Category: travel

Categories
technology travel

Automated Call Back Service

I just tried to call Southwest Airlines for some information, but all the customer service reps were busy. They now give you an option to enter your phone number and receive a call back when it’s your turn in the queue. They say you don’t lose “your place” in the order of calls, and you don’t have to wait on the phone. They tell you approximately how many minutes it will take until you receive a call back. My range was between 13 and 21 minutes. Now… we’ll see if they call back.

UPDATE: They called back 15 minutes later. Nice.

Categories
food travel

Tent Rocks, Cochiti Lake, Santa Fe

The weather was so beautiful today, so we decided to head a little ways out of town and do some walking around Tent Rocks. The sky was SO BLUE compared to the white cliffs and the rock formations. Beautiful place to walk around. Afterwards, we headed to Cochiti Lake and played with rocks and sticks. I skipped a few rocks successfully… I’m pretty bad at that. Sean and I splashed each other a little bit using our sticks in the water. I found a good stick to hit little rocks into the water like golf balls. Nathan and I talked about how we need to try kayaking or canoeing sometime. We saw someone that had a kayak and some little contraption that extended floats on each side to keep the kayak from flipping. Yeah, I’d need that. Once we got our fill of playing with rocks and sticks, we drove to Santa Fe and had dinner at Tomasita’s Restaurant. It was pretty yummy, but the chile was picoso… spicy. We had a wonderful day. 🙂 Check out the pics of Tent Rocks on my pictures page.

Categories
food pictures travel

Kansas, Butter Bells

Sean and I took a trip with my mom to Kansas for my Grandma Peny’s 84th birfday. We went bowling, got to see a cool train set up, ate at a train restaurant, and ate at T-rex cafe again. Here are the pics.

Nathan and I bought 4 punds of butter at Costco today and we got to discussing whether you can leave butter out on the counter without it spoiling too quickly so that it is soft when you spread it on bread. The package we bought said that it should be stored in the refrigerator, but I’ve remembered people leaving the butter out and that it was fine to eat. I researched the web a bit and it seems that the majority say that it is the exposure to air that causes butter to become rancid, and that use of a contraption called a “butter bell” can keep butter safe for up to 30 days at room temperature. If you read this, please leave me a comment about whether you leave your butter out or not… I’m curious. And if you leave it out, do you just use a regular butter dish with a cover or do you use a butter bell?

Categories
technology travel Uncategorized

iPod mini, Leaving for Kansas

We traded some speakers of ours for an iPod mini (4 gig) yesterday. I’ve been spending most of the day trying to get all my music organized and transferred… ugh. I’ll be glad when it’s all done. So far, it seems easy to use, but I need to figure out how to bookmark songs and I’ll also have to try out creating a playlist.

We’re leaving for a week of vacation and going to Lawrence, KS… home of the Jayhawks and my relatives, whom I refer to as the Kansasians. But wait… are filipinos considered Asian or Pacific Islanders??? I guess it depends who you ask. For myself, I suppose I’d choose “Asian”. The Philippines, afterall, is a country in Asia. But I have a cousin that says we should be “Pacific Islanders”.

Categories
family travel

Back to the Routine

We had a wonderful week of vacation at the church camp meeting in the Sacramento Mountains and visiting Nathan’s Gramma in El Paso. Now it’s time to get back to our routine. I already miss Nathan now that he’s back at work. The trip was great aside from a few navigational problems. It was HOT in El Paso but great weather in the mountains. I played a lot, a lot of volleyball and listened to some great lessons. Met some great people and just had an all-around blast. I wish they had camp meetings more often! We just picked up the cat this morning from her vet’s office where she was boarded. She’s been very purr-y and I think she’s happy to be home. Sean was petting her and she started purring. Sean said “I made Callie burp, mommy!” instead of saying he made her purr. 🙂 funny boy! We also got to take Sean to the zoo in El Paso. They have a sea lion there that swims up to the glass and if you touch the glass, he tries to bite you through the glass.

Categories
travel

Junction Cave

We went to Junction Cave today with Hunter, Nathan’s parents and his brother, Ty. Nathan and Hunter went through the cave all the way through (it goes underground about a quarter mile). Hunter managed to crawl through some mud (Sorry Paula… hope it doesn’t stain). I took Sean in a little ways til it got really dark, but the terrain was too rough to try to take him all the way in, so he and I turned back and did some hiking with Shila. I think the guys had lots of fun. Caving is quite an adventure. Make sure you bring at least 2 flashlights per person, a jacket (it’s cold underground), and a hat or something to help protect your head. Just a note, Junction Cave near Grants, NM is off of State Road 53, there is a turn off with a sign that says “El Calderon” not Junction Cave.

