VA/NC Vacation!

Well, after a week of "back to reality," I thought it would be best to get the details of our most recent adventure in writing so I didn't forget. Our travels this time around weren't out west, but back east with family and friends! Cari and I had the opportunity to take some time off of work and away from Albuquerque to travel "home" and spend time with many people near and dear to our hearts. It started with a fantastic wedding in southern VA (Martinsville). Cari flew home mid-week on Wednesday and spent a couple days with her best friend Amanda and a few other ladies getting ready for Amanda's wedding. I flew into Raleigh the next day and spent the evening/next morning with my family before driving to Martinsville to join Cari. Friday was the wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, and both went great. The dinner was lots of fun, as we enjoyed stories about Amanda and Nic from their friends, gift giving, and a great performance by Reverend Rat L. Snake! Afterwards, we hung out in the parking lot of our hotel, playing cornhole and drinking beer. True southern fashion. The wedding seemed to go off without a hitch, with the only exception being the long rainstorm that happened after the ceremony (during outdoor picture time!). Otherwise, the reception was great, including some amazing BBQ and great conversation/dancing with friends and family. Afterwards, Cari and I hung out with a couple good friends at our hotel, had breakfast with some MORE friends the next morning, and then left for Harrisonburg.

We spent the next 3 days in Harrisonburg with Cari's family. Sunday afternoon was spent hanging out, catching up, and enjoying some good food. On Monday, Cari and I went to spend time with Cari's grandparents (and great grandmother). It was at their house that we saw Cari's uncle and two cousins (5 and 7 yrs old) and informed them of our plans to go camping that night. They thought it sounded fun and decided to join. Monday afternoon, we packed up the cars and went out to Natural Chimneys to camp. The afternoon was spent setting up the campsite, playing cornhole, playing by the river, and hanging out. As night fell, we started a fire and made some burgers, dogs, and corn on the grill. Cari's aunt and one of her cousins started getting more and more nervous the darker it got, and when a bobcat screeched in the middle of the night, they made Sean take them home. I slept through most of it, but apparently it was pretty entertaining. We packed up camp Tuesday morning, went to the pool when we got home in the afternoon, and then took a walking tour of JMU before enjoying some Anthony's pizza Tuesday night. It's amazing to see how many changes the campus has gone through, especially the quad and the football stadium!

On Wednesday, Cari and I spent some more time with her grandparents and ate lunch at El Charro before heading down to Richmond, VA. We planned to stay the night with Jon and Megan, and met them at their house Wednesday afternoon. We ate dinner at Asian Galaxy, then came back to hang out, watch soccer and Toy Story 3, and enjoy some tasty wine! We got up too early Thursday and drove through Wake Forest, NC en route to Chapel Hill and got to see our good friends Jill and Seth (and their newest addition, the sweet Airlie).

We finally made it back to Chapel Hill, NC on Thursday and enjoyed lunch at Allen Bros. BBQ (my favorite) with my family (including my sister and beautiful niece Stella!). After lunch, we hung out by the pool before enjoying a great home-cooked meal. On Friday, we went to Southpoint Mall, did a little shopping, ate lunch at the Cheesecake factory, saw X-Men, and again hung out at home for dinner. Saturday was BEACH DAY! We got up, packed the car, and left for Wrightsville Beach, NC. We arrived around lunch time and had some great seafood at the Oceanic, which offered amazing panoramic views of the water. Afterwards, we changed and hit the beach, where we stayed for a good four or five hours and just relaxed/read. We went into downtown Wilmington and ate dinner at Elijahs (more great seafood) before heading home. Finally, Sunday was spent simply relaxing. We went for a walk, watched tv, read, ate, and played Taboo.

Monday came too early, as we boarded our plane back to Albuquerque. The good part was that we got to see Belle again (for the first time in almost 2 weeks), but we already miss everyone back east. We're so grateful to get the opportunity to travel and extremely happy to get the chance to see as many people as we were able to. Other than a few day trips or fun experiences with friends around Albuquerque, our next tentatively planned trip is this fall to the Grand Canyon and southern Utah...so stay tuned!!

