Christmas a week late

Haven't had much time to post recently. But here's what our house looked like Christmas morning. Tons of presents under the tree. Logan had fun unwrapping his gifts and helping with everyone elses too. We took this picture before Logan got up.

Here's Logan checking to see if Santa drank his milk and ate his cookies.

Here he is checking out the loot!

Logan's been a little camera shy lately so we didn't get any of him opening his gifts, or any since.

No big plans for us for New Year's. We're getting a pizza from Dions and staying in all night, we'll watch the ball drop in NYC later on TV. Nice and warm.

See you next year!

Gingerbread House

This was the first time we've ever done a gingerbread house. Logan had fun. Though the kit that we bought didn't have the greatest icing. It was really hard to spread making construction of the house pretty difficult. But Logan had fun sticking candies all over it. I just put the icing on both sides of the roof and let him stick everything on. He did a really good job and we like it very much.

River of Lights

We went to the River of Lights on Saturday. It was pretty cold, but we bundled up. The River of Lights is a light show that the Botanical Gardens put on every year. They decorate the gardens with tons of lights. It's very cool. It was really nice this year, they had some new lights up. Some interesting facts about the River of Lights that we learned in our Bio Park magazine.

• Set up takes takes 2 months, they start on October 1.
• The dinosaur (you'll see him in minute) is 8 feet tall, takes 2 months to build and 8 days just to string the lights.
• It takes 5 miles of extension cords and close to a million lights to do the event.

Here are some of our favorites. Some of the pictures aren't great, but you'll get the idea.

Elephants

The butterflies in the tree were new this year.

A submarine diving into the lake, also new this year.

Our favorite-especially Logan--the dinosaur, he's new this year too. His arms moved and his mouth opened and closed. Hard to see in the picture, but in the picture above you can see Logan looking at the dinosaur.

Snow Day

Not that it matters too much to us, but it's official schools are closed today. We only got about an inch, maybe a tiny bit more at our house. But the news said that parts of ABQ had 2-3 inches. Here's what our backyard looked like at about 7AM.

Logan and I went to play in the snow after breakfast. Our plan was to make a snowman and we even took supplies out with us, a scarf, and other snowman essentials, but the snow is too powdery and doesn't hold together well. So we just played. Logan threw handfuls of snow at me. Then we followed some cat foot prints around the yard. We obviously had a visitor last night. Logan wouldn't let me take his picture. He doesn't like anyone to take pictures of him recently so the only pictures we get are the ones where he doesn't know we're taking them.

We're supposed to get more snow tomorrow and Thursday.

Logan saying "No Mommy, No Picture, NO NO NO!"

Gingerbread house and tree

We had a busy busy weekend. Saturday we went to Dave Slade and Associate's client appreciataion party. They're the real estate company that sold our house last spring. So we went to Albuquerque Uptown, (an outdoor shopping center). They had the party in a restaurant there. They were doing door prize drawings for gingerbread houses that the agents made. There were 6 or 7 of them. We won one and got to pick our house. We let Logan pick his favorite and he chose this one.

In the parking lot of ABQ Uptown, we saw Santa walking to his car. He was nice enough to stop and say 'Hi' to Logan.

Sunday we put up our tree and spent Logan's nap time wrapping presents.

Hard to tell in the picture, but the tree is lit.

It's supposed to snow today/tonight so if we get a good amount I'll take pictures.

Christmas Party and Cookies

Last night we went to Blue Sky Tours Christmas Party. It was held at Gardunos on the Green. Gardunos is a mexican restaurant in ABQ. They're really good. The location we went to is by the hot air balloon museum and I think they only rent it out to people for parties. It was fun, the food was good. The party was sponsored by one of the resorts, Pacific Beach Hotels (I think) they drew names and everyone got to pick a wrapped gift, then unwrap it. There were I-pods, toaster ovens, coffee makers, tv's and a bunch of other things. Dan was one of the first ones called, he picked a digital picture frame. We've been wanting one for a while so it was a nice surprise.

This morning Logan and I baked cookies. I'm doing a cookie exchange tomorrow so we made cherry-nut bonbon cookies. I've never made them before, but they came out really good. This is us cutting the cherries for the cookies.

Check out A letter from Richard

I saw this on another blog and thought I would share it in case anyone is interested.  The copies are only available while supplies last. 

Richard Paul Evans is giving away free copies of his best selling book The Christmas Box. I want you to take a look at: A letter from Richard 

Zoo trip

We went to the Zoo this week. Wednesday actually, this is the first chance I've had to get the pictures on the computer. It was cold so a bunch of the animals weren't out. But the ones that were out we had fun watching.

We saw the seals getting fed.....

aa baby snow leapord...

a mountain lion....

a rhino...

a cheetah....

a lion playing with a pumpkin...

still playing....

now what? He took his pumpkin and put it behind a tree and layed next to it.

