Heading North on I-25

It seems like forever since we've gone anywhere.  Really its only been a few months but for us that seems like an eternity.  The thing about living in Las Cruces is that it's kinda like living on an Island.  We could go to El Paso, but that is about 45min away; we could go to the mountains/white sands, that's at least an hour way; or we could go to Albuquerque which is 3 hrs away.

Well seeing as how we really wanted to get out of town, we decided to venture into Albuquerque and explore the largest city in New Mexico.  So we left on a beautiful Las Cruces Saturday morning and ended up in cold and rainy Albuquerque.  We went to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science as soon as we got into town.  It was actually the first natural History museum that I have ever been to and it was pretty cool.  (please excuse the quality of the pictures, most of them were taken with my phone)

There were several exhibits to explore.  We started with the Time Tracks exhibit which is a "journey through billions of years of New Mexico's natural history, from the formation of the universe to the present day."  We loved seeing the dinosaurs exhibits.

 We then ventured into the temporary exhibit,  Gross-ology.  This was by far Carter's favorite part of the museum.  He was amazed by the animatronic snot exhibit.  It moved its arms and head and had a giant snot glob that occasionally dripped out its nose and then suck back up.  It was actually pretty gross but I guess that's why they call it Gross-ology.  They also had a skin climbing wall, complete with zits, a life size game of Operation, a Urine video game (we didn't play that one),  a burp pump,  and a Gas "station" that explored how flatulence is created and how it creates sounds.  Definitely more that I would have liked to learn about gas but interesting none the less.

 We ended with the Universe Exhibit, Lilly's favorite.  There was an exact replica of the Mars Rover that you could maneuver  and Lilly loved doing that.  She has always been very interested in space since Grandpa Armstrong gave her a big book of pictures from the Hubble Telescope when she was 3.  She's the only 7 yr old I know that has a favorite Nebula. 

After the museum we just kind of goofed around driving around town for a bit and then went to the Frontier for dinner. Then went and took pictures of the temple.  I so wanted to go in but we didn't have time.  I miss being close to the temple even though it has been at least 3 yrs since we've been in close proximity to one on a regular basis.  Oh well, maybe someday we'll be closer than 3 hrs away.

On Sunday, we tried to be lazy and sleep in but Carter decided to wake up at 6:30am.  So we got dressed and had one of the best breakfasts that I have ever had and then went to Rio Grande Valley State Park.  We went on a little hike and watched the ducks and explored the Nature Center.  It was nice to be outside a little bit (after spending so much time driving from place to place) even though it was a little rainy.  We had originally wanted to drive up into the mountains a bit but it snowed and was muddy so we had to nix that idea.   We would have liked to spend more time in Albuquerque but had to get back to LC for work/school so we left to go home soon after the park.

My huge kiddos

 It was a nice trip though and very much needed.  I'm hoping that there will be more trips in our near future.  We can only spend so much time inside the Las Cruces City limits.