The River of Lights - Our Albuquerque Christmas Tradition

We went to the River of Lights last year, and loved it, so we went again this year.

It was really cold that night, in the 20's.

Avery didn't talk or make any noises the whole time.

Avery just looked confused and a little miserable. She was not a fan of the freezing cold.

Lexi had a good time for the first 20 minutes or so and then she was cold and starting whining.

Sean and I had a great time.

We walked through a different part of the Botanical Gardens this year and saw new things.

As long as we are here in Albuquerque, this is definitely one of our Christmas traditions.

We will just have to go in November next year when it's still a little warmer.

Lexi's favorite part of the night was when we saw the lion.

Lions are still Lexi's favorite animal.

YAY! One more post done. A few more to go!

Our New Apartment - Our Living and Dinning Room (Halloween Decor)

So here is our new living room...

I have to say that I love the furniture arrangement.

People can actually look at each other.

And I love all the seating.
...

And here's our "dinning room."

It just basically a great room.

What do you think of the bats?

I love them.

Plus they give me something to put on the wall until I can figure out how I'm gonna decorate.
...

We don't have a lot of Halloween decor.

It mostly just on these two shelves.

I made this Frankenstein this year and I love it!
I put it out with a hand saw and painted it and put the bolts in too.

So yeah, this is where we spend most of our time.

Our New Apartment - The Girls' Bedroom and Bathroom

Here's the girls' room from the hall...

And here's their beds.

I made up some subway art to go above Lexi's bed, I just need to refinish the picture frame.

Here's Lexi's side of the room...

And Avery's side...

(The mirror is making weird shadows on the wall.)

And their closet...

(and me.)

And here is their bathroom...

(The picture frames above the toilet have the girls' artwork in them, eventually I'm going to put pictures of the girls in them. I'm thinking baby bath pictures in black and white.)

I wanted it to be feminine but not little girl-ish.

I love it!

This is the first time we've had two bathrooms.

The girls bathroom is twice the size of the one in our old ABQ apartment.

Our New Apartment - Our Building and Our Deck

We've lived in our new apartment for about five weeks.

I guess it's time I started posting pictures.

Our complex has three "phases" or groups of buildings.

Each phase is gated.

We live in phase three.

Here's the entrance into get into our phase...

Once you walk through the gate you see...

We live on the second floor. That is our deck and our kitchen window.

By best friend Lizi lives on the bottom floor directly above us.

And here is another side of our building.

In the picture above you can see the entrance to Lizi's apartment on the bottom floor

and the entrance to our apartment on the second floor.

...

To get to our apartment you can either take the stairs (seen two pictures ago)

or you can take the elevator which is next to mine and Lizi's apartments.

My girls are obsessed with the elevator.

And I have to say that I love it too!

Once you get off the elevator you see the entrance to our apartment.

I know I need a ribbon on my wreath, it's looking kinda bare.

When you walk out of our apartment this is the view you see...

(We have a playground in our phase the one two have pools and one has several duck ponds.)

And here is our glorious deck!!!

We love it.

It's bigger than the living room in our Rexburg apartment.

And it's the reason we moved here.

It wraps around the side of our apartment and is perfect for storage!

So there you have it, a sneak peak of our new place.

I will post more pictures as soon as our house is clean enough to take pictures of.

Remember that time we went to McCall's Pumpkin Patch...

Last week Sean was in Dallas. He flew home on Friday.

We were excited to go pick him up from the Sunport (we don't call it an airport here in ABQ).

We drove directly out to Moriarty to go to McCall's Pumpkin Patch.

It's 45 minutes away but so awesome.

I had the girls in matching clothes (perfect for pictures).

...

Just a side note: I get asked if my girls are twins like twice a week, no joke.

Seriously, twins?! They aren't even the same size!

So like I said, we drove nearly an hour to the pumpkin patch and when we got there we saw this...

No one was there!!!

It's only open on Saturday and Sunday!!!

I was proud of us though, we just laughed about it and took a few pictures.

(Mom, look Lexi is wearing the earings that you send her.)

...

And here are my attempts to get a cute picture of my girls.

They were just too interested in the hay and the pumpkins...

(Here's the post from our McCall's trip last year.)

Balloon Fiesta 2011

At the beginning of the month we went to the Balloon Fiesta.

Last year we watch from a random field.

This year we went to Balloon Fiesta Park.

Sean and I woke up at 4:30 and we all left the house at 5:15.

We were worried about traffic.

But it turned out that we didn't need to worry at all.

Since Sean audits out at Honeywell (which is next to the park) we got to go down streets that were closed to the public with a special pass.

So it took us 15 minutes to drive to Honeywell and 15 more to walk to the park.

So we got there when it was dark.

But that mean we got to watch the dawn patrol.

Lexi was so excited.

She begged us to let her ride in a balloon and bawled when we said no.

A new world record was set for the most balloons to go up in one hour.

I can't remember the exact number but it was over 350.

It was awesome.

Balloons were literally going up everywhere. All around us.

2011

2010

Lexi watching a Flounder balloon.

We left around 8:30. The girls were exhausted and we were too.

We could have stayed and seen hundreds of more balloons.

Maybe next year.