santa fe

we spent the last week in santa fe, new mexico with some of our favorite people.  we joined our church just at the time a new sunday school class was forming last summer.  over the past year we have become the directors of the class and have watched it grow from it's infancy to a large class of wonderful people who have quickly become some of our very best friends.  we are so happy to have such a special group to share our lives with, and this week, we got to spend time with a group of friends (and their kids) from our class.  it was so fun.

santa fe is a place jay and i both grew up going.  we have also been many times together, but this was our first time in a few years.  the weather is SO MUCH COOLER there!  we did things like wear long sleeves, jeans, even FLEECES, people, haha!  we saw rain, too, something we haven't seen in so long.  but my favorite part of going to santa fe (or any mountain town, for that matter) is the hikes.  every morning i got up, took a jog through town in the crisp, cool weather, came back, joined the rest of the crew, and we loaded up the kids and headed for the hills!  it was so much fun.

the second favorite item on the list in santa fe is the food!  holy geez, it's amazing. you can get green chilies on everything and i can assure you, i did.  give me that food, a nice prickly pear margarita and a porch, and i am in heaven.

and last, the shopping in this place is unreal.  indian market was going on while we were there, so we got to spend a lot of time perusing the galleries and enjoying art, plus beautiful handmade jewelry and lots of great clothes.  link made out like a bandit, of course.  and i came home with nada.  seems to be the case often, these days!

lunch at the shed - best enchiladas EVER.

cutest pic.  ever.

wait, maybe this is.  link and little finley shared a lot of kisses this trip!

the lean in

he is looking so grown up to me these days.  :(

all smiles.  he LOVED hiking.  

la bamba at rancho de chimayo.

ellie, link, and finley. best buds.

no more photos, mom!  for real!

prickly pear margies and capri suns all around, please.

so thanks to camille, scott (aka ezra), cameron, garrett, scott d, audrey, and of course to little finley and sweet ellie, for such a fantastic trip!  we loved every minute of it, especially the beautiful time at the house in the evenings.  can't wait to play "celebrity" again soon.  hopefully the cops won't show up this time (true story, we were being so loud playing a game that the neighbors called the cops on us! and at like 11pm on a saturday night! whoops, but i think the cops were more embarrassed than we were when they saw the "wrecking crew" they were coming to bust - pretty lame for them, i'm sure.  we mentioned to them that there were three babies asleep in the house and they just mumbled something about seeing toys and strollers and walked off.  :)).  haha.  anyway, love you guys!  thanks for sharing in a great week.

it's getting hot in here

i am normally a defender of summer, but HOLY GEEZ!  this is frickin' ridiculous!  we are about to set a record for the longest heat wave (temps over 100) ever, and man does it feel like it.  however, i will still take this over living somewhere that it's cold a lot of the year.  at least we have plenty of sunshine and can still (somewhat) enjoy the mornings.  after all, when i finished my morning run at 8am it was only 85 degrees!  haha.

we have been spending a lot of time outside before lunch.  all of our time, in fact, to attempt to keep link and me from going crazy being stuck inside all day long.  because post-nap time is ROUGH coming up with things to do with a boy and mom who would much, MUCH rather be outside playing.  luckily we like to read and do puzzles for short periods of time and again lucky that link takes a long nap (1-4pm most days) so there is typically only about an hour until dinner when he wakes up!!

yay for rhodes and drew and their kaycee pool!  we love it there!

on our way to the circus on saturday - notice the sign, shout out to our champs, the mavs!

link touching every over-priced junky toy there.  oh joy!

clapping for the motorcycles (which were AMAZING)

link playing with one of the over-priced toys mentioned above :)

walking in from the circus.  wiped out!

mid morning trip to the park

tree hugger

water!  what is this stuff?!

we heart one arts plaza

so there's some of our beat-the-heat-cheap strategies.  we also do the spray park, play in the water hose while we water the trees, go to the gym, and visit hunny and papa.  what are some of yours?!  looks like this will be going on for a while.  we are really, REALLY looking forward to our vacation next week...off to cool temps and beautiful scenery!  until then we will be in the a/c or in the water!  :)