Usually we go to the cabin in August to escape the Texas heat, but this year, we were too busy in August to go. So we decided to take a trip this month instead. Tyler had never been to the cabin in the fall before and we wanted him to see all the beautiful foliage. Lots of fun getting to see actual seasons! Hank was a stellar traveler and had so much fun on the airplane. He’s still talking about flying on the airplane actually and I think may be a bit disappointed that we don’t have any more flights scheduled at the moment.
The cabin was wonderful, as always. We had a great time relaxing and playing outdoors. Hank very much enjoyed feeding the deer and making sure they had water. The first morning we were there, he put out food for the deer and shouted, “Here deer! Come See Hank! Breakfast!”. It was charming. Hank had fun putting out seeds for the birds and sweeping and playing on the playscape. He especially loved riding in the ATV and going to the river to throw rocks into it. I’m not sure if teaching our toddler to throw rocks (or anything really) was the most wise decision, but it certainly brought him great joy and we think he understands that we only throw rocks into bodies or water (I hope he doesn’t take that literally and bring rocks to the bathtub). One afternoon, Grandad was putting away one of the ATVs and Hank heard him and called out (while running toward Grandad), “Wait up! I wanna throw rocks!”. And an hour long adventure ensued. Hank had a blast.
We celebrated Hank’s birthday with GG and Grandad and their best friends (who are like Hank’s surrogate grandparents) John and Cheryl. We had some of Hank’s favorite foods for dinner (Mom’s macaroni and cheese, Grandad’s pinto beans, hamburgers and GG’s salad) and I made Hank a birthday cake. I have to say that baking at higher elevation is really interesting. The cake turned out perfectly (hooray for “The Joy of Cooking”!) but the icing didn’t set up how I’d hoped it would and while it tasted delicious, was rather the consistency of thick chocolate syrup, which suited Hank just fine. He really enjoyed his chocolate cake with chocolate icing/syrup and all the fun with GG, Grandad, John, Cheryl and Mom and Dad. Hank is looking forward to his birthday party at home and talks about his “Happy Birthday” at least once a day. Whenever he sees candles (like in the jack-o-lanterns he carved with Daddy) he likes to blow them out and say “happy birthday!”. Fun times.
While Hank played with GG, Tyler and I took a day trip to Taos where we got a Hank a drum, hand made from aspen and cow skin by a lovely American Indian man. We also bought a beautiful necklace from a woman who shared her story. It was a very interesting story and we learned something new, that the reason many American Indians accepted Christianity when it came to them had little to do with the message and everything to do with the symbol of the cross, a symbol that has been in their culture since several hundred years before the birth of Christ. We never knew that. She also told us that the making of jewelry for her is a way to honor her ancestors and share the story of being. My necklace is made of moonstone, jade and blue lace agate which she said is a very special spirit stone bringing harmony and truth. She called the jade “the guards”, we’d never heard someone refer to anything in jewelry that way. We were also blown away by the Rio Grande Gorge. Obviously the name implies something big, but the river seems so small down at the bottom… however, to see the huge Grand Canyon-esque gorge and imagine that that was once all river was amazing (by the way, i’m sure the river itself is rather large, it was definitely swift, but looking at it from the top of the gorge, it looked like a silver and white ribbon).
We visited the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railway. The train wasn’t actually leaving from Chama because the trestle burned down a few months ago (someone said it was arson, so sad), but they were doing maintenance on the trains in the yard there. We drove up to Cumbres Pass to see the train depart (buses took passengers from Chama to Cumbres) and Hank thought it was SO cool to see the steam engine at work. The engineer, a jovial man named Ray, let Hank sit on the platform between the engine and the tinder, which was very cool. Hank wasn’t very keen on the loud sound the engine made with the steam and the whistle at the same time, but he had fun waving to everyone in the train as they passed by. After the train left, we looked for the pennies Grandad had placed on the tracks and one them ended up on Hank’s walking stick.
We had so much fun and so many adventures while at the cabin, we could write an entire volume. We thought instead that we would just share some photos from our trip. This is probably the most photos we’ve ever loaded into one gallery but there were too many cute photos so we decided to include a bunch of them.
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