A sotol plant shows off its plumes in front of a changing tree.

I know, I know. Shocking to see a blog entry from me, eh? 

This weekend Rick and I flew down to Las Cruces, New Mexico to celebrate (a little bit early) his father's 89th birthday. It turned out to be a small family renioun with Rick's brother and sister, cousins and dear friends of Lynn & Vaughn. It was a bit of a whirlwind trip, but well worth it. 

We planned our trip just right because as I sit here typing snow is falling outside my window. Big sticky flakes that are turning the yard into a winter wonderland. We had wonderful smooth flights, avoided the high winds in El Paso, Texas and arrived home Monday night, well before the crush of holiday travelers and the snow storm. Truly a blessed trip!

Rick's mom did such a great job of planning all the events and keeping all of us together at the right place and appropriate time. Kudos, Lynn! It was great catching up with everybody and meeting people I had not met before. We stayed in a room at the Good Samaritan where his parents have a casita. It was really nice and all we had to do was walk a few steps over to their place. Since we didn't rent a car we were pretty dependent on other folks to cart us around, but it was not a problem at all.

Vaughn's birthday is really November 30th but it worked for best for everyone to celebrate a little early. We had his birthday celebration at a restaurant at noon on Saturday. We had party favors, balloons, leis, wine, food and lots of fun. After the party we visited the Farm and Ranch Heritage Museum, which was fascinating. We really needed more time to thoroughly explore all the exhibits since they were pretty in depth. 

I will do a separate post with more photos from the museum. I really enjoyed the Cowboy exhibit the best. One round building on the grounds had various cut-outs of different farming/ranching scenes. This one below reminded me of the song by Ian Tyson "Jaquima to Freno" which is about the old Mexican vaquero's which were kind of like horse whisperers. 

"Hey Mr. Vaquero ...

Put a handle on my pony for me,

Teach me the mystery."

You can listen to the song here. It is basically about taking a horse from being wild, to the halter and finally to a bit and bridle.

We also walked through a native cactus garden that is just down the street from the parents' house. Again, I plan to do a blog post with photos just for that as well, but here is a tiny taste of what is to come.

Not to forget the most prominent thing we did: EAT. And, we ate. And we ate. And we ate again. It seemed like we went from one food event right to the next. All of it was great. We are jealous of all the good restaurants they have to choose from in Las Cruces. 

So that was our short trip in a nutshell. It was fun but it's good to be home! We are looking forward to Thanksgiving turkey tomorrow! Hope you have a good one!