"Alamosa, we hardly knew ye."

October has been a golden, glorious succession of crisp mornings and sunshiny afternoons this year. Or so I hear. I have been out of town for most of the month.

I think I'm recovering from our trip to Alamosa, CO last week with four children and no spouse. This is surely karma for my relaxing getaway of the week before. Cory needed to stay here and catch up on all the work that was piling up while he frittered his time away on a beach, and I felt obligated to take my children somewhere while they are off-track, since this is the last year they will all be in year-round school. So...we made a long overdue trip to south central Colorado to visit my sister and her chillins. (They live in the middle of nowhere so I feel obligated to include as many country phrases as possible. When else will I be able to say things like "dag-nabbit" or "I was fixing to?")

My sister is one of those people who makes you feel like the biggest sloth in the universe. You know the type...teaches her kids Latin, sits on the board for the community homeless shelter, cooks a full breakfast for her family...every day. She makes her own cheese, for crying out loud!

(Just a little side note here. My children have become so accustomed to cold cereal for their morning repast that when Cory got up one Saturday and made pancakes, Anna told him, "Daddy, pancakes are for dinner!")

But my sister, Larissa, (the old goody-two-shoes) is also my biggest blog fan, so I feel extra pressure to make sure I get an account of all the goings on with the "country cousins" included in this here history.

Monday-We drove the 9 1/2 hours to their house, including a 30 minute stop for lunch. Thank goodness for books on CD, a DVD player, and a navigation system. Seriously, traveling with kids has become so easy now that I feel like I should cut a check to my parents to pay them back for all the whining, fighting, and car-sickness their generation was forced to endure without the distraction of "Bugs Bunny" cartoons on continuous play in the back seat.

Tuesday-We got up early to attend the children's play "Grimm Pajamas" at Alamosa's local college, Adams State. It was darling, but I still have not figured out a way to get the theme song out of my head...especially since Zachary has adopted it as his own personal soundtrack. After the show, we drove straight to Great Sand Dunes National Park. Imagine an endless sandbox blowing around the base of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. Now imagine six boys age 6-11. They had a fabulous time. Anna, on the other hand, betrayed her sissy, city roots and spent the morning terrorized. It might be my fault. As she got more and more frustrated on the walk to the nearest dune I may have inadvertently scared her boots off by the following conversation:

Me: It's kind of hard to walk in all this sand, isn't it sweetie?

Anna: Why is it hard?

Me: Well your feet sink into the sand a little, and it makes it hard to lift them back out.

Anna: (face pales, eyes grow wider, I see an image of sinking in quicksand flitting through her mind)...oops.


When the afternoon wind picked up, we packed up the shovels and loaded up the ol' cowpokes for a trip to the pool. (My sister is so smart...what better way to clean off a couple of van-loads of sand-encrusted kids than a dip in the pool? It must be all of that book learning she done got at college.) The pool is actually filled via a local hot spring and was more like taking a long and luxurious bath. I had to threaten, cajole and bribe my kids out of that place.

Wednesday: Here's where the sloth part comes in. While my sister productively checked things off her to-do list (meetings, meal preparation, world peace) I hung out with the kids reading, watching movies and playing board games. In the late afternoon, we all went downtown (through 2 whole streetlights!) to attend the grand opening tour of the city's new water treatment plant. Anna of course was terrified because water treatment includes a lot of ear-piercing machinery pulsing out decibels just slightly higher than your average Ozzie Osbourne concert. That girl is such a wuss...I really must figure out a way to toughen her up to country standards. The boys were interested for the first 5 minutes, and then, driven by boredom, spent the rest of the time trying to turn my hair gray by running around open vats of chemicals. Everyone managed to survive (even through the mayor's speech and reporters' interviews...my brother-in-law is the city manager, so his kids are more inured to this particular type of activity.) We finished the day off by eating ourselves sick at the local Mexican buffet. Isaac thought he had gone to heaven...all the cheese and taco shells he could possibly ever want.

