A week in Albuquerque

We are very excited to welcome my longtime friend, Ariel, and her precious little girl, Talia, as they arrive this week for a visit! Talia is just two months older than Luke and we are sure that they will be fast friends as well. As I’ve been thinking through what to do while they’re here, I thought I’d share my must-visit list with you all. Think of it as a virtual tour of Albuquerque or a little window into our favorite activities here.

DAY ONE:

Since ABQ is almost a mile high in elevation, it’s always nice to take it easy the first day so out-of-towners have a chance to adjust to the elevation gain. So we could have breakfast in our backyard and then go over to the sprayground (less than a mile from our house) to let the little ones run in and out of streams of water. Then back home for some lunch and naps, followed by dinner in Old Town Albuquerque. This quaint settlement dates back to 1706, and features a lovely old church, plenty of stucco, wood beams, and ristras (decorative bunches of drying chiles), and a pretty gazebo in a park-like plaza. Luke likes to try to climb on the old canons and chase pigeons. I like the relaxed atmosphere and the galleries with lovely turquoise jewelry and pretty paintings!

DAY TWO:

When asked about day two, my helpful husband suggested bungee-jumping, noting we should let the children try it first since they heal faster. I’ll just let you file that thought away and continue with my own itinerary here.

We could start the day at the Petroglyph National Monument. There’s a short, interesting trail here with thousands of ancient carvings in volcanic rock and a great city overlook. It’s located to the west of Albuquerque where it’s especially dry so you see more of a desert habitat but there’s little shade. So it’s best to come and go in the morning during the summer.

After naps and an early dinner, we could take advantage of the cooler evening temperatures with a stroll into the Sandia foothills from a nearby trailhead or a visit to a local park. If it seems too warm for either of those options, we could splash around with the little ones at a nearby Albuquerque City Pool. The wading pool there is shallow enough at the edges for Luke to walk in, but he tends to gravitate toward the center, dunking himself in the process!

DAY THREE:

The Albuquerque BioPark includes a zoo, botanic gardens, an aquarium, and a train. Thorough visits to all of these destinations might be a little much for one day, but fortunately they are fairly close together making it easy to pick and choose which parts to see. Plus we have a membership that allows us to take a guest for free and there’s no charge for kids 2 and under.  My favorite stops are the polar bears, the seals (feeding time is best), the baby orangutan, the shark tank (especially when a diver is in with them), the Japanese gardens, and the butterfly house. There’s so much to see that I actually haven’t bothered to take Luke on the train there yet, but I’m sure that would be fun too. We could take a break for lunch at the Flying Star, a kid-friendly diner with a varied menu located near the zoo.

DAY FOUR:

  Tent Rocks National Monument is probably our top-rated local hike. It’s only an hour away and the less than 3-mile hike features astounding rock formations, fantastic views, and a walk through a tall, narrow slot canyon. The skies are almost always a gorgeous blue behind the white and beige rocks, and the drive there passes by native american homes and farms. The monument is currently closed to pave the lunar-like dirt road that used to take you the final few miles to the trailhead. We can’t wait for it to reopen with a paved surface and hope that it does so in the next few days.

Tent Rocks is a detour off the highway that leads to Santa Fe, so after a visit there we could continue on to New Mexico’s capital city, hopefully with napping children on board. The Santa Fe Old Town is quite similar to Albuquerque’s, but it’s worth a visit to see the new NM state history museum which is located there. We like the guided tour it offers of the Palace of the Governors, which was originally built in 1610 and has been in continuous public use longer than any other structure in the US. We’re also amused by the eloquent letter to the governor signed William Bonney, aka Billy the Kid. After the museum and a stroll through Old Town, we’d have to stop for dinner at our favorite place for New Mexican food – Tomasita’s. Yum!