Never too young to help out

Here are a few shots of Logan helping with the leaves in the back yard. He had fun raking them and wouldn't let us help when we thought he needed a hand.

Pumpkins

We found these cute pumpkin accessories at Walmart. They are like the Mr. Potato Head accessories but made to stick in pumpkins so that small children can help decorate pumpkins without the mess and sharp tools. Logan helped me with these. We had 2 large pumpkins and we put one on each side on Halloween. Logan wouldn't let me take a picture of him with the pumpkins.

Our pig.....

Cat....

Dog.....

and Bear.

Logan used his crayons to color the pumpkins too.

Trick or Treating at Blue Sky

Dan's company, Blue Sky tours lets their kids come trick or treating around the office on Halloween, so Logan and I went to visit Daddy at his office. He got alot of candy and lots of compliments. We had to run to the bank and post office on our way to Dan's office and there were lots of compliments and candy given out there too.

Here's a picture of Logan getting a special treat from Daddy.

We'll have more pictures of Halloween festivites later this weekend.

Zoo Boo

What a busy week it has been, fortunately Dan had a few days off, which is why we jam packed everything into one week.

Wednesday we had appointments super early to get flu shots, Wednesday afternoon Logan got his hair cut.

Thursday was a trip to the mall for some early Christmas shopping.

Friday Logan had his first dentist appointment. The dentist said that everything looks good and his is happy with Logan mouth. After the dentist it was a quick trip to Sams Club for some Halloween candy and other bulk items. Then home for a quick nap, after nap was a stop at our early voting center then grocery shopping. Whew! But that wasn't the end to our busy week.

Saturday was the Zoo Boo. It's an event that the zoo holds every year, where children get to get dressed up and trick or treat around the zoo. Most animal exhibits have a table sponsored by a local business that give away candy and other items to the kids and coupons and brochures to the parents. State Farm was giving the kids footballs and coloring books, and while we were in line for our coloring books Logan tired to put as many footballs as would fit in his bucket. After explaining that he only got to keep 1 he put the rest back. Molina Health care gave us toothbrushes, McDonald's gave us coupons for free ice cream just for a few examples. Logan also got a lot of candy, more than we probably need.

Logan's tiger costume from last year still fit so he went as a tiger for the 2nd year. Though this will be the last year since the pants were getting a little short.

We had fun at the zoo and saw lots of animals. The zoo keepers had decorated all the animal houses with Halloween decor and made all the animals paper mache balls, the monkeys were eating theirs when we got there. We made it home just in time for a nap.

Looking at the polar bears.

Getting candy and goodies from the polar bear exhibit. This one was sponsored by a local dentist office.

Monkey eating the paper mache balls.

Baby zebra.

Poor Cinderella... she is always looking for a friend. We have been having some neighbor cats visit our yard recently and Cinderella has tried to make friends with them. This normally happens during Logan's naptime too. She'll meow and meow hoping to make friends, but unfortunatly the other cats hear it as "get out of my yard" and quickly run away which makes poor Cinderella even more upset. The video is just the last part of her meowing. Prior to me grabbing the camera she had been meowing for at least 2-3 minutes. And even after the camera was off continued to meow for another couple of minutes. Orbit, on the other hand when she sees other cats will act like normal cats do and growl and hiss and scare them away.

Please don't look too closely at our backyard-as it's work in progress.

Balloon....In our front yard.....?

Well, hot air balloon season is here. The balloon fiesta starts tomorrow, so balloons have been seen all over Albuquerque for the past couple of weeks while ballooners arrive and set up and practice their flights.

It's not uncommon this time of year for us to hear the burning of the propane over our house as they fly over but this morning it sounded louder than normal, so I looked out the window and coming down, almost right in our front yard was a balloon. Logan and I ran out into the driveway, camera in hand to see the balloon.

Diagonally across the street from our house is an open field and they landed there. We went back inside to get shoes on and we went to see if they needed help. They didn't, they were waiting for their chase crew which showed up about 5 minutes later. They let the passengers off and the pilots went up again, and landed somewhere else. I don't know if they needed more space to land (the field they landed in was right next to a ditch so they couldn't have laid it out flat as they probably needed too and there are lots of other obstructions, like fences or houses) or if they were burning up fuel. But for whatever reason they took off again with the chase crew following.

Very exciting morning. Logan really didn't like the burning of the propane. It's loud and hot and probably very scary to a 2 year old. We'll watch the balloon fiesta tomorrow morning on tv you can see live coverage of it, starting at 7am NM time at our local ABC station's website

Just landed.

Logan in our driveway looking at the balloon.

Chase crew arrives.

They had to move the balloon from one side of the fence to the other to let passengers off. How they did it...they tied a rope to the balloon, tied it to the fence and the balloon went up, they pulled the rope and the balloon landed on the other side of the fence.

It was the Trader Joe's balloon.

Off to land somewhere else.