Grows More Precious

Hi all! We're BACK!! Did you miss me? I missed you guys - hehehe. It's strange to go to bed without blogging. Really strange - hehehe. I felt like I was forgetting to do something each night - LOL!

We woke up on Friday morning at regular time, but instead of getting kids ready for the bus and school, we worked on getting packed and dressed and out the door. By 9:45am, we were all loaded in the truck and ready to go. We drove to Alamogordo, and stopped at Arbys for lunch. Crazy, how much eating out with 7 people can be....

But see my yummy sandwich? It was FABULOUS! I just LOVE a good turkey sandwich :)









We got back in the truck, and finished our drive to Ruidoso. We were so worried that we'd be late, but we ended up getting there right on time. Here's some pics from outside the hotel.







We checked in, and were SO pleased with our room. I took a few pics on my cell phone of our room. We stayed at the Best Western, and it was WONDERFUL!


There was a bathroom off to the left when you first walk in, then a little closet, then a king sized bed on the left wall, a TV dresser on the right, and further in the room, a doorway to another room with 2 full beds and a TV dresser, and the right wall had a fireplace, with a couch and a desk. It was SO cool. I'm a Motel 6 girl, so this was pretty fancy for me - hehehe.

At 2pm, we had our first class. The room at the end of the hall was set up for childcare. There were a few ladies there to watch all the kids. I put Eme and Joe and Jim in childcare, and left Jake and Tom in the room (since they're old enough to be on their own for a few hours), watching TV. We don't have cable at home, so they were SO excited to watch real tv. hehehe.

Our first class was about the 5 Love Languages. You know about them, right? How we each receive and show love in a different way? 5 main ways. Words of Affirmation, Quality Time, Receive Gifts, Acts of Service, and Physical Touch. We spent a while talking about them, then took a little assessment quiz to find out what our primary love language was.

Captain America was Quality Time and Words of Affirmation, and I was Receiving Gifts and Quality Time. I'm not sure about the Receiving Gifts one, though. I guess that's me. I like it when he does little things for me. Not expensive things, though. Anyway...

We took a little break at 3:30, and we checked on the kids. Doing just fine. We did our next class, where we learned about Words of Affirmation and Quality time.

After class, we all got back together in the conference room for dinner. We had Spicy chicken, with rice, and taco fixings. It was quite tasty. And apple crisp for dinner. SO much food :)

After dinner, the fam got ready and headed to the hotels pool. They had a jacuzzi too. We had fun going from the pool to the jacuzzi and back and forth. I think it was the kids' favorite part :)

After the pool, we came back to the room, and had all the kids shower and get ready for bed. We were channel surfing, and found and edited show of "The Patriot", already 1/2 way over. We all watched it, then turned off the TVs and went to bed. I think it was only like 10pm or something :)

The next morning, we were up at 7am, getting kids ready for breakfast. We headed down to the breakfast area in our jammies (hehehe), and Captain America headed off to the gym. He ran a few miles on the treadmill, and we ate. The breakfast was SO good. They had a waffle maker, yogurt, hard boiled eggs, cereal, bagels, english muffins, cinnamon toast, cottage cheese and peaches, biscuits and gravy, sausage biscuits, hot cocoa, lots of juices. It was fabulous. I just LOVED it :) And the kids did too. See how happy we are at breakfast - hehehe.



After bfast, we dropped the kids back off at child care, left the older boys in the room, and went to class. We learned about Receiving Gifts and Acts of Service. We had a little break at around 10, then back to class.

See our snacks. Yummy! My sister thought this picture was funny, with the healthy fruit in the foreground, and the snickers bar in the background. hehehe.


At 11am, we let Tom and Jake go to the pool, since they were old enough to go and play on their own. We learned about the love language of Physical Touch.

At noon, we had lunch. Angus burgers. OMGosh, were they ever good. With baked beans, too. SUCH good food. Or premium hot dogs. The little kids picked those.

After lunch, we were released for Family time. We had 5 hours to do what we wanted in Riudoso. We got ready, and headed out. Here's some pics of us in the truck, almost ready to go...








We found a few brochures at the hotel of things to do in Ruidoso and surrounding areas, made our plan, and headed out. First stop, down town Ruidoso. We walked around and did the tourist thing. At one of the last shops, we bought some smooth, fun colored polished rocks for the kids. We play train dominos a lot, and it takes "markers", which the rocks would work perfectly for. They were pleased. They each got 2, thanks to the very friendly store lady :)

Back in the truck, we drove up to see the Smokey the Bear museum. Unfortunately, the road was really windy, and I started to get car sick. I took a pill, but it made me a bit sleepy and out of it. Yeah, not so cool :)

When we got there, we found out that there was an admittance fee to the park. Yeah, I wasn't gonna pay over $10 for us to go and see the spot that they buried Smokey the Bear. So we just went into the gift shop/museum, and looked around.

Here's Jimmy with the historical marker.

And the gang inside the museum.

Tom and Jimmy, looking at the display cases.

We were gonna drive a bit further, and see the museum of Billy the Kid, but realized that it closed in 30 minutes. And I wasn't gonna pay for only 30 minutes. See, the cheapness in me coming out - hehehe. SO, we drove around a bit more. We drove by Ft. Seldon, and old US Army fort, long since out of use. It was kinda neat, though. We also found a Merchant Marines cemetery. That was kinda cool.

