Adventures at White Sands National Monument

Back in March we took a weekend and went down to hang out with my family. On a Friday evening, we met up with Heber, Kett, Cameron, and Darrow in Las Cruces and spent the night at the KOA campground there. We were going to stay at a nearby state park, but by the time we got there that evening it was already filled up, so we had to go with our back up plan. 

  The guys weren’t so sure about “camping” in town in a commercial camp ground, but I think they ended up being somewhat impressed. There are definitely some perks to being nearer to civilization!

Saturday morning we ate breakfast, broke camp and headed over to White Sands National Monument to spend several hours playing on the dunes. 

The huge stretches of pure white everywhere you look are just beautiful. The weather was gorgeous, just sunny enough to be warm and just windy enough to keep things comfortably cool. 

We all had fun, but one of my favorite parts of being there was watching Erik have fun.

 He LOVED the sand!

 He jumped and dug and ran and climbed and played hard all day. 

We set up an area that was (somewhat) sand free for the babies and the sickies (more on that later) and we were able to enjoy the messiness of the sand without it taking over.

When we were all worn out and starving (who takes time to eat lunch where there is such fun to be had?!) we loaded back into the cars and headed towards Animas to visit Grandma and Grandpa Richins. It was Grandma’s and Heber’s birthday that weekend, so we had big plans to party the rest of our weekend away. We got there that evening worn out and covered in sand, so we all got cleaned up and enjoyed just being around each other. That night though, all fun pretty much ceased. Kett had started throwing up while we were at White Sands and we thought maybe she’d just eaten something bad. Then Heber started in with it Saturday night. Then it hit me about midnight, with Erik joining in a few hours later. By morning Cameron was in on the “fun” as well, so we all skipped church and stayed home to fight over whose turn it was to hug the toilet. Mom, Dad, and Ethan were so sweet to all us sickies and made sure that we were all as comfortable as could be. It was such a relief to know that I could lay around and toss my cookies all day and still have the baby be taken care of.

By Monday we were all mostly back to normal, so we gave Carolyn the go-ahead to come over from Thatcher with her boys and join in on the party. Erik and Wyler played outside and were absolutely covered in dirt, so they ended up getting tossed in the tub for a bit before Ethan and I loaded up our kids and headed back towards Belen.

Even with the vast amounts of vomit, this was a fun trip. We made some good memories and had lots of time to just be around each other and visit. I’m looking forward to getting back down to Animas again soon, and hopefully things will go a bit smoother next time!