Staycation

Staycation- noun; a vacation in which the participants stay home and enjoy the offerings of their own city, rather than traveling to do so.  Mandatory requisites includes no answering phone calls, or performance of regular duties and husbands taking a minimum of one week off from work.

Instead of a traditional vacation this year, which we had been planning, on a whim we decided to just.....stay home!  Weird, I know.  And I think everyone we told must think we're nuts.  Corey and I started thinking about past vacations, and that we often do things we could do here at home, but never, ever do.  And you know how after a vacation, you wish you had just a few more days to regroup before getting back to the grind?  Those thoughts, combined with the idea of sleeping in our own beds, and the kids having all their toys at hand so we could actually relax too brought the idea of a staycation to fruition. And so we planned.  And these were the things we came up with.  In the end I feel like we know our city a little better, and even discovered some fun surprises.

We camped in the backyard the first night, and the boys were thrilled with the idea.  It's just another one of those things we always say we'll do, but never do. We went ahead and roasted some marshmallows too, in the true spirit of camping(and my favorite part!). 

I slept okay(for camping sleep, anyway), but now know that a certain bird sings an obnoxiously boisterous solo every morning, right before the sun comes up.  Somehow everyone else slept through it.

The tram was a must.  I've only been up once and our boys have never been.  They thought it was amazing, and actually, so did I. What a beautiful view all the way up. We decided to hike a trail that the visitor's center claimed was .9 miles.  We figured our little crew could handle that.  Along the way, the boys looked for fossils in the rocks, collected pinecones(which are still resting on their dresser like prized trophies), and discovered butterflies landing on their clothes.  It was beautiful and shady, but it seemed like more than .9 miles.  And it was.  Oh, the trickery of hiking signs.  It ended up being a mile and a half
each way, and Beckett barely made it, even with
the promise of an Icee at the bottom and snacks
along the way. Corey did his part and carried him a little ways since Beck was, "just too tired."

Our destination was the little rock house built a while back on the cliff of the mountain. It had spectacular views and was a nice little walk, at least if you're older than three.

One day we went to Cliff's, the local theme park, which(shamefully), we've never been too.  It was better than expected, and we found out that our Beck loves the rollercoasters.  Despite the blistering heat, we had a great time, and an almost perfect day.  Unfortunately, Asher slipped on a stair at the 'Monkey Mania' water park there(we didn't love it), and split open his chin.  It ended up not being too bad, and he left the Guest Service area with a band-aid, a new stuffed animal and a bag of cotton candy.  That definitely helped:) 

We also went swimming, watched the 'Topes (we all got to run the bases, woot!), hit ABQ jump and let the kids bounce around for a while, ate some yummy food (Beck decided to try a chicken heart at Tucanos and liked it, ew), went to the Explora museum and did some shopping.  Oh, and we took naps, several of them. All of us. 

Our last day was a unique one.  Running through our city is the famed 'Rio Grande', only everyone who lives here knows it's not so grand. I mean, it's nice, and really makes our city beautiful, but it's not huge and full of lots of water, and you never really see people in it.  A couple of months back I found an ad in a magazine for a company that kayaks down the river, and I thought, wow....where do they do that? Corey looked into it and signed us up.  It's just about a 20 minute drive from our house to the departure point, and they took us out and let us kayak down the river with the kiddos for a couple of hours.  It was really beautiful!  We saw tons of dragonflies, a turtle, fish, two deer taking a dip in the river (I didn't even know we had deer around here!), and a blue heron that followed us for half of our trip.  Beck was my mini passenger, and helped me paddle while racing Corey and Asher.  He did get a little tuckered out and laid down in my lap for the last 20 minutes or so, because yet again, he was "just too tired."  It was relaxing, and gave me a new appreciation for our grand river. 

And so, the staycation was a success!  We really enjoyed exploring our own town.  What a wonderful and relaxing vacation it turned out to be (thank goodness for the naps).