Baby Engineering: Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving we decided to head to El Paso to see Kathleen, Johnny, and Layla since we hadn't gotten to spend much time with them yet since Layla was born. We made the decision to drive instead of fly after we saw the ticket prices for Thanksgiving weekend. As the weekend drew near, we started to regret our decision, but it was a little late to change our minds. We stopped on the way to cut our 12 hour trip in half. That definitely helped. We also made some pit stops along the way to add a little bit of interest. While we were there, we visited three national parks and added three new stamps to Emily's passport, so in the end I guess the long drive was worth it.

Here we are at White Sands National Monument. We were very surprised that they were open on Thanksgiving day.

We drove through part of the park, and made a stop to take a quick walk and a few pictures before we got back on the road.

Emily had so much fun playing with Layla... and with Layla's toys. Toys always seem to be more fun when they belong to someone else.

Kathleen and Layla.

Andrew and Emily hanging out on the couch.

Layla is 5 months younger than Emily. It's amazing what a difference 5 months makes when you are less than a year old.

Layla's chair vibrated, and Emily likes playing with it. The last time she was there, we let her sit in it, but I don't think that would last too long now that she's bigger.

On Saturday, we decided to start the long drive back, but we had Kathleen, Johnny, and Layla come part of the way with us and we made a few more national park stops on the way back.

Here we are at Guadalupe Mountains National Park. It looked like they had some good hiking trails and camping, so we decided we would have to make another trip there some day when we could hike and camp together.

Here we are at the sign for the Guadalupe Mountains National Park. While we were there, we got Layla her own passport to fill up with all of her family's travels.

The next stop on our trek was Carlsbad Caverns National Park. I remember going there several times growing up. I doubt Emily will remember this trip, but I'm sure we'll make the trip again some day.