Family Vacation 2014

For the past several years, my parents make sure we go on a family vacation as our Christmas gift.

2006 - South Padre Island
2007 - Yellowstone
2008 - San Antonio
2009 - Staycation at Great Wolf Lodge
2012 - San Francisco/San Luis Obispbo for Jaime's wedding
2013 - Destin, FL (over-blogged about here, here, here, and here)
2014 - Ruidoso, NM

Why Ruidoso? It's driving distance and 20 degrees cooler than Texas in July!

On Tuesday July 1, I worked in the morning, then we headed for Amarillo. The kids were great and we didn't even break out the Kindle on the 5.5 hour drive. We met my folks at the Big Texan to watch the USA v. Belgium soccer match. There was plenty of room for the kids to play, which they LOVED. The Big Texas was just in the news recently when a 34 year-old mom of 4 ate their famous 72-oz steak dinner in less than 5 minutes (you are given 1 hour and if you finish, it's free)... then for dessert she finished off a second helping in another 5 minutes.

The next day, we made a pit-stop at Cadillac Ranch. It was drizzling and chilly.

We got to Roswell and drove by the house that Derek grew up in (he moved to TX right before his 4th birthday).

Then it was off to Martin's Capitol Cafe for some green chile stew. On our way out of town, we drove by what once was Derek's great grandmother's house.

From there we headed to Ruidoso. The whole family was there by about 3pm. Uncle Steve and Derek lead the kids into the woods to follow some deer.

After dinner at a pizza joint, the kids went to bed. Then Derek and I went to the casino with my siblings. Abby fell in love with Jacob and kept giving him kisses.

On Thursday, we headed to Ski Apache. We rode the gondola up and took the short hike up to the peak. Well - the hike was short for everyone except Abby. She wanted to be carried up the mountain - but only by mama.

Friday was the 4th of July. We went for a hike in Lincoln National Park (again - Abby's legs were barely working).


We ended the evening on the balcony telling stories with some beverages.

Then we went to what we thought was a neat cave (Fox Cave), but instead it was really lame so we took lots of cheesy photos instead.


On Saturday, our crew headed out to Carlsbad Caverns. It was about 3 hours to get there, 3 hours in the caves, then 3 hours back.

On the way back, Grant threw us for a loop by having a nosebleed in the middle of a nap. Seriously - it came out of nowhere. We ate in Roswell and the kids got to play at the UFO Festival. The restaurant was aptly named. Yes - we got a T-shirt.

That evening we went with the whole crew to the Flying J Ranch. It was a really fun evening.






On Sunday, we checked the weather and rain was in the forecast all day. We decided to head back to Dallas a day early, then we could have a staycation day on Monday. We got back around 8 pm, and Emily came over to watch the kiddos. Although the kids did AWESOME on the car ride (as opposed to the ride home from Destin last year, which was pure torture), we were in need of some adult time and a margarita!