Three's a charm, right?

I guess I'm a feast or famine kind of blogger.  I'm sitting here with the A/C off, the window open, and my feet are freezing.  The kids are outside playing with their coats on!  It is the middle of August and only 56 degrees at 10 am.  Crazy!  

There's something else I like about Santa Fe--the nights are never sweltering.  We are a desert at 7000 ft elevation.  It gets hot, but rarely above 100, and it's a dry heat.  The downside?  We are close to the sun and hence can burn easily.  The nights are cool.  The downside?  That's good in the summer months, but in the winter it is frigid in the mornings when we send the kids off to school!  

We learned last winter about supercooling with the water bottles we keep in the van, so I guess there was some sort of benefit to so many mornings below freezing!  (There are some pretty cool videos on youtube on supercooling.  Just google it to find them.)  It's pretty weird the first time you find a bottle of liquid water in your car when it's so cold outside.  You'd think it would be solid ice.  So I picked it up and turned it over, just to be sure it was liquid.  Then the ice crystals started forming and in seconds the whole bottle was ice.  It only works, as far as I remember, with pure water like Dasani in an unopened bottle, and when the water has been cooled to below 27 degrees. Since the water is pure it doesn't have imperfections to start the crystallization. When you agitate the cooled water it gives it the push to crystallize.  Very very cool process!

You know you're in Santa Fe when...

...McDonalds has a green chile cheeseburger on the dollar menu.

...the Japanese restaurant has Santa Fe style sushi and green chili tempura.

...you've got rocks for a front yard and dirt for your back yard.

...you are excited to see grass.

...the median household income is 45,000 and the median house value is 282,000 (I highly doubt the median income can afford the median house)

...you order food at a restaurant and they ask you red or green.

...you order food at a restaurant and ask for Christmas.

...there are jewelry vendors on every corner.

...on Saturdays you'll find old cardboard boxes on street corners with Yard Sale written on them.

...even Target looks like an old pueblo style building.

...there is a procession carrying the virgin (just like we saw all over Spain).

...downtown is filled with restaurants, art galleries, and jewelry vendors.

...there are as many restaurants in a town of 70,000 as there are in cities 4 times the size

...on Christmas Eve you can go downtown and walk around eating cookies and drinking hot cocoa for free all evening.

...the free hot chocolate is spiked with red chile.

...you never know when there might be a detour for another film being made.

...you drive down the street with your windows down in the fall so you can smell the chile being roasted in every big parking lot.

...there are walking trails allllll over the city.

...people throw in random spanish words in their everyday speech (and half the time you don't understand even if you are fluent in spanish.)

...it's a novelty to see a house built with a peaked roof and siding.

...you're embarrassed to be seen buying chemical weed killer or not going organic.

...at least once a week you find yourself saying, "Well, this is Santa Fe!"

...you have to specify Las Vegas NEVADA.

Phew!  I think that's enough for now.  I'd better add that we have only lived here a year, for whatever difference that makes. If anyone wants to add to my list, feel free to do so in the comments.  I realize some of these aren't exclusive to Santa Fe, but we sure like to think so!  

Something funny happened on the way to the restaurant...

So as not to detract from the nice evening we had on Thursday, I chose to leave out a couple details.

#1--If you've eaten with Kyle enough, you'll know this about him: he hates to eat with 3 prong forks.  A fork isn't a fork unless it has 4 prongs (personally, I'd rather see a 3 prong than a 5 prong myself...but that's another story).  So at the Japanese restaurant, the table was set with just chopsticks.  Kyle gave it a go, but he just isn't comfortable with using them.  He doesn't have it figured out.  So we asked for forks.  And they brought the 3 prong forks.  Hmph.  He couldn't figure out which he would rather use.

#2--When we arrived at the restaurant, it was run by native Japanese people.  Two different men that helped us saw our "Got Good Marriage" t-shirts and asked us if we were just married.  We told them it was our 10th anniversary and they asked if we had kept the shirt and been wearing it for 10 years.  I think the language barrier made them think the shirts really meant to say "Just Married".  Whatever.  They did sit us in a private section of the restaurant, which was nice!  

#3--When I eat Japanese food, I love to get tempura vegetables.  Yumm!  How funny when we realized this was definitely Santa Fe...one of the veggies was a strip of Hatch green chile.  Yea, I gave that one to Kyle.

Happy 10th Anniversary to us!

Yesterday was our 10th anniversary.  Kyle told me he was in charge of the day (I got to plan our overnight getaway in Las Vegas next week when we go visit my sister Janet).  After work we met up at Bryce & Bettie's for them to watch our kids.  Kyle had changes of clothes for both of us...we both wore denim shorts and our maroon "Got Good Marriage" tshirts that we got at a marriage seminar/dinner/dance earlier this year.  Apparently B&B have been hiding from us that they have a racquetball court at their apartment complex...Kyle and I both have racquets but we've never played since we married.  We played 5 games (and I won 3 of them thank.you.very.much!) and then we went out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant.  It was such a fun night.  Racquetball is one of the few sports I feel competent at and it was SO FUN!!

A couple weeks ago Kyle asked how often I check our bank account online.  Then he recommended I don't check for awhile.  OooooKaaaaay.  Last night Kyle reenacted the night he proposed to me.  He read a poem he wrote and sang the same song he same to me 10+ years ago and got down on one knee and presented me with my wedding ring with a read diamond.  Here's the backstory: when we got engaged, we got a cubic zirconium instead of a diamond because we were poor and didn't want to go into debt for the ring.  We also decided that we would probably be able to afford a real diamond by our 10th anniversary. A few months ago the CZ came out and I put my ring in my jewelry box for safe keeping until we got a replacement stone.  I've been wearing my Grandma's wedding ring, so the priority for fixing the ring was fairly low (aka...kinda forgotten).  Low and behold...Kyle seized the opportunity to get the ring fixed and fulfill a promise of 10 years ago.

Thank you my love!  I had a wonderful anniversary!

Ben blowing bubbles

It took about 10 seconds of instruction and 20 minutes of practice...

And now, Ben is a bubble blowing expert!

The tooth fairy got a raise, I guess

When I was a kid, I got a quarter.  My kids also have been getting a quarter for their teeth.  Well, maybe it was the long time it took for this tooth to come out.  Maybe it was how cute Courtney looks with this tooth missing.  Maybe the tooth fairy got a raise.  But last night, the tooth fairy brought her two quarters.  (Congrats on your raise, LCDR tooth fairy!)

 

Check out Kyle's woodworking blog!

The link is on the side and he has posted some of his scrollsaw projects.  Go check them out!