Let the adventures begin!

This is the week the kids have been waiting for all year - the arrival of their best friends from Oregon.  We hit the airport a little early to greet with a sign and our 'staches' (yep, I wore one too).  I must say, it was pretty fun to provide the travelers with some laughs and smiles as they arrived in ABQ.   For blog purposes we'll call E-'s friend Lizard and M's friend Techy.

I decided they needed to start their day the New Mexican way and made breakfast burritos with green chiles of course!  Off we headed toward Sandia Park to hit the quirky Tinkertown (much more fun with friends).

Hard to describe this place - basically some guy spent years carving and collecting and now has it all in this museum in the Sandia foothills.  Admittedly, it is a little creepy.  The girls' imaginations were running wild with story ideas.

There were clowns!  Scary!

Dolls - more scary!  Check out the Chucky looking one in the back.  Even a sign warning that at night they tell stories - 

Lots of old fashioned quarter machines to tell your fortunes, careers, personality etc...  Techy is "Patriotic" per Uncle Sam here.

M- and Lizard had their fortunes read by "Grandma Esmerelda".  If you didn't like them you could pin them on the ceiling.

It was a fun couple hours.  And, since we were so close to the top of Sandia Mountain I figured we should drive up to check out the view...

Once at the top, I thought a little hike to see the tram would be fun.  I mean, if you've never been to ABQ, you'd want to say you hiked on the Sandias right?  We embarked on our 'little' hike.  Kids loved it on the way there, but they were pretty much hating me on the way back.  The little hike - it was about 4 miles!  

Here's the tram - we didn't ride it.  It is North America's longest aerial tram.

Kids with energy on the way to the tram.

All done - this is the last picture they let me take and I don't think they were too happy with me at this point.  But we made it back, I fed them snacks and Mexicokes and they're all happy again!

Stay tuned for more adventures tomorrow:)