That’s how I like my mountains: crisp, clear, a small cloud on the side and with a little bit of powder sprinkled on top. Not the nasty, foggy, cold, windy, snowy stuff that we had to suffer through for the last few weeks.
Perhaps spring is really coming?
This was the first year that we wanted to introduce Pia to some Easter traditions. The plan was to have her color some eggs that we would use as decoration in the home. It started out really well:
But baby did not realize that those white round things break really easily and throwing them into the containers with color did not allow them to maintain their egg-shape. In short: all ten eggs broke during the coloring process and the stickers that were supposed to go on the eggs ended up everywhere else but on the eggs.
Oh well. Soon after the color had dried on the broken eggs we peeled them and they ended up in a big bowl off egg-salad:
After the easter egg troubles our kid enjoyed the dressing up game and here she is in her finest pose:
On Sunday morning when Candice was busy in the kitchen preparing a lemon-lavender pie, we discovered that Pia really likes lemons. She would suck them and even eat the skin of the fruits. She was making the nicest facial expressions while she was eating them:
Later that Easter Sunday we dressed the baby up and went over to Michelle and Jim’s house for a little Easter party. Lots of kids and way too much sugar for all of them. But it was a lot of fun:
After being constipated for the whole day, the food at the party made it happen for the little girl and when this picture was taken there was a distinct aura of smell around the girl. There were also quite a number of flies on the baby ….
Pia explored the house and enjoyed going to Taso’s room. This was taken on her way back to the kitchen. Looks like a movie set, doesn’t it?
It’s still cold here and the fact that Pia is also teething makes for a constantly runny nose. Luckily the baby has mastered the recycling technique: The sequence on the right details that
Step 1) Look stupid just before you have to sneeze
Step 2) Release tension with a hearty “haaaatschi” (i’m german) and
Step 3) Use tongue to grab liquids from the nose for later reuse.
Hurry with step 3, because mom will try to stop fluids with a tissue! Don’t let that happen! Retain fluids by all means!
New Mexico has officially shut down. The two biggest highways I-25 and I-40 are partially closed, which affects the north-south and east-west axes. Santa Fe schools are closed. University of New Mexico is closed. This is the biggest winter storm we’ve seen since we are here and others confirm that Santa Fe has not been hit that hard in the last 10 years.
This picture above is the back of our house. Just three days ago we were sitting at the very same table to have coffee in the morning. With t-shirts only!!!
Candice decided to take Pia down to her mom (who happens to be in town this week) and stay there until tomorrow. We are trying to take the Jeep to Camina La Tierra in a little while. That should be some fun. And it is still snowing …
The trees around the house are aching under the load of snow that has piled up on them in the last 48 hrs.
I’m talking about the person who is responsible for the weather around here!
Saturday we had temperatures around 70, which means you could easily walk around in a t-shirt the whole day, yesterday the temperature dropped by about 20 degrees and this morning I wake up to a nice amount of snow. This is ridiculous. Wonder how many plants will not like the shock-treatment.
Also no wonder that this kind of weather makes you sick. Pia was sneezing and coughing for the last three days. She also had a mild fever. Looks like things were almost ok again yesterday. At least she was scanning the weekend newspaper ads for deals:
She still needed more rest than usual and Frisco makes for a nice pillow:
The power of personal publishing at work: A few days ago I posted an entry that talked about the problems we had with Volvo’s On Call Plus system. Soon after posting the entry Google’s bot came by and grabbed the story. And now I just saw a person who searched for “Volvo on call plus” at google.com and was redirected to the entry above. I also entered the “Volvo on call plus” query at Google and saw this:
That’s cool: before you get the manufacturer’s original description of the system, you get my entry with the list of problems …
It was baby party-time at the Hoellrich household yesterday afternoon. We invited some friends and neighbours for an early dinner. The laughter of the babies is still echoing through the house and our cleaning lady is trying to get rid of all the fingerprints …
Thanks for coming and hanging out with us!
Here’s another interesting activity for the winter months in New Mexico. At the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge there are tens of thousands of birds during the winter time. Every morning at sunrise there’s a mass-ascension and every evening when the sun sets there’s a mass fly-in. Thousands of cranes, geese and ducks will lift off at the same time or gently glide back down to the water.
We packed our car on Saturday morning and took the 150 miles drive down to the South. The Jeep was packed with all of Pia’s stuff, two dogs, photo equipment and, most importantly, the cooler with snacks. As usual we start working on the sandwiches 5 mins after leaving home …
When we arrive in Socorro (be gentle with the web-site, especially all those broken images/links) we find out that it’s too early to check-in at the hotel. So we drive to the historic part of Socorro and have a coffee with some cake as a refreshment. Rejuvenated we go back to the hotel, check-in, drop off our stuff and then head further down south to the “San Antonio” exit of I-25. At the visitor center we try to orient ourselves and find the “best spot” for the fly-in later that day.
