May Staycation

Brad was on vacation this last week.  He gets 3 weeks a year, and has to take them a week at a time--we can't split it up to spread it out more throughout the year.  Usually when he has a week off we end up going to Utah to visit family, and sometimes we will use it for a vacation of our own.  We decided this time around we would stay home during his vacation, partly because we didn't have any extra money to travel with, partly because we have a lot of house projects we needed Brad to work on, partly because we didn't want Ella to miss more preschool, partly because I wasn't up for another camping trip quite yet, but mostly we made the decision because we feel like with Brad's schedule we just never seem to get enough family time together in our own home, doing the everyday things and just hanging out together. 

We decided to fill the time with fun family activities as well as working on some house projects. We took a day trip on the RailRunner (the commuter train) and headed up to Santa Fe for our first outing. We went to the Farmer's Market, danced to a Mirimba band (they were awesome), visited Historic plaza, had some New Mexican fare for lunch at Tomasita's, and had fun wandering around the capital and riding on the train.

Later in the week we enjoyed some backyard camping (a first for us), including a campfire, roasting hot dogs and making smores, along with bedtime story-telling which seemed to be the highlight of the experience for the girls.  Our one night camping adventure ended up being two when the girls begged to sleep in the tent one more time and their extra nice Daddy agreed.  (Mommy "had" to sleep inside so that I could hear the baby, just in case she woke up!)

We also visited the Aquarium and the Botanic Gardens (two places Brad hasn't had a chance to go to with us yet) and then just enjoyed the luxury of having Daddy around.   And yes, Brad also tackled a bunch of projects for me including getting all the baseboards up around the house and building me a vegetable garden!