Labor Day

We’ve been busy getting settled into our new lives here in Belen, but we did take a day to rest from our labors and enjoy Ethan’s day off on Monday.

We’ve been doing some sleuthing and found out that we can ride the local commuter train (called the Rail Runner) up to Albuquerque and even to Santa Fe, and it’s actually pretty darn cheap(as in $6 for our entire family, round trip!!!), so we decided to give it a shot. We got up Labor Day morning and had a lazy morning and a big breakfast, and then we headed down to the station to catch our northbound train. 

 Erik loves the trains, but actually was a little scared by them when we went and sat in the station the other day for a few minutes just to watch them go by. We had no idea how he was going to react to the actually climbing on board one, and I was half afraid we’d spend the entire ride trying to calm a completely freaked out two-year-old. Luckily, he LOVED it, although you’d never know from his expression in all the pictures we got. Darn kid just wouldn’t smile for the camera. He started out sitting on our laps, and then decided to get brave and sit on his own seat. It wasn’t too long before he decided he was too grown up to be seen with the likes of us though, and he claimed the empty seats across the aisle from us as his own property. He climbed up onto the seat and sat there looking out the window (desperately hoping to see some cows) for the whole last part of the ride. It was fun to see him so excited and enthralled by something, it takes a lot to bring this kid to a voluntary standstill.

 We had a few hours to kill in Albuquerque before the next southbound train headed out, so we wandered downtown for a while checking out the fun stores and art galleries along the way. We made it all the way into Old Town, but by that time we didn’t have a whole lot of time left so we didn’t get to see everything there was to see. We did manage to squeeze in a fair amount of fun though. In addition to an art gallery and a few other little shops that we stopped by, there were a few other places around the plaza we enjoyed. There was the Rattlesnake Museum, which we didn’t actually go inside of, but they had a tank full of turtles that Erik was fascinated by. We probably spent more of our time in Old Town looking at the turtles than at any other one thing.

 We really enjoyed the main plaza, which was full of fun art galleries and stores. And, just like the Santa Fe plaza, there were Native American vendors lining the porches of the buildings selling their handmade jewelry and art. It was fun to walk by and see all the beautiful things they had to offer.

We stepped inside the church of San Felipe De Neri for a few moments. This building has been continuously serving the people of Albuquerque for over three hundred years, and it’s really quite beautiful. 

 Way before we’d seen all there was to see in Old Town it was time to turn around and start making our way back towards the train station. This was probably a good thing, since it was hot and we were all getting tired, especially Erik. He just couldn’t quite hold on until we got back to the station.

 In fact, he continued to sleep at the station despite the two trains that pulled through while we were there.

 Not even the wonder of the train ride was enough to wake this little guy. His slept like this clear up until the train started to slow down as it came into our station. We love the way he sleeps with his hands folded very properly in his lap.

We had a marvelous day and hope to do this again.