finished with teaching for a couple months and is not working, therefore allowing her to be around to entertain guests while I slave away at work! ;) Our first guest over the summer was my sister, Katie and our future niece (yet to be named). She came the second week of July and was a GREAT sport, despite her pregnancy. Unfortunately, her connection flight from Dallas to Albuquerque was canceled, so it took her until the next morning to get out here...but, she was able to push her departure back a day, so no time was lost! We went to Old Town in Albuquerque on Friday afternoon and the girls did some jewelry shopping. On Saturday, we drove up to Santa Fe, walked around, and ate at our favorite restaurant, Tomasitas. The rest of the weekend was spent driving around, eating out (Chama Brewing Co.), stealing lavender, and watching bad movies (Brooklyn's Finest). We had a great time and it was excellent to see my sister!

The day after Katie left, Cari's best friend Amanda came to visit. Since she was here during the week, she and Cari were able to spend a lot of "girl" time together during the day. They went to Acoma (Sky City), which is one of the oldest inhabited communities in New Mexico, built on top of a 370 ft mesa. The pictures look incredible, so I'll have to visit someday. They also went shopping and out to eat quite a bit. I cooked one night and we went to an Isotopes (AAA baseball team) game another night. Overall, it was a great time!

We had a few days and a weekend in between Amanda's departure and our next visitors, my best friend Jon and his wife Megan. They came on Wednesday and left the following Monday (if I recall correctly). We had a great time with them, which included an AMAZING Carbon Leaf concert in Santa Fe the night they arrived. Carbon Leaf is our favorite band to see live (from VA!!!), and after seeing them 2-3 times a year in N.C., this was the first time they had come anywhere close to us out here. As always, they didn't fail to put on a great show at the Santa Fe Brewery (the beer was pretty good too!). The rest of the weekend was full of great food (we went out almost every meal, and they went out for breakfast everyday), fun board games (Taboo and Quelf), enjoying wine at the Gruet winery (2 miles from our apartment), and even a soccer game on Sunday. We definitely miss having close married couple friends out here, so it was a blessing that Jon and Megan were able to come and hang out.

Not a week after Jon and Megan left, our VACATION began!! Cari and I flew back to Raleigh, NC to spend time with my family and go to the beach with Cari's family. Despite leaving at 6 a.m., the traveling was pretty problem-free. We spent the first weekend with my parents in Chapel Hill, enjoying great food (including a middle of nowhere BBQ restaurant covered in UNC paraphernalia with great sweet tea), reading on the screened porch, seeing my sister and brother-in-law, and playing games. It was relaxing and enjoyable! On Monday, we got our rental car and drove to our old stomping grounds, Raleigh, to pick up a bunch of BBQ to take the to beach. We drove around for a while and took in the city that we miss daily. We drove to the beach after taking a few pictures...our destination? Ocean Isle Beach, NC. The week we spent with Cari's family was great! We hung out on the beach, celebrated Cari's grandparents' 50th anniversary, went crabbing, read a ton, played games, went golfing (well, the other guys went golfing...I pretended like I knew how to hit a ball), and ate some great food. It was a fantastic week on the beach -- we definitely miss being 2 hrs from the ocean. We drove back and spent the rest of the weekend with my parents in Chapel Hill before flying home Sunday.

And thus, the summer "ends." Cari started back at work the very next day. She's still working for Head Start, but she's with a new school starting this year. It seems that God has placed her in a new location that will allow her to use her skills and assist kids in a way that she was unable to do last year due to the environment in which she was placed. It's taking a while to get back into the swing of things, as she's remembering that a lot of the children don't know what it's like to be in school. So the next few weeks will be a challenge until everyone gets situated. My job is going well...we've hired some new analysts, so on-the-job training for them has been one of our tasks lately. God is definitely still working in our lives to show us the beauty of this place and bless us with a great church and friends that we can spend time with.

We have some fun things coming up this fall: continuing our indoor rec soccer league, going to Breckenridge, CO over Labor Day weekend, hopefully hiking La Luz to the top of Sandia Mountains, and maybe another weekend trip or two (Chaco Canyon, White Sands, camping in Red River this fall). My parents are also coming for the Balloon Fiesta in October, which will be a GREAT time! We're excited about where God has us right now and are looking forward to experiencing more of what New Mexico has to offer. Keep checking back, and make sure to check out pictures on Facebook. Love you guys!!

