Dan and Angie Visit

We are so glad that my brother and sister-in-law were able to visit for a weekend! We took them to all our favorite local hot-spots including up the Sandia Peak Tramway, walking along the Rio Grande, visiting our local winery, and to our favorite little restaurants Taco Cabana's and Dion's Pizza. The girls were all smiles having their Uncle Dan and Aunt Angie here! It was truly a fastastic visit!

Getting ready to head up the tram.

At the top of the Sandias


ABQ sunset * A special bedtime story with Uncle Dan

Rock skipping on the Rio Grande * The Corrales Winery

Happy Halloween

It is so nice to be headed into the fall season! It is my favorite time of year! We had a wonderful Halloween. The girls both wanted to be princesses which was no shock since they both always love dressing up and getting girly (to my surprise, I always expected any daughters of mine would be full-on tom-boys!) We also took the girls to the Zoo Boo, which is always a lot of fun. We went early to avoid the crowds and then had a picnic lunch before heading home. The girls enjoyed picking pumpkins at McCalls pumpkin patch with Zoe's friends from school. And a very special Halloween treat this year was seeing Zoe in costume in her ballet class! It was adorable to see all the girls dressed up together!

Nonna and Grandpa Visit - Part 2

Frank's folks came by train from Chicago to visit for the week. It was great to see them! Nonna, the girls, and I kept busy while FJ was at work making all kinds of Halloween treats. We made a Halloween gingerbread house and some candy corn cookies as well. A highlight was nonna and grandpa joining Zoe for her ballet class on Friday. She loved to have them there and grandpa especially loved seeing his little ballerina in action. We also celebrated FJ's birthday, Frank and his dad got to the Corrales winery, and we took a short trip to Santa Fe. They were also here for Jenna's big move into a toddler bed. She did great, and to our relief never once climbed out during naptime or bedtime! We were happy to visit with some of Frank's cousins the last weekend his folks were in town. Frank's cousins were in town for the Balloon Fiesta, but unfortunately Albuquerque had some strangle weather that weekend and the entire Balloon Fiesta got cancelled for the weekend. I felt so bad for them! But we did get a wonderful visit in Saturday night. It was a great week, and the girls just loved having nonna and grandpa here! They were very sad to see them go (they keep reminding me how much they miss nonna and grandpa), but we are hoping that we can all get together again for Christmas this year.

Frank and his dad wine tasting * Nonna and Jenna at park


Storytime! * Frank's cousin Linda and the girls


Us and the cousins


Bye grandpa!

Nonna and Grandpa Visit - Part 1, the Balloon Fiesta

Every October Albuquerque hosts the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta. Ballooners come from all over the world to take part in the huge event. We were lucky to share this year's balloon fiesta with Frank's folks who came to visit for the week. On Saturday morning we got up super early to see the mass ascension. About 700 balloons took off as the sun rose. It was amazing! On Thursday night, we all went to what they call the Glowdeo. As the sun sets, the balloons fill up and light up the night sky. Thursday was the special shapes night, so we saw all kinds of crazy shapes including a strawberry, scarecrow, chicken, pig, and a bumblebee to name a few. After that the fireworks went off. It was quite a night! The biggest ballooning surprise turned out to be that our house was the landing site for a balloon on Thursday morning! Nonna saw it come right by the house, turn around, and then land in the street right in front of our house! FJ even got a picture with the ballooning crew! They deflated and wrapped up the balloon right there on our street. It was quite the sight for nonna, grandpa, FJ, and the dogs. However, the girls and I missed it since they landed about 5 minutes after I left to take the girls to school and then they left the house about 5 minutes before I got home. Bummer!

The mass ascension:

The Glowdeo:


The balloon landing at our house:

Zoo Trips with Zoe's Pre-school and This Weekend

Zoe's pre-school organized a zoo trip for last Thursday. Zoe looked forward to it all week! We walked around the zoo with two of her good buds from class and had a picnic lunch on the lawn. Her favorite moments were looking at the gorillas and playing at the zoo playland. It was great to see Zoe having so much fun with her new friends!

We had so much fun at the zoo that we decided to go again this weekend. Zoe's favorite animal was the hippo this time, and I think both the girls' favorite thing was the playland and drinking an Icee together at the end of the day.

Video of Zoe on playland swing.



Video of Jenna on playland swing.

NM State Fair

We spend Saturday morning at the NM State Fair with the Bishops. My favorite moments were eating fried Oreos and when Zoe played her new $5 pink plastic trumpet at top volume all the way from when we bought it, out the exit, through the exit tunnel (hello echo!), to the car, and on the ride home until both girls crashed from sheer exhaustion from a fun day!


Mychal and Zoe on 4-wheeler * Jenna and fried Oreos!


The kids on the teacup ride. Lucky Zoe got her top pick of the pink cup! * The girls just loved these funky foot massagers.

Lucky Dog

This is how Zoe chooses to dress our dog Gimlet. What a good boy! He is wearing a Princess dress. Gimlet was a bit humiliated, but a good sport through it all!

Busy Times

It's getting into my favorite time of year. There is so much going on! Here's the latest from the Corrales front.

For Labor Day weekend, we went to the wine fest with the Bishops and had a great time. Zoe and her friend Mychal are too cute together! We also checked out the local amusement park, Cliffs, which we were happy to find had a wonderful kids' section. Zoe even dared to ride the roller coaster (and I mean the big kids one!) She was very brave.





Jenna started school this week. She and Zoe go twice a week for about four hours. She is very happy to be going!




Zoe's ballet started again last week, and Zoe is thrilled to be dancing again! She'll show off her best toe taps and spins all day.











We also got to Colorado Springs this weekend since FJ needed to go to the AF Academy for work . Our good friends the Hollands are there, so we had a wonderful visit with them as well! We had so much fun that the night lasted until 10:30 before we even stepped out the door to head back to our TFL room at the Academy. That's a lot of playing for our 2 and 3 year olds! On the way out of town we stopped at Garden of the Gods.







Last, but not least, school at UNM has started as well, so it's back to the books. I don't really know if I'm excited about that or not. Classes are great, but the homework not so much so!