Thursday: It must be a rare sight for a town this size to have such a metropolitan presence because when we woke up Thursday morning, we discovered a picture of ourselves on the front page of the Alamosa paper. Don't believe me? Follow the link below to a search of the local paper. Under the date, enter 10/22/08-10/23/08 and under article text type "water treatment." If you look closely, you can even see Isaac behind Zachary.

http://www.alamosanews.com/V2_search_archives.php?heading=3#

Of course we had to leave town that afternoon to avoid the autograph-seeking masses, so we hitched up a team (okay, so we really just drove in minivans) and rode off to the nearby Alligator Farm. Some local entrepreneurs have taken advantage of their own hot spring by raising Tilapia to sell to nearby restaurants. Many years ago, they hit upon the idea to introduce a few alligators into the system to eat up the waste...kind of organic waste management. With the warm waters, the experiment thrived, and pretty soon, they were the proud caretakers of hundreds of prehistoric reptiles. Always thinking about that bottom line, they hit upon the idea of selling entrance tickets to tourists interested in getting a close-up view of gators far outside the Everglades. I had heard about this place prior to our visit and had always imagined something akin to a zoo...and it is exactly like a zoo...that is if a group of rednecks got together and opened a zoo. Imagine a zoo without any kind of codes or regulations. Imagine power cords dangling precariously over open fish tanks. Imagine a zoo, where the only thing separating you from ferocious, wild animals is a chain link fence, jury-rigged together in several places with ropes and plywood. Imagine a zoo whose sole security system is a kennel of junk-yard dogs and a couple of fractious ostriches. The alligator farm is everything that is great about America and a free-market economy.

We took turns holding the little alligator. I'm a little afraid to post this blog lest the EPA come and shut down the entire operation.

Gives me chills just thinking about it.

Across the entrance from the farm is a "playground." You walk over a bridge, through a gate into a pen with a swing set and slide 30 feet high, a couple of goats, a donkey, a pond, piles of old tires, and a mountain of animal droppings. The only rule here is, there are no rules. On our way out, Zachary forgot to close the gate and we soon discovered we were being followed by a very tall, very stubborn goat. You would think maybe there would be some kind of staff on hand to deal with this kind of thing, but no in the end, we sent our kids off to chase it back. When that didn't work, we told them to try to lure it back to the pen with hay. When that didn't work, we told them to slap it in the right direction. Finally, I had to stop laughing long enough, join the kids, and push the stubborn animal with every ounce of my strength back into the enclosure. I'm pretty sure the owners of the "establishment" were watching these proceedings from their office just to poke fun at us poor, helpless city folk.

Oh, and did I mention that Anna was terrified? When we pulled in, we saw some ducks in a separate pond, and she said, "Um, I don't think those ducks should swim with the alligators."

Friday-We did lots of down-home cooking this day...or Larissa did. I did lots of down-home eating this day. In the afternoon, we attended the college's "Chemistry Magic Show." Just one more way for me to traumatize my daughter. They exploded balloons filled with gas in one of the "tricks." I don't think she'll ever go near a balloon again. The rest of our crowd had a marvelous time however, and even Anna enjoyed going to the lab and doing some experiments of her own after the show.

Doing a little ph-testing.

Saturday-Why is it that the drive home always seems to take twice as long? We survived it though, and came home with colds instead of souvenirs. It was a wonderful week.

Here's what the kids said were their favorite parts of the trip:

Anna-"playing dollies with Nicole" Those two little girls are peas in a pod...we hardly saw them the whole week.

Here they are putting makeup on in the bathroom. After the photo, Anna told Nicole, "She's taking our picture because we are so beautiful."

Isaac-"the sand dunes and swimming"

Noah-"playing boardgames"

Zachary-"I don't have a favorite thing." How typical...you know those city cousins...they are so wishy-washy!

I apologize to all those who may have been offended by the content of this post...especially any alligators or goats who may have seen themselves depicted in an unflattering light. It was intended to be all in good humor.