White Sands/Carlsbad Caverns

I really have a lot more to write about than just our most recent adventure. For the purposes of time, space, and (let's be honest) memory, I'll try and summarize what we've done recently. It has been an incredibly eventful Spring season. First, we had the joy of having Cari's cousin Becky come to Albuquerque and visit for Easter. She was in San Francisco this semester for school, so it was a quick flight over. We hung out for the weekend, involving Good Friday and Sunday Morning services at our church, a Real Matt Jones concert, a little shopping, and some Hinkle Family Fun Center putt-putt/arcade games! It was great to have some family come in for Easter. Cari then went out of town the next weekend to visit her family. It was a great time for her to take a break from school (since her spring break was cancelled due to the winter weather we got here). The NEXT weekend, we went up to Denver for a concert from one of my favorite bands, Alter Bridge. It was a short trip, driving up Saturday morning, going to the concert Saturday night, and coming back Sunday. We stopped on the way up in Co. Springs at a great diner for some lunch, before arriving in Denver and getting sketched out by some of the inner-city "regulars." The concert was amazing though, and well worth the 6 hour trip, even with driving half the way home in the snow (during the last weekend in April!). We stopped in Santa Fe and ate at a Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives-reviewed location called Backroad Pizza (incredible) on the way home.

The following weekend (told you we've been busy), I had the opportunity to go home and visit MY family! It was a great trip: ate some incredible BBQ and drank amazing sweet tea (compliments of Alan Bros.), went to the movies twice, went to Concord to spend time with my sister and her friends and my beautiful niece, hung out around UNC, including a baseball game, was with my Mom on Mother's Day, etc. It was a great and very fulfilling time considering it had been almost 5 months since I saw my family. Finally, Cari went back for a bridal shower/bachelorette party in mid-May for her best friend, Amanda, who is getting married in a couple weeks.

To wrap ALL of that exciting travel up, Cari and I decided to take a long Memorial Day weekend and explore some more of New Mexico. Neither of have been south of the city, so driving almost all the way to Mexico promised to be an adventure. We started on Saturday by driving to Las Cruces where we stopped for lunch. We ate a hole-in-the-wall New Mexican restaurant (randomly selected while driving around) and were not disappointed. The food was great! We then drove from Cruces towards White Sands National Park, which was our first destination. I won't bore everyone with the details of how it's formed, but White Sands is a huge area (100 + sq miles?) of large white sand dunes. Being in the middle of New Mexico accentuates the beauty of this place. We watched an orientation video and then headed out. Unfortunately, it was extremely windy, which wasn't great for visibility, but we were able to drive around the dunes and get out for a good 2 mile hike. After thoroughly wearing ourselves out, we drove the short drive to Alamogordo, NM, where we stayed the night. Before turning in, we ate some amazing BBQ at a local joint. It was not as good as NC BBQ, but it was pretty close!

The next day, we got up and drove southeast to Carlsbad Caverns. The first half of the drive was through Lincoln National Forest, and it was beautiful (i.e. NOT typical New Mexico). The second half of the drive was through nothingness, which was more what we expected. We arrived at the caverns, scarfed down our lunch, and headed into the cave. We opted for the Natural Entrance trail instead of the elevator and were not disappointed. The hike down was over a mile and tough on the knees, but the sites were phenomenal. We made it down in time for our previously-registered King's Palace tour, which was a ranger-led tour through some of the less-frequently seen caverns. Again, words cannot describe the beauty of this place. Pictures don't do it justice either. It's one of the few sites I've seen that I would recommend for everyone to see before they die (excuse the morbidity). Finally, we hiked the Big Room (another mile +) before standing in line for over an hour for the elevator back up. After eating a less-than-ideal cafeteria dinner, we stayed for the nightly bat flight. Unfortunately, Carlsbad hasn't gotten rain since last September, so no rain = no insects which = less bats. We probably saw about 200-300 fly out over a 20 minute period, which is nothing compared to the 300,000 - 700,000 that usually come out after there's been some rain! Oh well. We headed back to Carlsbad and stayed at the Trinity Hotel (very nice, very cool boutique hotel downtown) for the night. The drive home was pretty tortuous, with 50+ mph winds the whole time and extreeeemely straight roads (awful). However, driving through Roswell was a plus, and we got to see all of the stores downtown decorated with alien getup.

