King of the Sand Hill

One of the greatest things about living in Las Cruces is that White Sands National Monument is only an hour away. There are these magnificent sand dunes and the boys LOVE to sled down them. All the fun of sledding on snow, but not the cold. Someone had made a little jump on one of the dunes and Leo kept calling it his "super jump." He really didn't catch air, but he had a great time.

Snowmen

I was told that Las Cruces has very mild winters and that it rarely snows. Well, since we've been here (3 months) it's snowed 3 times, all in the month of December. I had just received my January kits from A Page 4 All Seasons and what better timing! We went down the street to the park to play in the snow and Leo insisted on building a snowman.

Unwrap the Magic

We had company for almost 3 weeks and with the holidays I had to pack away my scrap stuff. I finally found a few minutes this weekend to scrap. And wouldn't you know it, I had the pictures and couldn't find my... for lack of a better word (I really don't like this one) mojo. Thankfully I still had one of my predesigned December layouts from A Page 4 All Seasons. I changed it up a bit, but I got some of Christmas morning scrapped.

Snow Angel

Snow is rare in Las Cruces so when we got some Leo had to go out and play. I don't know why it was so exciting for him, it snows at "home." I had this A Page 4 All Seasons layout for over a year now and finally decided to use it. I thought it was a funny sight to see snow on a palm tree. I don't think it happens all that often.

Gingerbread fun

Leo really wanted to make a Gingerbread house so I got a kit. I had thought about making it all on my own, but got lazy. Aaron had fun eating the icing and candy. Leo just had fun decorating it. The one I got was preassembled and maybe next year I will attempt to make one from scratch.
This is one of the layouts from my December A Page 4 All Seasons kit

Old Town Albuquerque

We had some time to kill between the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta and lunch at the restaurant that Martel's aunt owns, so we went to the plaza in old Albuquerque. It was so nice just walking around checking out all the hustle and bustle. Martel found a CRX parked on the street so I clandestinely took a picture of it with him and Leo next to it. The Navajo Code Talkers were there signing books, but I couldn't get a good photo.

Here's your trivia for today, what's the most commonly misspelled city in the US??? I'll give you a hint, it's not Albuquerque. The answer tomorrow!

This is another A Page 4 All Seasons layout that I changed up a bit.

Boys and their toys

Yet another of the Children's Museum layouts. It's more of a mishmash of photos that I really liked and wanted to scrap.

This is an A Page 4 All Seasons layout

Making Music

Are you tired of the Santa Fe Children's Museum layouts yet? I'm almost done. :) As I mentioned before, there was just so much to do that I had to separate into many different layouts. I think I could do an entire album of just that day!

In the outside area, they had all these "music instruments." They really aren't but I don't know what else to call them.
This is a Pagemaps sketch but I didn't save it to my computer.

Pumpkins!

I think this is the last layout from the Mesilla Valley Maze. I have tons more picture, but they're just going in the album in photo protectors. While we were at the maze, we took a tractor ride out to the pumpkin patch. We were getting ready to leave Las Cruces to go on our whirlwind tour of New Mexico, going to be back in Las Cruces for another week and then head home. I was a mean mommy and told Leo that we could go look at them but we weren't going to get one. I was not about to truck a pumpkin 2000 miles around the country. They sure were pretty though

Yet another A Page 4 All Seasons layout.

We only had the back of my car to bring our "personal" item and I wasn't able to bring a lot of scrap stuff this time, so I ordered a bunch of these kits because everything you need for the layouts are included. One must be resourceful if one wants to scrap away from "home."

Sopapillas!

One of my favorite things to do when we visit Santa Fe is to go to the old Santa Fe plaza and get sopapillas from.... Plaza Cafe. I think they actually have the best sopapillas I've ever eaten. Some times we eat them in the cafe and on days like this one, where the wait was over 30 minutes, we got them to go and walked across the street and actually ate them in the plaza. It was a beautiful day and the plaza was full of activity. There was a guy making balloon animals and had made these great flowers and attached them to the lamp posts.

Here's a little bit of trivia for you. Santa Fe is the oldest state capital in the country. In 2010, it's celebrating it's 400 years and they've already started the festivities.

This is another A Page 3 All Seasons layout.

Balloon Fiesta

One of the many things that we did on our whirlwind trips was a short detour to the annual Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta. We were in Santa Fe (about an hour away) the night before and foolishly thought that 2 hours would give us enough time to get there for the 7:00 am Mass Ascension. Boy were we wrong! We hit BAD traffic on the freeway (right next to the sign saying Balloon Fiesta 1.25 miles). It took us an hour and a half to get from there the 2 miles to the parking lot. Martel's second biggest pet peeve is sitting in traffic (litter being his first) so that made him a bit grumpy. We actually got to park in the lot right next to the fiesta sight and had an incredible view of the balloons, so we decided not to actually go inside. We really had no idea about the sheer quantity of balloons there, over 500! It was amazing to see them all (or most of them) in the sky at the same time. The fiesta goes on for over a week and there are tons of things going on. Sadly, we only had a little bit of time, but someday I hope to be able to go back and see more.

