White Sands

Last weekend we had an awesome family adventure. Hyrum had Friday off and at about 9:30am he said, "wanna go to White Sands?" Did I ever! In an hour we were on the road and we booked our hotel on the car ride to Las Cruces. We met up with our good friend Janae. She lives down in Las Cruces and is a fellow dietitian. We had dinner with her in the old town area. It is Billy the Kid territory. Then on Saturday morning we hit White Sands. It was really amazing!

Spotting Hyrum while he does a back flip.

Scottie and Hyrum leaping off the dunes

Our family at the top of a high dune.

Janae, Hyrum, and Grant leaping and James watching.

It was the coolest thing ever, really. When you drive in you feel like it is a ski resort because everything is white, except that people are warm in t-shirts and bare feet. It was in the 70s in November people. If that doesn't convince you to come visit me, I don't know what will. We bought some sleds and sledded for awhile. I think our favorite though was jumping off the dunes. It was a kick. Definitely a must see in New Mexico. The boys had an absolute blast in the biggest sand box they have ever seen. Scottie loved not having to wear shoes and getting as dirty as his heart desired. Fabulous!

I will leave you with this adorable picture of Grant buried up to his waist in sand. He isn't too sure about it but overall he had a good time too. One last fun fact, all that sand is gypsum, think plaster. Yeah, cool.

I left my heart in San Jose.

This past week we went to San Jose, California for one of Hyrum's conference. He presented a paper that he and his professor had worked on. At the last minute we bought a ticket for me and I got to go too. Thanks to my sister Shannon, it was just the two of us. Scottie had an awesome time playing with his cousins Eli and Cade, and we had a relaxing little vacation. Here we are at the Japanese friendship garden.

One of the coolest things we did was go to the Tech museum.
Here I am walking the line with drunk goggles. These are supposed to estimate what it feels like when you have a blood alcohol level of like 1.1 or something.
I would be a terrible drunk. I could not walk straight to save my life.

They had the coolest robots and computers. We programmed our own Mr. Potato Head, had a computer take a picture of us then draw the outline with a robot, and this cool robot would spell out anything you asked it to in blocks.

The tech museum also had a special exhibit spotlighting Leonardo DaVinci and all of his invention/engineering projects. They had tons of models showing his inventions. This one was a spring that basically told time. Springs were basically the only storage form of kinetic energy back then, they were like today's batteries.

His flying machine. The wings were supposed to flap. I doubt this one ever really worked but cool idea Leonardo.

We went to the Winchester Mystery House. This was a crazy house built by the widow of the man who made Winchester guns. She was haunted by the fact that they killed so many people and felt that she could only appease the spirits by constantly building. So this house has all sorts of odd architectural things inside. Legend has it she used to hold seances and sleep in a different bedroom everynight to avoid the ghosts.

Ooh, the Winchester Mystery house all in gingerbread.

Overall we had a great time. I loved getting some sunshine, I don't get enough vitamin D in Washington in the winter. I even went swimming in the hotel's outdoor pool though it was only maybe 70 degrees. It felt great to me.