Overall, we've been busy, but things should settle down in July. Cari is finished with school now and has time during the day to get things done around here (I love it!!). We'll be going back home for about a week and a half for Amanda's wedding, and then splitting the next week between Cari's family and my family. Between that, a Yellowcard concert, my birthday, a Train/Maroon 5 concert, playing indoor/outdoor soccer, and spending lots of time with friends, it should be an extremely fun summer! We'll keep everyone posted (well, everyone who actually reads this, which is probably just us) if we do anything else new and fun! God bless!

Durango/Cortez, CO

After a long and cold winter (in the negatives for a week!) and an eventful Christmas of traveling to Virginia and North Carolina to visit family and meet our new niece, Cari and I enjoyed a great getaway over President's Day in beautiful Colorado (quickly becoming my favorite state) which hopefully you've seen pictures of an Facebook by now. We left on Friday around midday so we wouldn't have to drive in the dark. This was probably the best decision we made all weekend, because the drive up involved a lot of smaller back roads (took me back to Southside VA!). The cabin where we stayed was located outside of Cortez, CO, which is almost to the Utah/CO border, about 45 miles from Durango. We actually had to take a couple long "county" dirt roads to get to the cabin, but eventually arrived right before dinner time, and just in time for a beautiful sunset which we watched from our deck. The cabin was great, smelled "loggy," was fully stocked, and had great views. We brought dinners up with us and plenty of food for the weekend to save money, which was good decision #2 since we were 30 minutes from any sort of civilization. Friday night was taco night, which we enjoyed thoroughly before crashing.

We woke up Saturday morning and checked the weather for the weekend. It was supposed to rain in Durango/Cortez, so we decided to spend the day inside and save our one day of skiing for Sunday. This was good decision #3, considering we got sheets of rain at our cabin during the day, and we also know someone who was skiing in Durango on Saturday and said they got caught in a thunderstorm on the mountain! So, we spent the day Saturday cooking breakfast, reading, eating lunch, watching Cold Mountain, taking naps/reading more, watching the UNC/BC game, playing some board games, and grilling steaks. It was a fantastically relaxing day.

We got up a little earlier on Sunday and got dressed to go skiing. The road from Cortez to Durango and up to the slopes was awful, since it had rained/frozen/snowed the night before. Apparently, people in that area expect that everyone there can drive in the snow, so they don't spend money to plow that much. Needless to say, it took us an hour and a half to get to the slopes (which isn't too far off of what it would usually take, but much more stressful). Skiing was great...I've been to Santa Fe to ski out here, but this was better. The conditions were amazing...I've never skied anything like it before. The slopes are long, with fresh powder, and since there are more trails to ski, it doesn't seem as crowded. We were there for about 4 or 5 hours and only made 3 runs!! The first time down the mountain was a little rough for Cari since this was her second time skiing ever, but she progressively got better/more comfortable as the day went on, and by the last run, she didn't fall at all! (Not to mention, she had a great instructor..). We got back to the cabin before dinner and enjoyed a huge pan of nachos before turning in.

