Land of Enchantment

The stress of traveling long distances in confined spaces with two wiggly kids who need a new activity every 10 minutes and are prone to shrieking when they're unhappy is almost enough to prevent us from going anywhere. But not quite. And we're all happy we mustered up the will and the dough to make a trip to Santa Fe last week.

The sky was blue nonstop. The food was delicious. And we all were happy to relax by the fireplace at Noni and Mickey's house. The one exception is that Oliver was terrorized by Winnie the Pooch (aka Winnie the Poop). It didn't help that she lurked around his chair at every mealtime, having quickly learned who was most likely to drop food. Slowly he got used to her and learned to say, "Back off!"

We went on lots of fun excursions - to the Anasazi pueblo ruins and cave dwellings at Bandelier, to the other-worldly rock formations known as Tent Rocks, to the Children's Museum and to the mountains to go sledding. Sledding in particular was a blast - even Noni and Mickey took a couple of runs. Ezra and Katy's boyfriend David bonded catching some "sick air."

The kids had us in stitches telling knock knock jokes, mostly of the scatalogical variety. Most are some variation of this one:

"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"Smell mop."
"Smell mop who?"
"Ew, I don't want to smell your poo!"

Oliver's punchlines to that joke never disappoint. Here's one that he told us:

"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"Smell mop."
"Smell mop who?"
"Ew, I don't want to taste your toilet!" (pronounced 'toy-wet')

Love to all from Ash, Gabe, Ezra & Oliver