Our visit to Stanley

After spending about a week and a half with my family, it was past time to head up north and visit with Ethan's family. It's only about a six hour drive, so compared to what we'd already been through it was nothing. It is always so nice to be with the Mower family. We spend lots of time talking and laughing and just enjoying being around one another.
One of the highlights of this particular trip was getting to go on a tour of some of the local fiber farms. We actually only ended up having time to go to one of the locations on the tour, but it was a lot of fun. We got to run into some old family friends (I actually lived not far from Ethan's family until I was twelve, so it's not uncommon to bump into people from my childhood while we're up there visiting), and see some fun animals and displays, so I'd say it was a success.

Erik and the alpacas were pretty interested in each other.

A pretty recent batch of pygmy goats, they were for sale too! Too bad I don't have anywhere to put one right now...

Erik was WAY too interested in the spinning demonstration. Aunt Abby was enlisted to help keep him (and his very dirty fingers) out of the way.

We had lots of fun just being at Grandma and Grandpa's house too. Erik loved all the toys, but was a little disappointed when this little train wasn't able to take him for a ride. 

While we were up there, Ethan had a job interview so we left Erik with Grandma and headed up to Santa Fe for a day on the town. After Ethan's interview we went out to lunch for some real NEW Mexican food. Oh man did it taste good! I think the amount of pleasure we got out of the food was making the other diners around us uncomfortable, but OH MAN it was SO good! Green chili in everything, and sopapillas (don't even try ordering these at any restaurant outside of NM, they are NOT the real thing!) and horchata and enchiladas and it was all amazing! 

We happened to be in Santa Fe the day after the Tres Lagunas forest fire started in the Pecos, and you could see the pillar of smoke growing throughout the day. It was really interesting to watch. 

Ethan wanted me to make sure to include a picture of the local architecture, and sadly this is the best I got. There is actually a city ordinance in Santa Fe that makes it so you have to build in the traditional style. I think the building across the parking lot there is a bank, but I'm not sure. Kinda hard to tell when everything looks the same. It's all the flat roof with the vigas in the traditional style. See here and here for more examples. 

After a week and a half in Stanley, we headed south again to spend some time with Kett and Cameron before heading back to my folk's house for my little brother's missionary talk. More on all that to come later.