Alamogorda and White Sands, NM

Diana and the children @ White Sands National Park

We had a really really busy and FUN day today! There are tons of pictures to see that are finally uploaded! :)

Isn't Chris too cute in his karate uniform? :)

Our day started with Christopher's karate class. Whoa ~ was that ever interesting! I didn't realize that Diana had taken karate as a young child and had achieved almost a black belt! It was fun to learn this about her! Chris is one of the youngest students in the Saturday morning class. I have never observed karate instruction on any level, so this was a real surprise for me. Diana says she is using this mainly for discipline for Chris. After watching today's session, I think this is a good idea! The children have to listen very closely to the instructor, and he expects COMPLETE obedience! When he asks a question, he wants a "Yes sir" or a "No sir" ~ no shaking your head up and down or back and forth! He wants WORDS. The class lasts about an hour and it's a lot of hard work, both for the children and for the instructors! We thought Christopher did a very good job today, even though it was a struggle at times.

The miniature train ride around the park ...
We could see it while we were eating our lunch.

We had packed a picnic lunch at the house before karate class because immediately after class, we headed north up 54 to Alamogorda. It's almost 70 miles into New Mexico and we had a lot of things we wanted to see and do today. The first on our list was the Toy Train Depot & Museum with a miniature-train train ride. We ate our sandwiches and crackers on a blanket under the shade of a tree outside of the museum where we could see the little train taking children all around the park. Then we bought our tickets, looked through half of the museum, boarded the train, rode it around the park, and then came back to the museum for the other half. The museum had beautiful layouts, (really well-done): G-gauge, O-gauge, On30, S-gauge, HO, Markelin HO, TT, N-gauge as well as Z-gauge. There were nice old fellows who were running all of the trains. Emma, Christopher and Matthew were absolutely squeeling with delight! Thomas and Percy the Trains were there too! One of the train fellows had a very long train that was carrying little HO scale police cars (kind of like Matchbox size), and he had a collection of police cars from every single state in the country riding on his train! The miniature train we got to ride on was very fun. The engine was made to look like a steam engine (but it wasn't).

It was finally our turn to ride!

This is Matthew with a little girl (Anna)
who was absolutely determined to be part of our pictures!
She had no intention of moving away from the engine ~

NO MATTER WHAT! :)

This was their favorite layout ~ there was even a
miniature amusement park that could be
hand operated (Emma is doing it) to make the
ferris wheel go around ...

Outside the train museum ...

Our next stop was to a park called Kids' Kingdom, and in theory, it was just about 5 minutes from the Toy Train Depot. We asked for instructions as to the best way to go, but either the gentleman gave us the wrong directions, or we misunderstood them ~ but after about 20 minutes of driving around, Diana finally spotted some castles and children ~ and the playground! It was plenty HOT there at the playground, but we had a lot of fun. We had a little snack, drank a lot of water, and explored the place. There was a cool tower with an upstairs that had a little kitchen table. Christopher decided to be the chef and cook us all dinner ~ whatever dinner we wanted ~ we just had to put our order in, and Christopher would make it for us! Most of us ordered turkey and stuffing, and Christopher was very pleased to cook it up and serve it to us. We met a lot of children coming and going around the place who enjoyed "cooking" with us for awhile.





This is Emma standing on a map of the United States over at Kid's Kingdom ... look what state she is standing on! I told her MICHIGAN is where she and her family belong!






This was where we were doing our cooking and Chris was the chef ...

WHITE SANDS PICTURES!
Doesn't it look so much like SNOW?!
It was so much fun to run and play here ...
and the sand was very COOL and soft to touch. Here we are trying to slide down the sand ...
We didn't know that our sleds needed turtle wax!

Three little cuties, all in a row ...

It was nearly 3:30 in the afternoon before we headed over to White Sands to see the WHITE SAND (duh) dunes! They were as beautiful and amazing as we had heard about. Do you know how beautiful the dunes are at Lake Michigan? How soft the sand is? Well, the white sand here is actually WHITE, like snow, and it is even softer than Lake Michigan sand, very fine in texture. The dunes were amazing. Grandpa Jones and I had found some roll-up sleds out in the garage at home and brought them along, because I had heard you could actually sled down these sand dunes just like you could do if it were snow. So how did our sledding turn out? Not so very good actually. We met some folk who had been trying to use their sleds and they told us that unless we had turtle wax for the bottom of our sleds, they just would not go down the hills very well. They were right. We tried each sled with each of the kids, but the ride down was pretty boring and slow. We just couldn't make our sleds go very fast. Thankfully, Diana had purchased pails, shovels and sifters for the kiddos ~ so we climbed up a dune and started digging! Christopher was into making volcanoes (which he pronounces, "Canoes"), and Matthew was just really pleased at filling up an entire bucket with the white stuff and pouring it out to make a mountain of his own. Matthew was real intense about it too ~ don't mess with his mountain! Emma was pleased just to be there, run in the sand, pose for pictures and do a little digging of her own. We had fun burying each others' toes, making sand angels, writing letters in the sand, and running down the dunes.

We had so much fun burying our legs in the sand!

Christopher was pretty intent on making "Cane-o's"

(Volcanoes)

Emma zipping through the "snow"!

By then we were all hungry, so we drove back into Alamogordo and stopped at Wendy's and ordered one of everything on the menu and happily pigged out. We wanted to make sure no one was too hungry for the 90 minute ride back to El Paso. I sat in the back seat with Chris and Emma for the drive home. We talked and talked ... and laughed and giggled ... and hugged and cuddled ... and even though I am mighty tired out tonight, I am totally and completely happy ... I don't think life here on earth gets any better than a day like this!