Monday was our leaving day :(. We got up, packed, cleaned a little, and headed out. We had heard of Mesa Verde National Park and decided to check it out on the way home. It's probably better in the spring/summer when all the roads in the park are open and those that are open aren't slushy/wet, but we didn't think we'd be driving too far. Oops. The road into the park was the second scariest drive I've ever done in my life (second only to being driven up the Alps to Hilter's old hideout, the Eagle's Nest, by a bus doing 40 around hairpin turns with no guard-rails). At least I was in control this time, but cresting hills with previously mentioned hairpin turns and thousand-foot dropoffs, despite having foot-high guardrails was a little disconcerting. We made our way through the park (20 miles) at a leisurely 10 MPH until we got to the museum. There wasn't a ton to see there, but we got some maps and continued our drive. The Park contains a lot of cliff dwellings and other previously inhabited (some excavated) Native American homes. The views were incredible, and the history of the place was fascinating. After spending a few hours sight-seeing, we headed on home.

It was a great trip overall...we're hoping to take a few more day trips this spring (finally getting down to White Sands and possibly Carlsbad Caverns), and one weekend trip to the Grand Canyon/southern Utah. We'll keep y'all updated! Thanks for tuning in!

Red River, NM

I realized the other day that I'm several blog posts behind. I'll try to post a couple subsequent entries soon after this one, but if I recall, this is our most recent adventure after the Balloon Fiesta. This past fall, we decided to make a weekend trip to Red River, which is in northern New Mexico. According to numerous websites we visited, this area of the country has some of the most beautiful fall foliage around. Not only did we decide to go up for an evening, but I was able to convince Cari to go CAMPING!! I haven't been camping since my bachelor party, and Cari isn't a huge fan of being in the middle of nowhere in a tent all night, but she knows I love to be outdoors and agreed to humor me.

So, the planning began. I found a long list of all the state campgrounds around the Red River area. We also planned on bringing Belle, so in the event all the campsites were full (which I thought could be the case given the popularity of this area in the fall), I also got a list of 2 or 3 dog-friendly hotels. Finally, on Friday, I came home from work, packed up the car with food, camping gear, and clothes, and went by WalMart for some last minute essentials (firewood, chairs, etc.). I picked up Cari after work and we hit the road. The drive up was beautiful, going through Santa Fe and Taos. We arrived near one of the first of many campsites outside of Red River just after dark, so Cari was a little nervous about having to get settled and pitch the tent with no light. For some reason, the gates to the first campground were closed!! We drove down the road, stopping at each campsite, one by one, and to my dismay, each one was closed. Who would have thought that state campgrounds in northern New Mexico would be closed by mid-October? Not me. Guess we know now!

Given that the camping portion of the trip was no longer a possibility, we started making phone calls to the dog-friendly hotels that I had found previously (thank goodness). We ended up staying in a rustic lodge in the heart of Red River. It was relatively inexpensive, run by extremely friendly people, and could have been straight out of a horror movie. Not the best night's sleep, but after an evening of college football on our 20" TV, beer, pizza, and a happy wife (mainly because we weren't in a dark, cold tent), we were ready for the morning.

Our plan for the day was to do a little hiking, and also spend time in the car driving around and looking at/taking pictures of the fall colors. Using the information and maps given to us by the lodge owners, we drove to the Rio Grande Gorge recreation area. This area had many (OPEN!!!) campsites and numerous hiking trails. We chose one based on a map that would allow us to hike the bottom of the gorge, which looked like a tiny version of the Grand Canyon, and was one of the filming sites of Terminator: Salvation. The hiking expedition took a turn for the worst, however, when Cari saw that the trail was about 2 feet wide with a couple hundred feet vertical drop and no railing. I was ready to go, but couldn't get her to come (and I can't blame her, especially considering her fear of heights). So, we drove around for a while and headed out on the second part of our day, which was the Enchanted Circle.

This drive is especially popular in the fall, as it offers mountain views with beautiful colors throughout. The drive goes from Taos to Red River and then around through Eagle Nest and Angelfire (all ski locations). We took our time in each location, taking pictures and enjoying the scenery. After we drove a full circle, we went back through Taos and back home! Overall, this adventure felt like "the one that wasn't," but looking back on it now, Cari and I did get to see some great scenery, as well as learn more about each other! I hope to go back in the spring for a camping trip with some guy friends, but will make sure to do more research this time!

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!!