Vacation in San Diego

Hola! Surprise, surprise...it hasn't been a whole 4 months since the last post. Although, it is almost summer time. We hope everyone back east reading this is doing well. As always, we miss everyone, and despite Albuquerque being a little more green now that it's getting warmer, it still doesn't compare to North Carolina. However, please expect us to rub in the fact that our 95 degrees actually feels like 95 degrees when the humidity level is at 10%!!

Cari and I recently experienced a new adventure that I wanted to blog about (if for nothing else, so we don't forget some great memories). We had the opportunity to go on vacation (for longer than a couple days), together, alone, for the first time since our honeymoon almost 2 years ago. Don't get me wrong, we've greatly enjoyed spending time with our families while on vacation (traveling home, going to the beach, etc). However, spending a whole week away from "normal" life with just each other was much needed and very much enjoyed. After originally contemplating spending a week in Mexico at an all-inclusive resort, we changed our minds near the beginning of the year to spend vacation in San Diego. We've both been wanting to visit and thought we could take advantage of our close proximity and all the various things San Diego has to offer. Please read on if you want to hear details about our trip (warning: it's long)!!

Arrival Day: Pretty chill. We left early afternoon and caught a non-stop flight to CA. It was delayed slightly, but we eventually arrived in BEAUTIFUL, sunny San Diego. The flight in was incredible, and we knew before we even landed that we loved it. Our nice little Prius rental car was waiting for us when we arrived. Well, according to the front desk it was waiting for us. When we walked out to get it, it wasn't in the spot they told us. Not 10 seconds later, an older couple pulled up after realizing they had the wrong car!! Too funny. Anyways, we were staying on Coronado Island at the Loews Coronado Resort. It only took about 20 minutes to get to our resort, but the drive on the bridge over San Diego Bay was, again, beautiful. Coronado Island looked like a tropical paradise. We checked into our room with no troubles (luckily, we caught a deal online and were able to book a suite, so we had a little more living space which was nice) and grabbed dinner at the resort's casual-dining cafe. The food was excellent; I tried the famous California fish tacos and Cari had a great linguine primavera dish.

Day 1: DISNEYLAND!! That's right, Disneyland. It's located in Anaheim and was not even a two hour drive. We got up early and drove up. After paying for parking and admission tickets (and realizing that Disneyland must make a LOT of money), we took a shuttle to the park and spent the entire day there. It was eventually exhausting, but well worth it. Cari and I were reminded of our childhood by riding rides that we experienced when we were younger (Space Mountain, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Jungle Cruise, Splash Mountain, etc.). We ate amusement park food for lunch (burgers and sandwiches at "Hungry Bear Restaurant") and chowed down on House of Blues in Downtown Disney for dinner (excellent pizza and jambalaya). We were definitely beat at the end of the day, but we enjoyed feeling like little kids again! :)

Day 2: This was our designated chill/do-nothing day. We did exactly that. We ordered room service for breakfast after sleeping late and then spent the remainder of the day by the pool. The resort had 3 heated pools, one of which was designated for adults only. Surrounding the pools were tons of lounge chairs with 3-4 inches of padding on them. Amazing. That's exactly where we parked it for the afternoon and allowed the servers from the nearby "Cantina" to bring us margaritas and chips/salsa. In the evening, we ventured downtown to Joe's Crab Shack. Yes, I know it's a chain restaurant. However, we had one of our favorite meals during our honeymoon at Joe's in Naples, FL...so we thought it only fitting to eat here. It was just what we remembered...incredible. We indulged in king crab legs, corn, french fries, b...soda ;). When we got back, Cari proceeded to watch approximately 4 hours of "Say Yes to the Dress" on TLC while I inevitably passed out early. Spending all day sleeping in the sun really takes it out of you!

Day 3: After again sleeping in, Cari and I went back downtown to the historic "Gaslamp District." This area is full of dining and shopping...and we did exactly that. Cari shopped around for a while (while I followed like a good husband). I love her. We then went to the Hard Rock Cafe for burgers and nachos (we ate REALLY healthy while on vacation, can't you tell?). We also met an awesome blues guitarist on the street named Stoney B. I bought a CD from him, which he greatly appreciated. It would serve us well later... keep reading... From there, we went to the San Diego Zoo, which was huge and so much fun. I won't go into much detail about what we saw...other than to say that if you're in San Diego, the zoo is a MUST. We wanted to check out the Wild Animal Park, but didn't have the time. For dinner, we drove up to Pacific Beach and went to an oceanfront restaurant called "World Famous" as a result of a friend's recommendation. One of the best meals we had on the trip. Cari had bacon wrapped scallops (yuck) and I had an incredible, perfectly cooked steak/shrimp (yum).

