Carlsbad Caverns- Kings Room Tour

On our way out to Phoenix for Thanksgiving, we stopped at Carlsbad Caverns. It is a beautiful example of hidden grandeurs in our earth... we spent about 6 hours there that day. We first went on a guided tour of the Kings Room, and then came back up for lunch and walked back down with the self guided audio tour. The kids probably hiked about 5 miles that day at least with all the walking, but they really didn't complain about it because there was so much to see.

Kings Room Tour:

The dark black marks on the rock are lantern burn marks. Early explorers of the cave would make a burn mark on the wall to help them know the path back out of the cave.

Those teeny tiny stalagtites are about 80 years old! They know this because this tunnel was blasted through to connect two of the cave's rooms about 80 years ago. Imagine how old the larger stalagtites must be!

Hey the rock looks like a tooth! This formation is actually called the shy elephant... because someone thought it looked like the back end of an elephant... but we thought it should be called molar because it looks like a tooth!

If you look closely you can see the reflection of the walls in the water. This is a pond 745 feet underground. :)

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Rocky Mountains and Idaho

We left Rich's sister and brother and their families in Keystone and headed on to Julie's family reunion in Island Park Idaho. The drive was gorgeous. I can't get enough of the views as we drove through the mountains. I was surprised at the quality of pictures I was able to get through the windshield of the car while we were speeding along at 60+ mph! (sorry for the wierd formatting of pictures... trying different options of hosting sites here! :)) Upon arrival at the cabin in Idaho we wasted no time and started the games and fun. Grandma (my mom) had some things she shouted out and everyone that fit in the group would go and sit by the fireplace for a group picture... "A" names, Born in Utah, Born east of the missisippi, etc... it ended with all the girls and all the guys taking group pictures. The next day we went on a gorgeous hike. The kids surprised us and just took off on the hike. We had to send Rich off to catch up with them instead of tagging bac...

House projects

After a few weeks of Rich working from home, we decided that we needed to do some moving around of stuff in the house. The exercise equipment needed to be taken out of the office, and we made the decision to dismantle Alex's room since it's downstairs and that would become the new exercise room. His stuff got packed up, and the room was painted and the treadmill was put into that room (which was a feat of it's own! It won't come out of that room until we move away, and maybe not even then! lol! The office got a coat of paint as well and two of the bathrooms. Now the entire house (except for closets) has been painted since we had moved in 3 years before. But then the biggest house project was thought of, and debated and decided on. We had always said that we would like to redo the kitchen in this house, and decided to tackle the project. We found cabinets online we liked and worked with a company to decide on our cabinet layout, and we ordered them....

Magical Magic Kingdom

We got to the park for the opening, and almost made it through to closing at 1am (we left about 12:30). We did take a break in the afternoon to go check into our second hotel and settle in and grab a bite of dinner. The magic kingdom is the magical park- fairy tales and wonder. The seven dwarfs train ride- we went to first- and managed to get into the line fast enough to not have an hour + wait like everyone else later in the day had. It's so fun now that the whole family can ride most of the rides together. And the parade.... So much fantasy and I love the costumes- so much fun to see! Angela was very happy with her souvenir of choice....it's hot this week!! It's just my magical park- I love it lit up late at night. :)

THE NEWTON'S

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