Pure Joy ...

It's practically the middle of the night ... I should have gone to bed hours ago, but we got "lucky" and the internet was actually accessible tonight at our hotel. We were gone all day and had such a blast and took 100's of pictures. I was just going to look through the pictures and not post anything at all tonight because of fatigue, but then who knows WHEN I will have the next opportunity to tell you about our great day???

We drove north through New Mexico today to Alamogordo. We wanted to show Jesse the cool Toy Train Museum and Depot, plus we wanted to visit a little zoo that we'd never been to before, AND while we were so far north, we HAD to show Jesse White Sands National Monument! So we had a very busy day ... but I can't begin to describe the happiness, so I'm going to try to show you!

The train museum was loved by all. It has rooms and rooms of the coolest layouts, and the fellas that work there are so fun to listen to.

We took a ride on the toy train that goes all around Alameda Park ... Emma just had her ticket punched ...

Jes and Di and Grandpa Jones rode the back of the train while Ems, Chris and I rode the front.

Look at Christopher's little face after having his ticket punched ... so cute!

I haven't done any editing to these pictures ... no time to do it ... but when I get home I will be able to use the photo program on my computer and really fine tune some of these shots ... Our next stop was the Alameda Park Zoo, about a two-minute drive away from the depot. What a great little zoo, and very inexpensive too ...

The kids had a great time feeding the ducks and turtles. Mr. Jones took completely incredible pictures of the animals at this zoo, but if I began to post them, it would take forever! Perhaps once we get home, I'll pick out his best shots and show you.
Jesse said this zoo was his favorite part of our day ... it was such a relaxing little park and watching the kids enjoy the animals was so much fun.

There was a great playground right at the zoo and we played there for a very long time.

Matthew had a whole conversation with this turtle while walking around it, deciding how best to climb on top ... ... and we all enjoyed climbing like monkeys ...

There was much more to the zoo, and we walked around and saw all of it ... but we didn't want to run out of time and not drive on down to White Sands.

The sand here is pure white, soft, and COLD ... wonderfully so! We had a real mild weather day anyway, I think in the upper 70's and it kept trying to rain, with just brief sprinkles ... but mostly it stayed dry and we enjoyed it on the dunes digging and climbing and sliding ...

There was a really nice family that we met who shared their kites with Chris and Emma ... and Jesse too!

When Jesse was a little kid, he really loved to fly a kite ...

This same family shared their sleds too ... and our little kids had such a blast taking turns sliding down the dunes ... all of them were fearless ... and exhuberantly happy ...

Aren't these clouds and the sky amazing?

Jesse started digging a big hole ... but you never reach water out here in the dessert, so it's very hard to get the hole very deep ~ the sides keep caving in ... but everyone enjoyed digging anyway.

Then it was time to try and bury daddy ... everyone was very enthusiastic about it, with Matthew dumping a huge shovel-ful on top of his head!

We packed so much into ONE day. We are exhausted, all of us! We ate dinner back in Alamogordo and then drove the 1.5 hours back to El Paso. I got to sit in the back with Emma and Christopher. We talked all the way home while the sun set. This was my favorite part of the day, without a doubt. Emma snuggled all close to me, and we talked about everything under the sun. We laughed and giggled and shared the deep things of our hearts that I will treasure forever ... pure joy!

"To show a child what has once delighted you, to find the child's delight added to your own, so that now there is a double delight seen in the glow of trust and affection, this is happiness." J.B. Priestley