It's been a while! Of course, the biggest news is that Christmas has come and gone. We decided to take an RV trip out to West Texas and New Mexico. The pictures are here, and following is a quick description of the trip.

On December 20, we drove to El Paso with Dan and Vanessa, who are from there. We took all our pets plus their dog Gish and cat Chicken. So that meant 4 adults and 6 animals in the RV! It was pretty packed. Our cats hadn't travelled anywhere (they even have a home-visit vet) since they moved to Texas in the RV over 3 years ago! So they were freaked out for the first day but settled in after that.

Once we got to El Paso, Dan and Vanessa and their critters moved out of the RV into Dan's grandma's home. We stayed in the RV parked out front. We had lots of fun visiting with their families, eating yummy Mexican food, and seeing the sites around El Paso.

Then on December 22, Ted and I took off for an "excursion". We visited White Sands Missile range just north of El Paso in New Mexico. Then we continued north to White Sands National Monument, which was a really cool area full of white gypsum dunes. Check out the pictures, it was amazing. Continuing a little further north we were surprised to notice a gradual but quick terrain change, from desert to forested mountains. We stayed two nights in an RV park in the really cute little ski village of Ruidoso, New Mexico. On Dec 23, we met up with Dan, his sisters Deanne and Debbie, and his friend Sebastian to go skiing at Ski Apache. There wasn't much snow, but it was really cool to get out on the slopes. The next day we headed back to El Paso.

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day was spent enjoying Dan and Vanessa's family traditions - and more yummy food. In the afternoon of the 25th, we took off for another excursion. This time we went east, to Guadalupe National Park. We didn't have time to do a long hike there, but we did hike McKittrick Canyon, which is an "oasis" since there is a flowing stream out there. We camped overnight, and the next day headed up to New Mexico again - to Carlsbad Caverns.

The caverns were pretty neat. As always they were more "developed" than I hoped - with paved railed walkways and electric lights. It was pretty neat though. All the formations were cool. We went on a self-guided tour, which I thought was neat - just doing things at our own pace instead of having to follow along with a guide.

After that we headed back to El Paso, spent one more evening with the folks there, and then tackled the long drive with lots of people and pets, back to Dallas on the 27th.

We've been busy since our return home as well, but I'll save that for a later blog entry!