What Can I Say about Albuquerque?

It has lots of mountains. Everything is adobe.

Luckily, Jeremy's power was restored soon after our arrival and we discovered that we were staying in what could only be compared to a luxury retreat. Jeremy and his wife managed to get a gig housesitting for a guy who is off in Syria in the Foreign Service. The house is huge and has a library, a study, a meditation room, a restaurant quality kitchen, wood shed, organic garden, and access to the homeowner's association pool. As Satchel and Jiro ran around they consistently made wrong turns. When I laughed and made a comment about Jeremy's house being big, Satchel very seriously informed me that our house is bigger. "This house is just long," he explained.

Jeremy fired up the grill at 11:00pm and made us a delicious late nite dinner consisting of chicken & couscous that totally hit the spot. We let the monkeys run around a bit and then we crashed out in our beds. I had the best sleep I've had in weeks. We woke up around 9ish to pancakes with blueberries from the garden. Then we went on a 2 mile hike to the Rio Grande, which admittedly wasn't too grande. I snapped this photo because it reminded me of a scene (plus kids) from a camping trip we all took while Peace Corps volunteers in Cameroon, West Africa. I love following these guys down dirt roads.


After our hike we went swimming, then Jiro and I took a luxurious two hour nap while the rest of the guys went into town. They came home moments before Jeremy's very pregnant wife, and we all decided to head back to the pool. "Let's have a party at the pool!" Satchel suggested so Jeremy loaded up his backpack with all kinds of tasty treats. Satchel and Jiro both went wild jumping off of the diving board, and we did indeed have a party.

When the party was over, Jeremy headed back to the kitchen and whipped up some tacos and served them in blue corn shells with rainbow arugula and fresh tomatoes from the garden. Once dinner was over the boys all gravitated towards one of Jeremy's drums, and had a blast banging away.


Jiro and I went to bed around 10:30pm or so and Warren and Satchel followed soon after. We woke up early because Jeremy had a meeting and headed into town after a quick breakfast of oatmeal. We took the kids to the Aquarium and Botanic Gardens while Jeremy was at work. The aquarium was the perfect size--big enough to have some really cool stuff (i.e. a huge jar of jellyfish), but small enough that I didn't get cranky towards the end. The Botanic Garden right next door had a very cool children's fantasy garden that totally freaked the kids out. (Satchel also freaked out in the Aquarium a bit.) We planned to take a tram to the top of a mountain once Jeremy was done with his meeting and I started to worry that the monkeys would refuse to board.

My worries were completely unfounded. The boys got on the tram like it was no big deal and loved every minute of our 15 minute journey UP UP UP. We had a picnic at the top of the mountain and hiked around for a couple of hours. Jiro actually fell asleep on Warren's shoulders and had to be carried for a good 45 minutes which was HARD. That boy is heavy!


We we got off the mountain, we met Jeremy's wife for dinner at a Mexican place called Frontier near the University. Jeremy went off to class and we got to scare Andria with the reality of parenthood. Actually Satchel was a dream. He ate his greasy taco like it was the best thing he'd ever tasted while Jiro went ballistic spilling drinks, weilding knives, screaming, and running through the restaurant. (Thankfully we were in a room waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay in the back of the restaurant where no one was the wiser.) I was so frazzled I accidentally walked into the men's room instead of the women's.

Once we finished eating we went to a nearby playground and let the monkeys run wild for over an hour while we talked turkey--breastfeeding, cosleeping, not circumcizing, etc.--with Andria.

When Jeremy got out of class, we spent the remainder of the evening just hanging out and reliving the good ole days in Cameroon while the boys played with the dogs. (Jose, the black dog, is actually from Cameroon and June, the Chow mix, thought she didn't like kids until she met Jiro. When he wasn't saying, "I want to go to the playground," Jiro was busy saying, "I want to see June." (The Border Collie is a friend's dog.)



Jeremy's friend Jeremy was coming to stay the night with his wife, so we sadly had to pack up our things and start making our way back home. We decided we'd never make it all the way to Memphis, so my mom called my dear Aunt Judie in OKlahoma and convinced her to let us spend a day or so on her farm with practically no notice at all.