Day 3 in Albuquerque

For our final day in our short stay in New Mexico, it was supposed to be the opening day of the season for the small amusement park there. I had already copied addresses and directions to the other places we had planned on going before we left, but for some reason I forgot to write down the directions to the amusement park. So in the morning, I turned on the computer and went to the website to get the address when I saw that where it used to have a countdown to opening day and say "2 days" it now said "10 days Closed today". What? With no explanation, they apparently moved the opening day so we wouldn't be able to do the thing that the kids were looking forward to the most. So this was the first reason for Sabrina to cry that day.

I had done enough research before we left to have alternatives. First we went to the
Indian Pueblo Cultural Center to watch the dances they had and look in the museum (where they don't allow photography) and gift shop. There were not many people there for the dances. I felt bad for the dancing group.
This little two year old didn't dance, but was part of the family. So cute!
This was from the first dance they performed.
This is a 9-year old doing the Eagle Dance.

This is the Buffalo Dance that they perform for two days straight for a certain celebration near Christmas. The father who was the MC said that usually it is performed by the runners since they are used to such physical demands. Of course, they only did a part of the dance for us.

After looking around there, we went to Explora, the children's museum. We usually go to children's museums on vacation. Although it wasn't an amusement park, it kept the kids busy for hours.

I had seen online that they had this bike you ride across on a wire so I told my children. They went running upstairs to do it when they stopped to read the rules. You have to be almost 5 feet tall to ride it. What??? They put that at a children's museum where most of the visitors are little children not even close to 5 feet tall and have no alternative "ride" for them? This was Sabrina's second reason to cry. Alex and Elisa didn't want to go on it to make her more sad so we went to a different part of the museum. Wasn't that nice? But they still kept thinking about it. So they got Robin to take Sabrina to a different part of the museum where she wouldn't see them and got to ride it without her knowing.

After reading about Elisa's fear at the cliff dwellings, you'll probably be surprised that Elisa actually did it. When I asked her about that, she said that she felt safe doing this, but felt like she would fall off the ladders. I dunno. I'm glad she did it though.

There were all kinds of instruments and noise makers.

The girls sat here laughing hysterically at this one. I didn't try it so I'm not sure what it does, but you speak and try to have a conversation with each other and the machine slows down your speech, makes it echo or other distortions.

They spent a long time playing with bubbles. I gotta get one of these for the playroom if we ever finish the basement.

Then there was the funnest elevator we'd ever seen. Yep, it's an elevator and it goes pretty slowly so you get to enjoy sitting and looking around going up and down the two floors.

They thought the mirrors were a lot of fun.

I didn't get a photo of the third reason that Sabrina cried that day. We went to a lab where they had different visiting scientists for a few hours with different experiments or demos. We went to one and a scientist asked Elisa is she wanted to scrape some of her cells inside her cheek to look at them under a microscope. Sabrina started crying and ran out of the lab. I caught up with her and asked why she was crying. She wouldn't say. I asked her if it was because she was afraid that they would hurt Elisa and she said it was. I explained to her that they were just going to have her scratch the inside of her cheek very gently. So we went back in, but she was still scared for Elisa. But she quit crying quickly and we went on to other exhibits.

Then there was a video camera that was heat-sensative. Alex's Transition glasses are very warm apparently. This is Elisa and Alex.

And Robin and Sabrina.

And the one photo taken of me that day... I was trying to look like a ghost.

We finished each day with some time at the hotel pool, which is probably my children's favorite thing about vacations. It was a fun visit. Now I'm wondering what state we'll go to next.