Ruidoso--August 2010

The fact is, we take too many damn pictures! SO. In order to remedy this dilemma a bit, I will have to spread this out in several posts. There is just no way I can condense 7 days of fun into one post!

We hit the road on Saturday. The kids were excited.
For the first 30 minutes. Then all I heard for the next 10 hours was, "Are we there yet?" "Are we almost there?" "How much longer?" "This is taking too long!" So our parents can rest well knowing that we've had our come uppin's for the hell we put them through on road trips! We did our best to keep them occupied with movies, jerky and peanut butter crackers! Nigel however was the perfect traveler!
We got in late, so we unloaded and crashed! The next morning, we decided to go have breakfast at Pena's and came home to a visitor on the deck!
We were trapped in the car for a bit. In fact, he came right up to the car and put his paws on the hood, we were a little freaked out! He eventually walked off through the neighbor's yard and we were able to make the mad dash up to the house only to find him coming through the backyard and around the house to get up to the berry tree that was off the deck (which, incidentally, is what he's going after in the photo!)

Once we got over the excitement of the early morning visitor we had the chance to check out the surroundings. The little cabin is still looking great!
Ian and Brady busted out the checkers board and ended up in a stalemate!
Then we had some more furry visitors!

After Nigel took out after one of our furry visitors, Brady decided he needed to have "a spot". So we put a fuzzy pillow in one of the chairs and Nigel spent almost the whole vacation hanging out in this spot, not bothering the wildlife! That'll do dog, that'll do!
Early evening had kids going wild on the deck. They were dancing and spinning and yelling and being crazy in the crisp, fresh mountain air! We gave up on wildlife at this point.

My very own Joe Cocker!
Power to the people!




I made a nice little dinner of meatloaf with sides of black-eyed peas and fried okra, fresh from my garden. Once the dishes were done, I made a pan of brownies and we all sat down to watch our favorite cabin movie... Clash of the Titans (original version of course)!