New Mexico Trip

After some time in Arizona James and I rented a car and drove 4.5 hours to New Mexico to see our friends.

Timing just worked out perfect with my dad's wedding and Tania being due with her 4th baby that we made sure to plan an entire vacation and go and see the new baby and spend time with our friends in New Mexico.
This picture is from Tania's facebook. But her kids are just the cutest and they love their new addition, baby Clint.

Ellie was in heaven while we were there. I've mentioned before how much she loves attention and playing with other people so having 3 other kids to play with from 7am-8pm everyday couldn't have gotten any better for her. Jane and Ellie are the same age but Ellie seems to gravitate toward the older kids. Ellie got all wide eyed when she saw Sadie's dolls in the closet so Sadie was nice enough to play dolls with Ellie. I wish I could give Ellie an older sibling, haha.

 New toys are always exciting. Ellie loved this doll house and all the tiny babies that were in it. She frequently lined them up across the couch just to check them all out.

 The bubble machine was a big hit they got to do before bed. Notice the difference between boys and girls. Ellie and Jane would clap at the bubbles and chase them around while Everett Karate kicked them. 

 I cannot wait for Ellie to be a big sister. She adored this baby and was so gentle while rocking him.

It was "cold" outside for the most part but my kid needs to be outside, a lot, so I bundled her (because she wouldn't have it any other way) and Jane up and threw them out there a few times. 

The dad's took the kids to the park while Tania drove me around her town to help me understand the full picture of it's awesomeness, wink wink. James took this picture. Sadie was obviously trying to attempt something here.  

I've been holding out to get Ellie's haircut until we saw Tania. Her hair has curl but it was often falling straight after naps or in the carseat and it just wasn't looking right. And she had a long tail in the back and long wings in the side so it needed trimming. I didn't think of a before picture until after she got started, but this one is before enough...but it doesn't look bad here since I did it and sprayed it and all that.

Anyways, she was so into getting her haircut. Such a girl. And she got a sucker afterwards. She couldn't stop talking about it for days after either. "Knee-uh (Tania) Haircut and sucker."

 And the after. 

Since cutting it short the curls stay better and if it goes straight you can still see wave and nicely cut layers vs long crazy baby hair. But hey, she was bald for so long that I'm so grateful we got to get a haircut! 

We rented a car from Arizona but we flew back to Idaho from Albuquerque. It was a 2.5 hour drive back to Alb. from where we were so we left to get the car back by 11am and our flight was at 2pm. The Alb. airport is small but Ellie and James walked around a lot and Ellie found her fair share of things to jump off of.

 But let me tell you this story...we got there and went through the security and we have our system down to a T. I make sure to get the carseat hand checked because it's probably too big for the scanner and it's attached to the roller so undoing it would be a pain. All the other airports we've been through James, Ellie and I all go through the metal detector vs the x-ray scanner. That's usually what they do when you have small children. But at this airport they said only one parent could go through the metal detector the other had to do the x-ray scanner. I've never done the x-ray scanner so I told James I'd just go with Ellie. 

Sometimes after going through they swap your hands for explosive materials and the computer reads the swap. They probably do that since there wasn't an x-ray scanner to detect anything hidden on your body I suppose? This time they did swab my hands, which, normally, no big deal. But this time she said I failed the test. I thought she just reswab or something but no a whole bunch of people came over and were looking at the computer that read 100%! The lady said she never sees it say 100%. She mentioned to the man how she wasn't able to do the "pat down" so here comes this other lady and she said she was going to have to go through all my stuff and take me into a private room. What on Earth!? 

Of course they stop the anxiety girl! However, I wasn't too anxious and James got to stay with me so it was fine. But they asked what bags were mine and I wasn't allowed to touch them or my shoes. They went through them and swabbed them and I saw the computer say pass. Then they took us into a private closet and there was one lady who explained what she was going to do and the other lady watching probably to be sure she followed all the rules and did it professionally and what not. But she had to touch around my boobs and my groin and in the waist band of my pants. It was fun. HA! Ellie kept saying I was getting a haircut?!

After the pat down the observer lady swabbed the gloves of the lady that just patted me down and went and tested for that explosive material and it passed so I was good to go. But here are the weird things about all this...I was holding Ellie the entire time and they never once swabbed her or checked her. I pointed to which bags were mine but James was with me, they didn't take extra precaution and recheck his bags. I could have not pointed to my bags and James would have just grabbed them. So in my opinion, while it didn't matter in my situation because I knew nothing was wrong, if it did happen to someone who really was bringing explosives on the plane I sure hope they would check EVERYTHING. Quite the experience. And afterwards I felt like they were probably watching me from all the cameras in the ceiling. HA! JK. Sort of.