Victory Lap

After my summer classes finally got over, Trevor and I took the Victory Lap to celebrate the forever done-ness of me and school. We drove to Ruidoso with Katie and Ryan and it was so great to be in New Mexico with our family.  They are amazing and I always feel so lucky to be part of the family.  

When people ask where my husband is from, they usually have no idea where Ruidoso is (in case you are wondering, its about three hours south of Albuquerque, up high in the mountains and trees).  If they do know where it is, its because of the horse racing.  They have the biggest quarter horse race in the country or something like that.  So I finally got to go to a horse race.  It was fun!   

ok, I didn't take this one... its courtesy of wiki

We went up to Josh and Tara's property for a dutch oven dinner.  Delish!  We played horseshoes and Ethan and Jake showed us their hut made out of tree scraps.

Trevor got a new gun.  Its a Swiss K31 and we took it out shooting for the first time.  He totally had that little boy excitement look on his face.  It was so cute!

 And there is a glimpse of that face. :)  Love it!

We got rained out and had to leave. It was sad...but I love the rain, so it wasn't that sad. 

Monjeau Lookout is one of the places that Trev has wanted to take me since we got married.  Every time we went to Ruidoso, it didn't work out; the road was closed every time!  Well we finally made it up there and it was amazing!  The lookout is used by the forest service to watch for forest fires, so we had beautiful views of the mountains and of town.  Before I met Trevor, I thought all of New Mexico was high desert... I had no idea that there were beautiful places like this!  

We played a ton of games played an insane game of Egyptian Ratsu (my favorite!).  It was so intense.  It took like two hours and I was literally breaking a sweat.  I'm looking forward to a rematch with Katie and Ryan... if they dare... :)

 I like this picture of Katie, Amy, and Mom.  It was so cute watching them play the piano together!

We had so much fun hanging out with the nephews.  They are seriously some of the cutest kids ever!  I read like a zillion books with Ethan and Jake and I loved every minute of it.  The family dog, Duke, killed one of the neighbors chickens... that was interesting and gross.  We crocheted, we played, we cooked, we ate, we talked, we laughed a lot, and we enjoyed being with the family!