Day 4: We were both a little cranky this day, due to our unruly neighbors with who we unfortunately shared a wall. They were up being noisy and drunk and singing terribly obscene songs until 4 or 5 in the morning. LUCKILY, we had a CD from a little-known blues guitarist to drown out the noise (that's right...STONEY B!). After trying the pull-out couch and calling the front desk to complain, we put on Stoney B and finally drifted off. Despite a partially sleepless night, we got up and drove to Pacific Beach to meet up with one of my fellow high-school graduates Ben Ringo. He is living in San Diego now and is roommates with a sailing instructor. His roommate is nice enough to teach Ben to sail and let him use the sailboat at any time (in return for Ben paying part of the slip rental). Fortunately for us, they needed to sail from Mission Bay around Point Loma to San Diego Bay to put the boat at the appropriate slip, and they invited us along! The weather wasn't great (overcast and chilly), but we went anyways. There wasn't much wind, so we had to use the small motor most of the way, but it was relaxing and a great non-touristy thing to do. The trip took us about 3 hours total (and no, I didn't get seasick!). After the trip, we went up to La Jolla and ate at Regent's Pizza (another Ringo recommendation). Went back to the resort and hung out for the evening.

Day 5: Our LAST day :( We woke up a little earlier in hopes that the weather would clear up by the afternoon so we could come back from our morning adventure to hang by the pool (didn't happen unfortunately). For our morning expedition, we drove up to La Jolla and rented a couple bicycles to ride down the coast. La Jolla is a beautiful place (and pretty pricey from what we understand) so we enjoyed the scenery as we found our way through the neighborhoods. We ended up on a walking path which took us to the side of the cliffs on the coast. There were incredible wild flowers and beautiful scenery of which we took many many pictures. We continued down the coast to Children's Pool which is a beach area in La Jolla Cove where seals like to gather. There weren't a ton, but there were definitely enough to see and take pictures of. After returning up the coast and checking in our bikes, we continued to drive north to Del Mar, which is the location of the San Diego State Fair. In addition to the fair, Del Mar boasts an AMAZING Thai restaurant (I'm sure it's not famous, but it should be). It was in a little strip center, but it was crowded which was a good sign. The food was fantastic. After stuffing ourselves, we drove back south to Mission Beach and walked on the boardwalk/beach there for a while. Finally, we went back to the resort to get cleaned up and went to eat dinner at the Fish Market (recommended by Ringo and my boss at work). The restaurant is located next to the USS Midway (decommissioned Navy ship turned into a museum) which we took pictures of. The Halibut and Mahi-Mahi we enjoyed were exceptionally fresh and tasty. We returned to the resort and spent the evening with a bottle of wine by a fire pit outside just talking (very romantic!).

Not much to say for the "leaving day." We got up, packed, checked out, and flew home with no problems. Albuquerque and the desert is nowhere near as beautiful as the west coast (where there's a BEACH!), but it is our home and we got to reunite with the other member of our family, BELLE! It was tough coming back from vacation, but we're looking forward to making our way back east later this summer to hang with my family and go to the beach with Cari's family. Anyways, again, we hope everyone is doing well, and I applaud you if you're still reading this. Please feel free to check out our numerous pictures on my Facebook if you haven't already. Also, a special congratulations to my one and only sister who is expecting a BABY!!! Woo hoo! Talk to everyone soon!!

Spring is Here!!

See a trend? If this rate continues, there might only be one blog post each season! To our readers (if there even are any anymore), my apologies for the false sense of hope that there would be more adventures posted more recently than 3 MONTHS AGO! I'm starting to think this blog is mainly for our purposes...keeping track of things that we're doing so when we move back, we'll have a "diary" of sorts. For those of you still reading, thank you!

