Celebrating a Special Birthday in Ruidoso

Another one of my great friends joined the 40 Club and like we have with others, we went on a little get-away to celebrate!  Unfortunately, Joy's birthday comes at a busy time - I think Fall is the busiest season for all of us! We were able to make time a couple of weekends ago for a one-night trip and she chose Ruidoso.  Jeff and Joy love to golf and part of her birthday trip wish was for all of us to go play golf together at The Links at Sierra Blanca. So, on Saturday morning, after getting the kids situated with their grandparents for the weekend, Colin and I were off to the beautiful mountains. 

 

We arrived just in time for lunch and met Michael and Sherri at Lincoln County Grill for some yummy green chile cheese burgers.  We then drove to The Lodge at Sierra Blanca to check into our room.  The Lodge is right next to the golf course.  Then it was tee-time!!  I was pretty excited as I have never been golfing before. Ever!  I was excited to drive the golf cart! :-)

 

Here's the beautiful birthday girl, ready to get her game on:

 Colin and I are ready to go:

 Photo bomb by Jeff:

 Our handsome (and funny) guys:

 Their gorgeous (and also funny) girls:

 We had so much fun!! Yes - there was golfing, but I don't think we could call it serious!

 

 There was also a little bit of goofing off! Just a little, though! ;-)

 I wasn't playing, but on the third or fourth hole, they talked me into trying it.  I wound up playing the next three and had so much fun!  Everyone was excited about how well I did for my first time.  Probably just Beginner's Luck, but whatever it was, it was pretty great!  I loved it!

Some deer joined us on the course when we were almost finished:

 We had an awesome time, although we only made it through 7 holes before it got extremely cold and pretty dark!  We then went to our rooms to clean up for dinner. Of course, we had to take pictures beforehand:

 The Birthday Girl with the guys:

 Sherri and I with the Birthday Girl:

 She chose The Texas Club for dinner, which is an amazing steak place that Colin took me to a few years ago for my birthday.  Steaks all around and it was delish!!  Afterwards, it was time to hang out at Jeff's and Joy's suite. We had such a great time laughing and visiting! Until Colin started getting sick! :-(  Turns out he caught a stomach virus!!  I don't know what Ruidoso has against our family lately, but what a bummer! He was sick all the next morning and throughout the day, into the next day! Poor guy!  Needless to say, we weren't able to eat lunch with the others on Sunday.  Instead, we stayed in the room as long as they would let us, then I drove him home and got him in bed.

Stomach bug aside, it was a fabulous weekend!  Wish it could have been longer but so glad to be able to celebrate such a wonderful friend's special birthday. 

I'm the next one in this group to join the 40 Club, but still have a couple of years, so not sure when our next big trip will be!?

Fall Break Camping Trip

We were so excited to be going camping over Fall Break!  Not only were we going to hang out with friends, but we were going to a campground in Ruidoso and had all kinds of fun things planned!  Well, it didn't quite turn out like we had planned, but there were still some fun moments.

 

The colors were beautiful, at least!

 

 Colin bought us this cool firepit a few weeks ago and we were excited to try it out! It was perfect for campground camping!

 A couple of does visited us that evening:

 The fun thing about Rainbow Lake campground is the fish pond where you can feed the fish:

 The kids also have a lot of fun down at the creek:

Those are all the pictures I got, I'm afraid!  On Saturday, our second day there, Jagger broke his wrist in a bicycle accident.  That evening, our friend, Michael, who had been hunting that day near the area, got an elk. Colin, Jeff, and Colton went to help him get it out and were gone for quite a few hours.  They were happy to help, though!  Then, Sunday morning, I woke up with fever and body aches, feeling pretty miserable, so we packed up and headed home. Turned out to be Strep Throat and I wasn't completely over it until Thursday!  Oh well - we tried!  Guess the camping is over until next year.

This Year's Fair Projects

Time to catch up on some blog posts!  The kids entered more projects in the fair than ever this year.  I was very proud of all their hard work and I had fun helping them find ideas on Pinterest!! Of course, they entered scrapbooks.  This year's theme was 2012 and we spent a couple of days in the summer working on them.

 Then, they did a variety of other craft projects for the past couple of months:

 Then, it was finally fair time!!  Cady had 11 items entered - all in the general youth building and Colton had 13 there and 2 more in the 4-H building.  Here are pics of some of their work displayed with the ribbons:

Cady did a great job on her snail picture above!  They covered it up with the ribbon and Star Award, though so here it is:

 



 This was one of Colton's projects from the 4-H Building - he got a Grand Champion ribbon:

 Proud of my kids and all their hard work!

 Cady also had a project in the Tombaugh exhibit:

 One of those cute globes is hers!

 They cleaned up on ribbons, but more important than that is the time we spent together working on them.  I cherish those moments and can't wait to do more projects!