New Mexico Roadtrip (again)!

We have been all over NM this year it seems--but when 90% of your family are there, it's a guaranteed blast! So we loaded up our car and drove down to Deming along side my older brother, K.C. and his family. We like driving the "back way" through Globe and Safford. So we made a stop in Pima, AZ to see the new temple on the way.

July 4th is a big day for my dad as he has headed up the town fireworks show for about 18 years now. Chris LOVES going down for the 4th because he gets to play with fire and light those monstrous fireworks. Me...I get the 4 kids BUT this year was sooo much fun because we had all of the cousins there!!! My mom bought about 50 packages (no exaggeration) of those glow necklaces and bracelets so each kids had like 10 a piece! They had way too much fun with these things--I had to lie to my dad and tell him that the kids LOVED his show when then honest truth was that they hardly saw any of it because they were too busy playing Star Wars with their necklace light sabers! But the show WAS fantastic and everyone who helped with the fireworks came back safe:)


Sabey--Travis' daughter

Seth (K.C.'s son) and Ethan--BEST BUDS

We also spent a lot of time at my sister's house. Kursty (my niece) was out of town this week so the girl cousins had THE BEST time raiding her closet and wearing all of her high-heeled shoes!


Now on to part 2 of our trip. The kids have been BEGGING to go camping now for a while. Chris and I.....NOT big camping fans. But anything for the kids right?! So we decided that camping in NM would be cooler (temperature wise) than AZ and boy were we right! We went to Cloudcroft, NM and nearly froze our butts off!!! It was absolutely beautiful there. We were high up in the mountains. We enjoyed nice cool weather the first day and had a great time hiking around looking for firewood--the girls LOVED finding flowers to decorate Papa Frank's hat:)




Papa Frank...ALWAYS a good sport!



Well....it started to rain...no POUR on us about 10:30 that night. At 12:30 a.m. we decided to move the kids into the van as water was now coming into the tent. So the kids stayed nice and warm and dry in van. My dad, Chris, and I stayed in the tent wet and FREEZING!!! The rain finally stopped about 4 a.m. which meant that we got like 2 hours of peaceful, quiet sleep. But, we made the best of it and got up and started a fire bright and early. We were going to try and stay a 2nd night but as it began raining again the next morning, we decided to pack up. We were ready for cold weather but not cold and wet weather. Every article of clothing we brought was wet and we really didn't want to have sick kids. So we headed back to Las Cruces to my little brother's house. BUT on the way....we made a little impromptu stop at WHITE SANDS!!!!

This place rocks! It's in Alamogordo, NM and we were already filthy so we figured why not?! Let's add some sand to our wet messy family and van! The kids LOVED it! It was much warmer there so we all enjoyed being warm again! Tatum was not happy to leave this place and cried for about 10 minutes after! A little history lesson: White Sands is actually an ancient sea bed and the sand here is super fine and clean. It is nicer than most sand we play in on any beach any where else.






We spent one more fun-filled day in Deming with my family. We went to the arcade, watched "Despicable Me," played at the park, and then topped our whole trip off with dinner at Si Senor's--only the BEST mexican restaurant in the world:) We had a great 8 days in NM. Always fun to go but also always good to come home:)