The past couple months have been a blur. I'll try to summarize as best as possible. I guess we left off shortly before Christmas with plans for my in-laws to come visit and for Cari and I to spend Christmas in Colorado. Well, thanks to the wonderful east coast winters, those plans didn't exactly hold true. Cari's family drove from Blacksburg, VA to Columbia, MD the Friday before Christmas with plans to come out Saturday. Unfortunately, they drove 13 hours in a blizzard, only to find out the next day that the flight was inevitably canceled. So, instead of re-booking all 5 of them to come out here, they graciously paid for Cari and I to fly out to Maryland for Christmas. We were disappointed to not host them here, but it turned out just fine, as we were able to see more of Cari's extended family.

Shuffling Christmas plans also required us to move our CO trip, which we were able to do with no problems or extra fees. We ended up driving to Colorado Springs New Years Day and spending the weekend there. The drive was interesting...not much in the way of scenery until an hour or so outside of CO Springs, as most of the area is the west side of the Great Plains (and boy, was it plain..ha..ha). However, waiting at the end of our trip was a fun little Bed and Breakfast/Inn with tons of character and welcoming hosts. If you haven't seen our pictures yet, check them out on Facebook. The mountains were beautiful and the city was small, but had a lot to offer. We had some amazing food (brewery, diner, Japanese to name a few) and saw a lot of great things. The first day we visited what's called the Garden of the Gods. It's a huge park area (free to the public) with tons of trails amongst gigantic rock formations shooting up through the ground. It was a tad chilly, but still incredible. The next day we took a cog railway to the top (well, almost...) of Pikes Peak! The ride was a little scary, but the scenery was absolutely amazing. We could see five states at one point and the Rockies hundreds of miles away! Overall, it was a relaxing time to get away from everyday life, and we would definitely visit Colorado again.

We also had the opportunity to travel back to N.C. for a wedding - Lindsey (who Cari used to work with at the Raleigh Rescue Mission) and her husband Brandon. Cari was in the wedding, so we split our time between seeing and visiting with my family, Cari's grandparents, Lindsey and Brandon's family and friends, and some of our friends. We were there for a long weekend (Wed-Sun), so we could have (always) used more time, but it was satisfying. I was able to come back a couple weeks later for a business trip (training I was able to complete in N.C.) which was also nice. I had the opportunity to stay at my parent's place and show my work colleagues some of the excellent N.C. sites/restaurants.

Since January, we've had the privilege of hosting some of Cari's family. Her grandmother came out to New Mexico for a couple weeks. She traveled with another group of people during the week, but she was able to stay with us on the weekends. We enjoyed relaxing, watching the Olympics, and hanging around here. We also got to do a few things like check out Old Town and the New Mexico Natural History Museum. This past weekend, we had the joy of Cari's aunt and cousin (Heidi and Becky) coming to visit during Becky's spring break from college. We got to go out to eat, to Old Town again (it's a great place to take visitors), and to Sante Fe. We also did something new, which was to ride the Tram to the top of Sandia Peak. Apparently, this is the world's longest aerial tramway (http://www.sandiapeak.com/index.php?page=tramway) and goes about 2.7 miles up to about 10,300 feet. It's more like a cable car that hangs down from the cable it's attached to above (like a ski lift), so the swaying and lack of anything below us (other than huge rocks) was a little disconcerting. However, the views at the top were incredible. Cari wouldn't do it again, but if any of you come out to visit, I'm happy to go up again! We're also looking forward to hosting Cari's mom, dad, and sister over Easter weekend in less than 2 weeks! Hopefully no illness or natural disasters prevent them from actually getting out here this time!!

I suppose that's about it. We've been filling our time in between the weekends with bible study, American Idol, and great food. We've finally started feeling like we're settling in here...meeting new people, spending time with friends, and keeping busy. We'll continue to pray and seek God's will for our lives and where He wants us to be, but at this point, we're learning to be content, even if it means being away from family. Albuquerque's not SO bad, and the Southwest certainly has quite a bit to offer that we have yet to take advantage of. This spring/summer, our plans are to check out the Grand Canyon, White Sands National Monument, and Carlsbad Caverns...all which are within a separate weekend trip. We also have plans to go to San Diego for a week and have tentative plans to come back east later in the summer to spend time with family.

We're still welcoming any and all visitors, so please feel free to come out and we'll show you the Southwest!! In the meantime, thanks for the thoughts and prayers..they're certainly being returned! Also, a special congratulations to Cari's friends Courtney (who just gave birth to her first child) and Sharon (who just found out she is expecting)! We love and miss everyone back east and can't wait to see you all soon!!!