We had some guests

Remember the good idea/bad idea segment from Animaniacs?  Well, here's one for you -

Good Idea: Taking care of your nieces and nephew for two weeks while their parents are out of the country.

Bad Idea: Taking care of your nieces and nephew for two weeks while their parents are out of the country and then moving a week later. Also throw in a few doctor's appointment and an outpatient procedure because, why not?

Now that I feel like I can breathe again, I can document our adventures.

I tried to keep these kids super busy, so that when their parents reminisced about their fabulous trip to Guatemala, the kids wouldn't think, yeah, and you made us go to Albuquerque...

We did the zoo, the aquarium and botanical gardens, Santa Fe (on the train!), watched Newsies (because to be "on a train that's bound for Santa Fe" when you've never seen Newsies, is just wrong!), lunch at the mall, swimming, hiking in the bosque and in the desert.

We went to the zoo with some friends, so there were a lot of kids! One of these kids doesn't belong, though. The boy with the four on his shirt didn't seem to mind being in our picture.

This was the first time we've ever picked up a map at the zoo. Skyler became a bit obsessed with plotting our route, thus I remembered why I never pick up a map at the zoo.

Meditation time at the gardens. Why, yes, Oliver is wearing pajamas. He had been so good about wearing clothes for the past two weeks anytime we went anywhere, that I decided I didn't care.

At almost the halfway point of this hike, the kids all freaked out and didn't want to finish. I said I was going to finish it and I'd probably beat them back to the car! We placed a friendly wager and Katie, Natalie, and Jesse came with me and the rest of the kids went with Jordan. Alas, my team didn't win, but everyone was much more cheerful for the second half of the hike!

Skyler, Tara, and Natalie spent a lot of time working on a stop-animation video. If you have 20 minutes to kill, you can watch it here.