Once that’s been sorted out, we go on the “Marsh Loop Tour” (see the map at http://www.friendsofthebosque.org/tourmapsmall.gif).
The park is beautiful and volunteers/rangers have done a very good job in providing viewing platforms and maintaining the gravel roads there. We see geese, cranes and all sorts of ducks. Pia is still a bit tired from the car ride, but she gets in a better mood when she sees all the water and birds on the water.
There are some areas where a walkway over the water is provided. This is great, because it allows you to get very close to the birds on the water without getting your feet wet.
Yes, we brought the dogs. At the visitor center we found out that dogs are allowed all over the park, but that they (obviously) have to be kept on a leash. The dogs freak out when they see all those tasty birds and are not allowed to chase them just a teeny little bit. It’s like taking a kid to Disney World and then not letting the kid get on any of the rids …
As sunset time is approaches we make our way to the “Flight Deck” (viewing platform 7 on the map) and await the fly-in of the birds. During the day the birds feed in areas close-by and in the evening they are drawn back to the lakes of the Bosque. Unfortunately it seems to be the one day where a) it had to rain exactly as the fly-in was supposed to happen b) the birds decide to land where they are not even within range of the long camera lenses.
Our friends Amy + Gavin (plus Marika) are also in the Bosque this weekend and initially we had planned to have a picnic together. But the teething baby decides to get awfully cranky when we get back into the car and we decide to rather head back to the hotel and prepare the little one for bed.
I take the dogs for a quick walk and get some (really yummy) take-out from a Mexican place called El Sombrero while Candice puts Pia down in the pack-n-play. When we return the baby’s already asleep.
We feed the dogs, feed ourselves and then get ready for bed. The two puppies sleep in the corner of the room on their dog beds. It’s hot and the dogs are restless in the small, unfamiliar room. At 11:00pm the nightmare starts. Frisco starts whining and pacing between the door and our bed. I’m afraid they will wake up Pia and ask them politely to return to their beds. It doesn’t help and a few minutes later I hear something that sounds like …. uhhh …. a “wet fart”. When I switch on the light, I see that Frisco (who had suffered from a bit of diarrhea on the walk earlier this evening) had left some “marks” on the room’s carpet. GREAT! JUST GREAT! I get dressed, because I know that he has to go out soon and while I’m still getting dressed he drops the biggest pile in front of the bathroom door. Within minutes the room smells like the bathrooms on Amsterdam’s main railway station.
I take the dogs outside and Frisco drops a few more puddle-piles. I know that this will go on the whole night and I don’t want to interrupt the babies sleep, so upon return to the room I cleanup the mess (abusing two of the towels in the room), pack the doggie beds, put them in the back of the car and decide to spend the night out there with them. Temperatures around the freezing point, a dog that wants to go outside several times and way too little space in the car do not offer a great sleeping environment. I probably sleep for about an hour that night and I get back into the room at 6:30am. Now it doesn’t smell that bad anymore. We have a quick breakfast, check-out (we do mention the towels, but we tell them that we had an accident in the car - that’s why I don’t want to provide more details about the hotel), load up the car and then head back down to the Bosque.
I get a few good shots of the cranes in the morning mist, but by far not as many good photos as I had hoped for.
We complete the whole tour loop and then drive back up to Santa Fe where we arrive at about 1pm.
Everybody is happy to be back home, you can almost hear the sigh of relief from the dogs and Pia celebrates by dancing in front of the house on “her” rock.
Next time we go, I think we are going to leave the dogs at home with a dog sitter …
Geez - I almost have a backlog of things to post! Saturday 2/19 the family (sans dogs) went down to the big, big city of Albuquerque to go to the local Aquarium. Candice, Pia and their friends from the Mommy’s group have been there several times, but I’ve never seen it. The kids love the big fish tanks and it’s a great way to keep them occupied for a while.
The Aquarium is really worth seeing - it ain’t no Monterey Bay Aquarium, but for a city where you did not expect to find an aquarium, they’ve really done a great job.
Pia does like all the fish tanks, but is most excited when she sees/hears seagulls in the entrance area: there we are at the aquarium to see the fishes and the kid likes the birds there - go figure!
On the way back home from the Aquarium we stop by P.F.Chang’s China Bistro for lunch. Pia wants to eat by herself like a big girl. Mommy and Daddy receive the “don’t come here too soon again”-award after the staff sees the mess under the table. But it was still fun.
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