Oh, and Leo took the pictures of us on the right page.
This is another A Page 4 All Seasons kit

Ways to have fun

Martel's dad was from New Mexico and still has lots of family there. One afternoon we went to his cousin's house. Leo and Aaron played Guitar Hero with Martel's cousin's daughter. Leo thought we was doing a great job, when in reality Revee was playing.
This is another A Page 4 All Seasons layout

Aaron

One of the many places we went on our whirlwind tour was Albuquerque. We had to get up at 5:00 am to go to the Balloon Fiesta (we were in Santa Fe that morning) and afterwards we went over to the Albuquerque Plaza for a little bit. Aaron was getting pretty tired (read cranky) so I set him on a short wall and played a game of peek-a-boo with him. He was so stinkin cute that I just had to snap some pictures.

This is an old A Page 4 All Seasons layout that I hadn't had the right pictures for. These were perfect!

Bubbles!!!!!!

Here's another A Page 4 All Seasons layout. The title, "Explore your world" is perfect for some of the pictures from the Santa Fe Children's Museum. It was truly amazing. If you have small children, and are in Santa Fe, I highly recommend going. Plan on getting there when they open and staying a while.

They have this huge table and all sorts of tools to make giant bubbles. They also have a cut out tractor tire with the bubble solution so you can make a bubble around you. Leo and I tried but our bubbles popped before we could get them over our heads.

Let the Good Times Roll

The Stallion Springs Community Church had a carnival the day that Martel left (originally) for Las Cruces. The boys and I decided to go check it out. They had a great time playing all the games and running around like the crazy boys they are. I had a great time just being a spectator. :)

This is another one of my Page 4 All Seasons monthly kit that I hadn't gotten around to using. The colors and the circles of the layout fit perfectly with my pictures.

Carlsbad Caverns

Even though our trip to Las Cruces was a business trip, Martel managed to take a few days off work so we could explore the state. I had never been to Carlsbad Caverns National Park. (one of my personal goals is to visit every National Park in the system) The Park Ranger told us to be quiet in the caverns because of the echo. Leo made sure to remind us to be quiet.

We went in via the Natural Entrance which wound down 750 feet in a little over a mile. Leo was amazing and walked the whole time, and then half the Big Room. One of the things that I HAD to do while we were there was eat lunch at the snack bar, 750 feet below the surface of the Earth. I mean, really! How many times can the average person do that? And my lovely husband played along with my request and bought a $7 pre-packaged salad and a $5 container of fruit, so I could eat down there.

Dripping Springs Park

The Organ Mountains are the east border of Las Cruces and the trail head to Dripping Springs was just 10 minutes from where we were staying. One day the boys and I decided to take a hike and enjoy our day. They did great on the 3 mile hike up the mountain

I'm back!

Hey everyone! I know it's been a long time but we were away for a month and are now in the process of moving. We went to Las Cruces, NM and while my husband was at work, the boys and I had tons of fun. These are a few layouts from the Mesilla Valley Maze. It was so much fun, and one of the adventures Martel actually was able to go on.

beach layouts

Friday was Leo's birthday and we went to the beach for the day. The boys had a blast. Martel and I did too. :) It was the most perfect beach day. Mid 70s and sunny with a gentle breeze. Amazingly, the water wasn't too cold.

A lot of these, OK all of them, were ones that I had done before and they just needed some pictures on them and were good to go. I got all 5 layouts done in an hour. The hardest part was deciding which pictures to print.


OK, so this isn't the beach. We went to Grandma and Grandpa's yacht club for dinner that night.

This is an A Page 4 All Seasons layout that I had. It goes perfectly with these pictures. Leo was all about playing in the sand. I cannot believe how much he had on him!

This one is another A Page 4 All Season's layout. Aaron had fun laying on me and smooshing my face. Ahhh! Silly boy!

Aaron LOVED the water. He wasn't too keen on the sand and didn't like it on him. He kept deciding that he didn't want to be on the sand and would make his way down to the surf.

Just some random pictures from the day.

I do all my own stunts!

Here's another one of my A Page 4 All Seasons club kit. I love these pages! And since the one I signed up for is geared toward little boys, I always have pictures for them. Leo loves to take his bike and start at the top of the yard, start pedaling, lift his feet and crash into the fence. For some reason he thinks this is great fun.