Thoughts on Santa Fe

Joyce said that Robin once said to her that we in Maryland don't know what blue sky is. I think she may be on to something. The sky in Santa Fe is definitely a different kind of blue. I think it may be because of all the light on the ground. It was snowy and a lot of the trees have light or white bark. All of that contributes to the blue of the sky.
Orion gently explained to Doug that he is Alpha Dog by putting his paw on Doug's arm. If you pushed it off and put your hand on his shoulder you would end up in an arm wrestling match to see who could end up with their paw/hand on whom. He (Orion, not Doug) was very persistent. All in all, Orion is a very good dog. He goes to his kennel when told, isn't terribly destructive, and doesn't bark much. But he really has a hangup about this Alpha Dog stuff.

Here's a photo of him on reclining on Robin after a hard day. I like the way his right leg is sticking straight out. He thinks he's Alpha Dog because he's laying on Robin and that's made him very contented. He kept us all entertained while we were visiting.
Here's the gift that we hauled all the way to Santa Fe for Robin. It's a dress that Robin's grandmother (Joyce's mother) crocheted for Joyce when she was a little girl. Joyce had it framed along with a photo of herself in the dress when she was 5 or 6 years old.

Here's a photo of daughter and mother with the dress made by grandmother. The dress was stored in a trunk wrapped in paper and was in excellent condition. It looks like it was made from cotton crochet thread in a peach color. The framer put matching matting inside the dress so that the back didn't show and carefully arranged each row of stitches.
Here's a slightly better angle. Click on the photo to see a larger version.

The kids have a Wii so Doug and I got to try it out. I've been telling Doug we need one of these and he's been resistant. Now he sees how much fun they are and we're trying to find one. They're still very thin on the ground.

Here's a photo of Joe and Doug bowling on the Wii. They also have an XBox 360 and maybe a PS3 (I'm not sure about that one). We played Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution. I totally suck at those games because I have ZERO hand/eye coordination but it was fun to try.

We ate authentic New Mexican food while we were there and we both thought it was great. I learned that "chili" in New Mexico isn't a soup with beans and hamburger. I learned to order green chili ( not quite as hot as the red) and have them put it one the side. We ate posole
(yum!) and sopapilla with honey. More about the Santa Fe later