Sally's Cabin and Pagosa Springs

I haven't been taking as many pictures as I used to. I have been a bad blogger in my day-to-day life... or maybe my hands have just been full. Here are a few pictures from the rest of our trip last week. The first half of the week was spent relaxing at the cabin. Natalie loves Mama Sally's dogs. And Sam is kind enough to sit still while Natalie reads to her, (Carmel flees). My DH has been having some trouble with bulging disks so has decided to become a yoga master and work towards fixing his back. Natalie loves having Daddy on the floor with her.
The second half of the week we spent with some old friends who were visiting Pagosa Springs for a wedding. We haven't seen these guys since I was just barely pregnant with Natalie, and now they also have a kiddo of their own. Chase is actually 6 months younger than Natalie though he's about two inches taller. They had fun playing "follow the leader" around the condo, (Natalie has finally stopped calling that game "follow the weasel"!) The photo is a bit blurred because of their high speeds!
We enjoyed a nice little hike to get a close look at some waterfalls. The kids did all their own walking.

It was pretty wet and cold up there.
Natalie had to be persuaded to the top by the promise of a peach, which she ate proudly all the way down to the pit.

We had some pizza to finish off our morning and the next day we headed home.
Natalie hadn't napped for two days straight, and slept poorly two nights, so she luckily slept almost the whole ride home! Right through lunch, and then she woke up just ten minutes away from our favorite Mexican restaurant, so we finished off a great week with a very nice drive and meal.

No more trips planned for us for a while. Thank goodness. But I'll try to be more on top of my picture taking duties so I have lots to share with you!

road trip - gator farm

We've passed by Colorado Gators every time we've driven to Sally's Cabin, South of Alamosa. But we've never stopped. Until now. On this trip the ride down was not so hot. Nat slept at the wrong time, and woke up way to early. So by the time we wanted to stop for lunch we were nowhere near anything. Except Colorado Gators.

So we stopped. We'd always figured it was just a building with a few alligators in it. But actually it's a tillapia farm that acquired a few alligators to get rid of it's excess fish. Then the gators multiplied, and they rescued more from bad homes. Now they have nearly 400 of them. There are a bunch of ponds fed by hot springs water at about 85 deg F so the gators can survive the cold winters no problem. And they still take care of the extra fish.

Here we are posing for a shot with Roswell. A female.
And I held a baby.
Here's one of the ponds.
And a big guy resting in another pond.

But they don't just have alligators. They also have tons of other snakes and reptiles you can check out. And we pet a couple of giant tortoises that were roaming around. There were also a pair of ostriches.
And a few emus.
But if you do make it there, you can't miss the great playground.
Hottest slide in town, but the playground locals were using it for its narrow band of shade.
And this was the most crooked swing I've ever seen. Natalie appreciated its novelty for about fifteen seconds, and then we were ready to hop back in the car for the last hour of our trip.
It was a stop I'm sure we will be making again on future trips to the cabin!

Balloon Launch

So if you're from around here you know that the balloon launch was weeks ago... yes I'm that far behind. But I wanted to share these pictures with you because they're so fun. We went to the Erie Balloon Launch last year and it was great, so we vowed to make it a tradition, (even though it means getting up even earlier than Natalie usually gets us up! She wasn't too happy to be out of her pajamas that early this year, but once we were in the car she got over it.

Here we are approaching our first balloon. We ran into a bunch of our friends there, so you might notice Aanya in the picture, going to check out the balloon as well!
And here's the first balloon going right over our heads. Such a pretty one too.
Watching a few more of the big ones fill up.

And heading off into the distance - this year they didn't all go towards the sun, so we could actually get a shot of them!
Actually they didn't get very far this year. Many of them landed in the next neighborhood. I think the weather was a bit warm for it. But there were about 50 balloons all together, over about 45 minutes or so, (though this time not all in the sky at once since they landed so soon). Definitely a fun event if you've never seen it.