New year, new New Mexico adventures

The second and third Saturdays this month we spent some time about an hour northeast of Albuquerque wandering in the desert like we tend to do. We had a great time and found some neat things to see.

The first week was a bit of an exploration week. We weren't exactly sure what we would find in these canyons, but we knew there were some homestead ruins as well as possible Indian ruins. We found some of both but the Indian ruins were almost completely covered. We did see tons of pottery sherds. It's amazing how many there are out there and we enjoy looking at the different styles. We're glad other people have left the evidence behind so we could see it too! Such a neat history!!

This is a piece of petrified wood. We found tons of pieces of this during both trips that had such interesting wood patterns on them.

Here is the only building evidence of a homestead that we found either week. It is a little hard to imagine what it would have been like to live in a building like this...I sure hope they had something comfortable!!

 

If you look close you can see all the nails in this piece of wood.

In a number of the canyons in this area there were natural springs. Of course they were frozen this time of year and the vegetation is lacking in beauty, but you can imagine that it is beautiful in the summer time. There were lots of birds nests made with mud up on the overhang.

 

We couldn't quite get to where we wanted to so we decided to backtrack and then head into the desert a different way. I wish I had a picture of the road we went on...one was hardly a road and we basically were driving through a sagebrush forest. Sadly, there wasn't anything to see and the road ended anyway, so we decided to head home a little early. As we were driving along, we saw a canyon that had lots of aspen trees in it that looked pretty so we decided to stop and just wander over to see what it looked like. Boy are we glad we did! We found a bunch of caves that sure looked like they had been lived in at some time. Stan found some pottery sherds in one of the caves. 

There was an absolutely beautiful sunset...pictures can't always do justice.

Our second adventure was to do a little more exploring at some points that looked neat but we knew we didn't have time the first day. Our first stop was to see if you could find a cave that was supposed to have some Indian wall paintings. No luck with the paintings, but we did find a cave that looked like it had been lived in sometime. 

We decided last minute to climb up on top of this mesa and wander around to see what we could find. Stan scouted out a way and I followed. I definitely lose my breath quicker than I used to...

Another natural spring. We scrambled up on top to the left of this.

At first we found nothing, but slowly we began to find some neat things...

That's a volcanic plug in the distance

And then Stan found something super neat! This is some of the coolest pottery that we have seen out in the "wild". We were careful not to touch it but threw the keys in to show the size of these pieces.

A little away we found a similar pot sherd.

Stan found the ruins hidden in some trees and then all evidence was gone. We decided to scramble down the mesa...it was definitely one of the more difficult things I've done because, well my body doesn't bend the way it used to. Here's a picture of where we came down. Don't worry, we were careful :)

We did a total of four miles that day but we were taking it pretty slowly because we were looking so intently for interesting things to look at. It was so much fun! We finished our fun day with a delicious hamburger bbq in the middle of nowhere. Our life on the edge is sure fun!

Happy New Year!

The evening we got back from Idaho, we had ourselves a fun party planned! We stopped by the store on our way home and got to cooking the minute we walked in the door. We had a New Year's Eve feast and it was all delicious! Shrimp Scampi is Moore family New Year's tradition and we grabbed some lobster tail to try too. It was surprisingly (for me) good!

Don't worry, we didn't eat all of that dip in one sitting. :)

After dinner we got down to business and opened our Christmas presents that we had left at home. It was fun to leave things for us to open that night. We got some snow shoes which were are so excited to use, we just wish that New Mexico weather would work with us a little and let us use them this year!

 

We finished up the night by toasting some Martinelli's and watching Monster's INC. We may or may not have gone to bed before midnight... :)

Christmas

Well, post Christmas is always so sad to me because you have to wait a whole year to do all the wonderful traditions again. We had such a great time in Idaho this year too! The only thing that could have made it better was a little snow, but I guess I forgot to order it. There is, however, nothing I love more than a lit-up Christmas tree.

We flew up to Salt Lake City on the Saturday before Christmas and Kevin, Stan's brother, picked us up and we headed to Filer. The couple days before Christmas were filled with food making, gift buying, and hanging out. Mom and Dad had just bought a ping pong table. Stan whooped us all.

We made curry twice during our 10-day stay. Here are pictures from our first time. Making curry with Stan is one of my favorite things to do with him. We did it a few times while we were dating and I have always said that one of the places I fell in love with Stan was in the kitchen. And the food always turns out delicious. It makes my mouth water just thinking about it and looking at this picture.

By Christmas Eve, all the family had assembled and we were ready for some real fun. Christmas Eve tradition was the candlelit dinner. The food was delicious and the company so fun. 

We then headed into the big room for a talent show:

the Christmas story from the Bible read by Dad...no picture of that one 

and present opening. Fun things were given and received by all. :) 

It was so fun to have Grandma and Grandpa there.

Stan and Larry in their new chairs...sadly ours could not come back with us on the airplane. Hopefully we can get it home soon!

It was off to bed after such a long present opening time. Christmas morning we all lined up to head into see what was left in our stockings. 

Here we are Christmas morning next to our pile of fun gifts.

Before we headed over to Grandma and Grandpa's for Christmas dinner, we went and shot guns for a little bit. I have to brag and say that I hit my first two clay pigeons and then missed the third, I decided to quit while I was ahead. Stan, of course, hits almost anything he shoots at. If you look close at the picture of him shooting, you can see the pieces in the sky. It was fun to see all the boys shooting together. :)

It was great to have everyone together for lunch and to have yet another excuse to stuff ourselves with delicious food...

The Tews

The Moore's (Ashley wasn't here yet this summer so this Christmas was the first time we were all together)

It was a great Christmas day! The rest of the week and our time in Idaho was spent doing things we love the most. Eating, watching movies, playing, visiting, and for Stan, programming :)

A fun treat for me was when we went up to see my dear friend Tilda the Sunday before we left. I worked with her when I was serving my mission and I love that I can see her every now and then.

It was a wonderful trip and we were sad to leave. Luckily there were some more presents and party plans when we got home to look forward to. That'll come in the next post...

Anniversary

Before I get to the fun stuff of our anniversary activities. Here is a better picture of our living room all decorated up for the season. It was so sad to take this down the other week before we left for Idaho :(

So on to more fun things to report about. We had our 1 year anniversary on the 14th of December!!! We decided to make a weekend out of it, but I told Stan he was in charge of planning what we would do. :) He did a stellar job. On Friday evening, he came home from work a little early bringing some beautiful flowers:

He said he had a few things to do and so I was to hide away in the bedroom until he finished. After about a half hour he said he was ready for the festivities to begin. He plugged in my phone to our speakers then called me from his phone so that his voice could be the loud speaker. I was a contestant on the "Newlyweds of the Year" show. I/we had to answer a few questions and if my answers were good enough, we could win the Weekend Dream Date Staycation Package. Lucky for both us, we did win! Here is what the package included:

Friday evening was an incredibly snazzy dinner at Elaine's in downtown Albuquerque. It was such a good time and the food was a decadent treat. 

Saturday we spent the day doing some of our favorite things. Saturday morning cartoons, looking through pictures of our first year of being married and reminiscing on all the funny things that happened (which took a REALLY long time since we have a gazillion things we've done), and spending some time outside the temple (since it was closed). That night we got ready and went to a restaurant of my choice, Texas Roadhouse. It was delicious and the company was wonderful.

And just for fun, we had a Tim Tam Slam:

Our cake wasn't quite defrosted enough to eat on Saturday so we had some on Sunday. It was surprisingly still delicious. 

We feel so blessed to have had such a wonderful year. We are so excited for the adventures this next year will bring and I sure think I am the luckiest girl alive!