Here's some pics of the view from up there.

We headed back to Ruidoso after that. I was pretty car sick, and in need of a nap. We stopped by WalMart in Ruidoso before heading back to the hotel. We bought lunch for Sunday afternoon, so we didn't have to stop and eat out on Sunday. We don't shop on Sunday, and it's always hard when traveling. Since we had a fridge in the hotel room, it would be relatively easy to pre-purchase food. AND, the total cost of more soda, food for the next day, and some treats was less $$$ than we paid to eat at Arbys on the trip up. Fast food really is expensive, you know :)

Dinner was at 6pm, and was steak. YUMMY! The place that catered the Couples Retreat was AMAZING! It was medium rare, just the way I like it. The cheesy potatoes were FABULOUS, and the spinach/mandarin orange/sunflower seed/feta cheese salad was DIVINE. My favorite meal, so far.

AFter dinner, we had cheesecake for dessert, and I was in heaven - hehehe. We went back to the room, and took a little nap. Not long, just about 45 minutes. We were supposed to take the kids to the child care place so we could have a "date nite", but we weren't allowed to leave the hotel. But we were tired, and took a quick nap, and let the kids watch TV.

At 8pm, we took the kids to the conference room, and we played train domino's. There was a big table where we could play, so it was perfect.

At 9pm, we had an ice cream party. I was starting to feel sick from all the food at this point, but who can turn down ice cream with all the toppings? They had good chocolate and vanilla ice cream, hot fudge topping, carmel, chocolate sauce, pineapple, strawberries, bananas, sprinkles, and 2 kinds of nuts. We were getting SO spoiled :) hehehe.

We went back to the room at 9:45pm, and put the little kids to bed, and sent the big kids to the pool, and had a bit of Mom & Dad time. We were all in bed and asleep by 11pm.

Next morning, we were up at 7am again, and getting ready for the day. And packing. Separating dirty clothes from clean clothes, gathering toiletries, getting the room in order.

We went to Breakfast at 8am, and had more fun eating - hehehe. I just had cottage cheese and a yogurt, with an apple today. I was still full from the night before. I'd eaten WAY too much :)

We dropped the kids off at child care, and went to our last class. We had a "vow renewal" ceremony, which frankly, I thought was kinda weird. But whatever - hehehe. We watched a little video on Dave Ramsey's "Financial Peace University", which I THOROUGHLY enjoyed, we tied up the classes and the weekend, and we were done.

We went back to the room, and finished cleaning up. I'm SO glad for whoever invented the suitcase with wheels and handles. Life saver, that's for sure :)

We got the truck all loaded up, and off we headed. Later, we discovered that Jake had left his glasses in the hotel (he has contacts), but that wasn't until we were already home.... Anyway, we took the LONG way out of Riudoso, more of a scenic trip.

We stopped in Alamogordo to eat lunch at a park, and had a good time. Here's some pics of the kids playing.



We got home at around 3:30pm, unloaded the truck, and relaxed for a while. I started the dirty laundry, and did the dishes (yeah, they were nasty from being left all weekend), and had Jake clean off the counters. The house looked pretty good after that.

Captain America took a nap, and I read some, and the kids took some quiet time in their rooms. They'd been together WAY too long, and were fighting. Quiet is good :)

We had cereal for dinner (yeah, I didn't feel like cooking), and at 6:30pm, I left for a Primary Inservice Meeting. A few times a year, the Primary Presidency holds an Inservice meeting, where we meet with the teachers, teach a little bit, and find out how things are going, give instructions, and what we can improve on.

Since Andrea is a teacher in the Primary, we went together. I sure missed that girl! It was good to see her again. We laughed and talked all the way to church.

The Primary president welcomed us all, we had a prayer and a song, and after talking for about 3 minutes, she released us to either Jr Primary, Sr Primary, or music/nursery. I was supposed to be teaching the Jr. Primary. Crap! That's the first I'd heard of it. Sigh.

SO, I just had us talk about how the classes were going, good things, bad things, sharing things that were helpful. Luckily, Andrea was in the group with me, and she never lets the conversation drag - hehehe. The 30 minutes flew by.

We met back up with the group, had dessert, had a few closing remarks from the Primary President, had a prayer, and were done. We still hung out and chatted for another 15-20 minutes, then headed home.

After sitting in the driveway and chatting forever longer, I finally got home a little after 9pm. Captain America was dying some wool pants, and cleaning up his mess. I guess he tried to dye too much at one time, and it boiled over on the stove. Jake had figured out that he'd lost his glasses by this point, and was making notes so he could call the hotel and see if they were there. He was writing out a script of what to say. Hard lesson to learn, so someone who hates to talk on the phone. But he did a good job. Yes, the glasses were there. They're gonna send them tomorrow, I think.

I downloaded all the pics from the trip, checked some emails, and started blogging about the long trip. Yeah, I should have just taken 25 minutes each night I was up there and blogged. It's taken FOREVER to blog for 3 days - hehehe. Here it is, 11:34, and I think I'm tired :)

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