Categories
family travel

Weekend of moving and changing tires

We helped a relative of Nathan’s Grampa move in Albuquerque on Saturday. There was lots of stuff to move and try to fit into a smaller place, but we helped get the job accomplished. Saturday night, Nathan and I couldn’t sleep because of obsessive dreams about moving and getting things to fit into trucks and what not. LOL! And my muscles got such a workout that they were twitching most of the night too. Crazy! On Sunday morning, we woke up before the sun got here and left to attend church in Deming. We love to go down there and visit the church down there, but we haven’t been able to do it while Grandma Peny was staying with us. Anyways, we had a nice service there, a fabulous picnic lunch (ended up being at our friends’ house since the weather was bad), and got to visit with our friends. It was a good day. On the way home, we planned to stop into Las Cruces and visit with some more friends and have pizza at Uno’s. But on the way out of Deming, we got a screw in our back tire. Nathan put the spare tire on and we got the flat one fixed, then he replaced the fixed one. Between the 2 of us being unexperienced with cars… it was slightly surprising that no one got hurt while changing tires. 🙂 After all that, we ended up not having time to go to Las Cruces :-(. We had a quick dinner at Burger King and headed home. I fell asleep in the car while Nathan was driving, and when I woke up, I was reading the signs on the road to see where we were. I saw a sign that said “Las Cruces, 15 miles”… Nathan had taken the wrong entrance to the freeway and headed south instead of north. We almost made it to Cruces, afterall! LOL! It was really funny. We lost about an hour of travel time on our scenic detour, but that’s okay. That just gave me more time to hold my honey’s hand in the car while we were driving home and we made it home safely, that’s the important thing.

Categories
travel

back from TX

Sean and I made it back from TX last Wednesday. We had lots of fun, but it’s always nice to come back home, especially after being away from Nathan for too long. I’ll be posting some pictures on my Flickr page soon. While we were gone, we missed a record breaking snow storm in NM, got to gather seashells in Galveston, visited a flight museum, ate at Rainforest Cafe (by the gorillas), and we got to visit a wildlife park and pet pygmy goats! It was a very fun trip, not to mention… I got to cuddle my new nephew, Andrew! He’s sooooo cutey! He’s 2 months old now.

Categories
family travel

The Stars at Night are Big and Bright

Deep in the heart of Texas… Sean and I are leavig today to go to Houston to visit with my brother and his family and meeting up with my Dad from Virginia. We’ll be back January 3rd, Lord willing. Nathan couldn’t come with us because he’s on call this week for work. Boo-hoo! 🙁 I’m sure he’ll enjoy gaming a bunch, though. Sean and I get to meet his new cousin, Andrew, too! Yay!

Categories
family movies sean travel

Wiggles Safari and other stuff

In recognition of the late Steve Irwin, I bought Sean his first Wiggles DVD. It is the “Wiggles Safari” which features Steve and Terri Irwin and their daughter, Bindi. I’m sad that the Crocodile Hunter is gone… I’ve really enjoyed his shows. Sean watched the video today and he seemed to enjoy it. He always likes shows with animals and enthusiastic people. Add singing and dancing to that, and you’ve got him hooked for the whole 45 minutes!
We had a nice long weekend for Labor Day. Nathan took an extra day off, so we got to spend 4 whole days together. It was pretty cool. Check out my Flickr page for some pictures from our weekend. We rode the Rail Runner train. The trains are pretty fancy. every other seating area has a small table and an elctrical outlet so you can plug in your laptop. Nathan said they have wireless internet too. We also went to visit Nathan’s grandparents. That was fun. We walked a bunch and found peacock and guinea feathers and got to feed the horses, too. The next day, we went to Sandia Crest and hiked from the Crest to the Tram and back. It’s about a 3 mile hike, roundtrip, so it took us quite a while with Sean in tow. He wanted to be carried a bunch on the way back from the Tram, so that took forever. We had fun checking out all the different mushrooms that are up there right now. Sean really enjoyed hitting the puffballs with a stick and watching the “smoke” (spores) come out. He thought he was making fire. Finding more puffballs was Sean’s motivation to continue hiking, even when he was really tired.