DAY FIVE:

The Sandia Tram, which takes passengers from the edge of Albuquerque up nearly 4000 miles in elevation to the top of the Sandia Mountains, seems the perfect finale to a visit to Albuquerque. The views into hidden canyons and forests as you ascend are stunning and once at the top you can take in the gorgeous vista by following a gently rolling trail along the crest. There’s also a ski lift near the tram’s crest station that you can ride in the summer to enjoy views in the opposite direction. We like to stay until sunset if possible to see the sun set along the horizon, casting seas of color through the skies and atop the mesa. Then the city lights twinkle magically as the tram whisks you back down to the base station.

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There are so many wonderful destinations that don’t fit in my 5-day itinerary. Albuquerque offers many more delightful children’s activities, including a science museum, a natural history museum, and a hot air balloon museum. Varied hiking opportunities abound in every direction. We especially love taking day trips to Georgia O’Keefe country, the Jemez Mountains, or Mt. Taylor for hikes. There are several terrific nearby sites for Native American ruins, including Bandelier National Monument (our favorite).

Overnight trips extend the possibilities exponentially. The mountains, streams, waterfalls and resort towns of Southern Colorado are only 4 hours away. Magnificent Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands National Monument are just a little further than that, but to the south. Whirlwind trips to the Grand Canyon or Sedona, AZ are doable in a long weekend. We love exploring the southwest!

Luke the movie star

Recently Erik has edited a few of our Luke videos. The most elaborate one features Luke’s newest piece of machinery. You can see Luke filling its tank to the left – we love his ‘glug, glug, glug’ sound as he performs this task. The video (below) is less than a minute long and is sure to prompt a raid on Target’s summer toy clearance aisle!

 

Luke’s first swimming lessons

Yesterday Luke completed his two-week swimming course at the city pool! Sidestroke, flip turns, competitive diving, you ask? Well, not that type of swimming lesson. The parent and tot course’s primary goal is just to make kids more comfortable with the water and lay the groundwork for future swimming skills. Luke did great with kicking his legs – which is not so surprising given the practice he gets while tantruming in my arms or on the floor. His leg strength is considerable!

He was reluctant to add in the arm movements, but by the last lesson he added a little paddling to his powerful kick. He could almost propel himself forward when he was really into it! Most kids weren’t as enthusiastic about kicking their legs and ‘swimming’ around the pool as our Luke was, but they were much better at jumping in from the side. When Luke is set up on the side of the pool, he helpfully takes off running in the opposite direction, forcing his parent to sprint out of the pool after him! We didn’t give him quite as much time to practice that ‘skill’…

I was only able to snap a single pic (see above) before a lifeguard informed me that photo-taking is not allowed. I hadn’t seen a sign and had noticed several other parents snapping away with little cameras, but apparently a big zoom lens on a chunky SLR crosses the line. However, I can share a pic of the certificate that was presented to Luke upon completion of the course. As his proud parents, we were pleased to receive such a cute certificate. But on closer examination it’s evident that the paper certifies not successful completion of the course, but failure! No grade inflation at the city pool, even if you are only one!!

Another Luke!

We’re expecting… another Luke!! Well, another baby of unknown gender, but we can’t help referring to him/her as another Luke. Often it’s in the context of Luke #1  behaving very rambunctiously that we look at each other and say, “Can you believe we’re going to have TWO Lukes soon, honey!?!?!”

Although we are sometimes daunted by the thought of double-the-Luke-trouble, we are completely thrilled to be given another child and can’t wait to meet him/her sometime around New Year’s Eve. That makes me about 14 weeks along, thankful to be feeling the nausea and fatigue symptoms subsiding!

Pregnancy, childbirth, and new baby care are no longer quite so mysterious, but we are extremely curious to see how Luke #1 responds to another little person in the family. Of course at 16 months he doesn’t comprehend what’s coming, but now it’s especially fun to see his interest in babies when we read him books about them and point them out to him in stores or at the park. We think that as long as we keep working on teaching him to be gentle, he’ll make a great big brother!

PS: We love the terrific equipment and staff at the local ultrasound clinic. In addition to the pic above and other shots, I even got a video of the little guy at our 13 week ultrasound. You can see the little squirmer yourself here!

