Ruby Willow Stern!

Rewind two months because I'm so behind... early in May I got to go meet my brand new niece, Ruby Willow Stern!  She was born on April 11, and, in my completely unbiased opinion, is one of the cutest, sweetest babies ever!



My parents visited San Francisco at the same time I was there, so I got to spend Mother's Day with my mama and Ruby met her Bubbie and Zaydie for the first time.



Bubbie counting little toes...



Bonding with Zaydie...



One of my favs- touchdown!  (She's already a yellow jacket fan :)



Sweet snuggles with her beautiful mama:



And meeting the great-grandparents!



Such a great weekend with lots of sweet baby snuggles :)  And got to end it with a mother's day happy hour with my mom and Aunt Susan before flying back to Albuquerque...

Desert in Bloom

Life has been crazy lately and I know I have not been doing a good job of posting new stuff.  Sadly I don't have time to write anything super entertaining today, but here are some pics I've been collecting of blooming cactus and other lovely flowers that are very different from the GA spring I'm used to!



























More exciting blog posts coming soon, including meeting Ruby Willow, a trip to Georgia, a trip to Chicago, and camping!

Stripmine Trail and Other Adventures

We had some really bizarre weather here in April, although I don't know if this is normal for Albuquerque or not!  At the beginning of April we had days of full sun in the 90s; the last weekend of April it snowed, only about 1/2 inch in town but much more than that in the mountains.



That Sunday we went for a new hike in the NE part of town.  I got a new book about mountain biking trails because we are still trying to find some go-to's to do with the dogs.  We are now in the process of picking hikes from the book and trying them out on foot first to see if they would be doable for biking with the dogs.



This was a really nice hike and could be great to bike with the dogs; the biggest down side is that is's a little too close to a road, which makes me nervous with our pups (especially Addie, who sometimes tries to chase cars).  It's also a great time of year for hiking because of all the beautiful (and different) flowers!






The end of the hike came to a pretty rock wall with different sediments making all different colors (although you can't see the colors very well in the picture).



We (read: Josh) also decided to take the new car for it's first real off-roading experience, so we took a "state road" from the northwest side of the Sandias to the area where we went sledding on the east side.



The state road quickly turned from paved to gravel to dirt to questionable.  Josh had a lot of fun (I was feeling a little whip-lashed) and we did get to see some great flowing water for a change from the snow melt!



Lots of beautiful views to enjoy too...

More visitors!

And we love having them and showing off all of our favorite spots!  Josh took Ashley and Leonard up to the Sandia Peak and Tree Springs Trail to enjoy the views.

We didn't take a lot more pics but of course we took her to all of the fun restaurants too.  Ashley left Sunday morning and then we went with Leonard to our first Isotopes baseball game!

Girl's Weekend

Josh went to visit the Golia's in San Antonio for a Master's watching extravaganza a couple of weekends ago.  He took Bailey along for the trip, so Addie and I got to spend some time together alone just like old times!



We did a lot of relaxing and cooking a few meals that Josh doesn't like, but we also went for a nice new hike in the foothills of the west side of the mountains.







I think Addie enjoyed having her mama to herself again for a change, but we were both happy to have Josh and Bailey back home :)

Reunited and it feels so good

Spring has been beautiful here in Albuquerque and we have been so lucky to have friends and family visiting to enjoy it with us!  At the end of March, my best friend from PA school, Becca, and her husband Forest, came to visit.  After spending two and a half years in school with Becca, seeing her almost every day and spending countless hours at Starbucks studying, I definitely have missed her face!  On their first day we went to this crazy exhibit in Santa Fe called MeowWolf.



It's an "immersive art experience" that is pretty interesting and a fun way to spend an afternoon, but really hard to describe.  Basically there's all these different rooms with weird, intricate details to look at and a lot them that you touch and play with and they light up and make noises.  Here's a sampling of some of the random creatures we found:











Definitely a little weird, but a fun place to explore!



Becca and Forest are big rock climbers, so the next day they went exploring and did some bouldering.







And of course, we had to do some hiking at one of our favorite spots.





It was a little windy at the top...



What a wonderful long weekend!