Spring Break Road Trip 2009

White Sands...3/19

Driving through the desert, you never imagine to see this...

We stopped at the visitor's center, bought some "sand disks" and headed to the dunes!! What an amazing experience!!! It seriously looked like we were driving into snow with our "saucers" to do some sledding, nope, we were dressed in shorts and t-shirts and actually got some sun!!! The kids loved sliding down...trudging back up was another experience, but the ride down was worth the effort exerted to get up. The kids made "sand" angels, rolled, slid, crashed down the hill anyway they could and always kept coming back for more, even despite a few moments of swallowing sand. Seriously, at one point Mr D took such a dive, that J and I were laughing too hard to even respond to his dramatic plunge. Hilarious!!! What an awesome day!!! White Sands, New Mexico totally exceeded all of our expectations!

Skiing Ruidoso...3/20

What a cool little ski town!!! Not quite the snow I grew up with in Utah, but when you're 4, snow is snow!!! After "gearing" up, we hit the chair lift. The kids got on great and LOVED looking around. We had an hour with the kids before their private lesson started so we got a few runs in beforehand. Being able to "teach" them the basics first was so much fun. Little Miss A had great foot control...I don't think she fell once. She was a little bit more cautious than her 3 minute younger counterpart though. D was all over the place. I lost track of how many times he fell down, but he kept getting back up and at it!!! The boy was on his own by the end of the day. Little Miss A did great too, she was more confident holding hands that at least by the end of the day she was skiing next to me rather than in between my legs.

Roswell...3/21

Another pit stop along the way...how could we pass and not check it out? As we pulled in, we told the kids to be on the lookout for aliens and spaceships. They saw them everywhere!!! Wow, this town had alien and UFO memorabilia all over the place!!! Even their lamp posts were aliens! The kids loved it! The museum was a little over the kids' heads, so we kept it super simple. It was a great pit stop. :)

Carlsbad Caverns...3/21
One word...WOW!!!! We will never "see" our Texas caves and caverns the same EVER again! This was GORGEOUS!!! We took the scenic entrance which was a 1.2 mile hike down 750 feet! The kids both did great. Before heading into the "big room" we stopped for a bite to eat. What other cave has a restaurant inside? We used our imaginations to figure out what all the formations were...let me just say there were A LOT of princess castles and Jabba the Huts in the Big Room. The Big Room spans the length of FOURTEEN football fields...CRAZY!!!! It was awesome, we could have spent so much longer than we did. We were a little rushed since we didn't get there until 1:00 and had to still make the 7 hour drive home after we left.