Luke the tent-dweller

The final trip in our June travel series was a one-night campout in the Jemez Mountains. Since they’re just an hour and a half away, many ABQ-dwellers retreat to the cooler forests and streams of the Jemez in the summertime. It was so pretty there that I wouldn’t have minded staying two nights, especially considering all the work it takes to pack for camping, no matter how many nights you stay! But the damper on our fun was the rainstorm that settled in over our campsite around 5 pm and continued on until the early morning. The rest of our small group arrived in that time window and so we had to set up and eat dinner in the rain. Sadly we were banking on NM’s arid climate and failed to bring tarps or our table shelter to give us a dry space to hang out in together. So we all headed to bed in our tents on the early side to get out of the rain. Luke clearly didn’t get the extra sleeping memo though. He woke up around midnight and was so distressed by the sounds of wind and rain outside that he had to sleep in my arms for the rest of the night. Wait, I mean toss and turn and prevent me from sleeping or getting comfortable for the rest of the night! But it was sweet how being scared prompted him to hold me tight all night long, if I pulled my hand away from him, he would reach out to pull it back around himself once again. He usually isn’t so snuggly anymore, normally wiggling away if you hold him tight for more than a moment, so I must admit I enjoyed his sweetness for some of those late-night hours.

The lack of sleep must have made me a little loopier than normal, here you see me doing an impression of the snake that I spied peeking through our front storm door. Yes! I looked over and there was a snake head, peering into our house at me! He was just a garter snake or something similar, but I still didn’t think he needed to be scoping out our living room.

Here he is on the run, while Erik pursued with the camera…

But let’s close on the rain topic rather than reptiles. Yesterday we had a good rain here in Albuquerque, so I took Luke outside to explore it. Isn’t he cute in his Daddy’s hat, swishing around in the puddles with his stick?

Luke the surfer baby

When Erik was asked on a Monday to attend a conference that Thursday in Santa Barbara, we were thrilled to be able to find a reasonably priced ticket so that Luke and I could tag along. The accommodations turned out to be perfect for us – the 2-room suite allowed Erik and me to enjoy pleasant evenings together rather than whispering in the bathroom to keep from waking our sleeping beauty. The grounds were lush and full of sticks and flowers for Luke to enjoy. And our little fish splished and splashed in the hotel pool and the public beach down the street. We have a video from the second time he went in the ocean on the trip, but I wish we had captured the first time we went in with him that trip. He was just overcome with delight and his happy squeals and gleeful giggles were contagious, even just after being knocked down by chilly waves. The weather was refreshingly cool after the ABQ heat wave, and we even got to dress Luke in the adorable sweater his great-grandmother made for him.  More pics and some videos can be found here, and we’ll leave you with a photo of our tired little surfer baby…

Luke the kayaker

In May we envisioned quiet summer weekends awaiting us for the month of June, a slow start to a mostly low-key summer. However as it turned out, we’ve enjoyed three trips this month, all filled with lovely sights, fun time with friends, and relaxing togetherness for our family of three. First we joined in on a last-minute trip to Pagosa Springs in southern Colorado with some ABQ friends. They daringly asked us to join them for their four-night stay at a 3-bedroom suite after having known us for only a few weeks! We hoped that none of our idiosyncrasies would cause them to regret that invitation, but eagerly agreed to come along anyway. We were glad we did as it proved to be a wonderful time, growing our friendship with this fun couple and their three sweet girls. We also loved the charming town of Pagosa Springs:

its woodsy environs:

the rushing rivers:

and unique hot springs:

Erik even got to do a little kayaking with Justin, and Luke loved checking out their gear!

I’d intended to write about all three of our trips in this post, but maybe that was a little too ambitious and our pictures are just a little too numerous. So hopefully I’ll be back soon with a post on our trip to Santa Barbara (CA) and our campout in the Jemez Mountains (NM). In the meantime I better go play with my attention-hungry little jet-setter!