Green Chili Roasting

One of the things we love about New Mexico is the green chili's that are part of the culture down here. One of the ways you know it's Fall is the smell of roasting chili's. This year we hosted some of our friends at our new house for hanging out and our annual peeling green chili's. 

Turkey Trek 2017: Run first gobble later

Happy Thanksgiving 2017! We enjoyed our 3rd Turkey Trek with our friends the Sieverts. This year Jamie and Katie had some awesome turkey running socks. 

The races started with kids fun run. 

Eli and Eva each did a great job running. This year they started off with a nice pace rather than starting with a dead sprint like a bunch of the other kids. 

Peter and Joseph enjoyed running along the sidewalk cheering on the racers. 

Jamie and Katie had a fun time talking and running together. 

It was a beautiful day for a race and good times for a friend. 

Oma and Poppi came when David was in Australia

David was asked to speak at a conference in Adelaide, Australia the week Oma and Poppi could come visit us in Albuquerque. Though we were disappointed he would miss them, it was perfect for me to have them there when David was gone.

Of course, with David gone, no one was taking our pictures! He is so good about that, that I forget to capture the moments. Here's a few of our fun times!

I got to slip away and go to my book club for it's 1 year celebration. Those are the tomes we read this year! What a fabulous group of women, friends who read!

Poppi and Oma watching Elijah and Eva's soccer game while playing with Peter and Joseph on the sidelines

They took an epic walk to Flying Star (while I got to stay home and read a book in the quiet). Poppi "chocolated" them up. They looooved it!

Special date with Joseph and Peter! Oma and Poppi took them to the Balloon Museum

Special date with Elijah and Eva: Oma and Poppi took them to Explora Children's science museum

Poppi, cozy on the couch with his grandbabies!

Making Sunday popcorn with Oma

The kids went to their first AWANA all in uniform! Joseph and Peter are Cubbies, Eva is a Sparks, Elijah is in T&T

Abbreviated Camping

We decided to go camping in the Jemez before it got to cold. After such a great time camping with Tom and Deanna we wanted to get a some time in the beautiful green. 

Our boys fell asleep like bookends on the drive up. 

We brought a cast iron skillet to make green chile stew over the fire. It was a lot of fun to slowly make dinner, cooking over the fire like people did for thousands of years. 

The green chile stew ended up being amazing! Even the kids enjoyed it despite it being kind of spicy. 

Unfortunately that night Elijah ended up having an asthma attach. It was fairly scary with him waking up in the middle of the night struggling to breath. Thankfully we had his inhaler and after some time he was able to breath more regularly. Because we were over an hour and a half from a doctor in case we needed to go in we decided to pack up at 2am and head back home. Thankfully with a trailer it was pretty easy to do. We were so thankful that he was ok though and despite an abbreviated trip we still had some fun on the Friday afternoon. 

Go Play Soccer!

Elijah and Eva were able to play soccer this fall. Their coach let Eva (5) play on Elijah's 7-9 year old soccer team, which was great for us! The kids had a great time, and we enjoyed watching them.

Can you imagine a more beautiful place for a soccer field with those mountains in the background?

Peter and Joseph enjoyed eating unlimited snacks and running up and down the sidelines.

Their team did so well they ended up winning the championship! 

They were understandably so excited!

They chose Rebel Donuts for their celebratory treat!

peaches from our new peach tree

Remember that song... "Millions of peaches, peaches for me..."?

That's how we felt in August when the most amazing peach tree in our yard burst forth with perfect peach after perfect peach... We estimate about 1000 pounds worth, no joke.

This was both an amazing welcome to our house, and very overwhelming. In the thick of it, we were going out three times a day to pick peaches so they wouldn't fall on the ground. The above picture was one round of picking peaches in the morning.

We gave peaches to neighbors, called friends to help themselves, froze bag after bag, made peach crisp, peach yogurt, peach cake... I tried my hand at freezer jam (Not a success. The Pioneer Woman recipe was far too sweet.) and peach butter (utterly amazing.) We dehydrated peaches and ate them off the tree. It was lovely.

The kids loved picking them. They would simply fall into our hands when they were ripe.