Spirit week

Every year, our preschool celebrates "Spirit Week" by encouraging the kids to dress up every day. Some days, they are asked to wear a certain colour, or wear pyjamas to school (always a hit!). Other days, the dressing up is more elaborate.

One day, we dressed as our favourite cartoon characters:

Popeye:

Butterfly: 

CRAZY HAIR DAY!!!

Having crazy hair is serious business....

"The Day After Tomorrow"

Snow daze

It finally snowed in Albuquerque!

It snowed in our front yard!

 And in our backyard!

Some of us were more content to stay inside (mainly because she doesn't like hats and jackets).

Our new xylophone survived the snow.

Semilla had a great time bouncing around in the snow.

So did another little girl...

 Meanwhile, inside, towers were being constructed...

Howard is very proud of this one. 

Happy birthday, Aussie Grandma!

Christmas 2014

 Happy Holiday from the BrandenBurdetts

We completely value the Christmas 'card' (i.e.delivered through the postal system). Sent to us from many wonderful family and friends, we religiously compile them on the mantel this time of year. It is also really fun to open a Christmas card! That is why this is a little less anticlimactic, however, here is our "Christmas/Celebration of a New Year" card to you and your families:

It has been a wonderful year for us, and while we don' t post on the blog regularly enough, a lot of wonderful people, places, and experiences have filled our 2014 (explore our blog to see what we have been doing).

Ayesha, Paloma, Imogen, myself, and even Semilla, wish you, and the people you love, a very bright, a very healthy and a very lively New Year - 2015!  

What can we say, we love our children.....and we love you! Merry Christmas.

A look back at 2014

We thought it would be fun to take a look back through 2014 and see what has been keeping the Brandenburdetts busy.

Dragoons

This year for Thanksgiving, we made grand plans to go to Big Bend, TX. I don't know where the idea came from, and why we decided that this year was the year to do it, but we did. We spent weeks planning the trip - menus, camping gear, best locations for camping, dog-friendly hotels on the way... The night before we left, I packed the food and Howard packed up the truck. By 10pm, we were loaded and ready to go!

We thought we should check and see if we needed to take wag bags for primitive camping, so Howard jumped online and looked up information about the National Park. There was no mention of wag bags, but there was something about keeping dogs on leash... and off trails... and out of rivers... and not letting them anywhere, really.

This was a glitch.

We couldn't leave Semilla behind, and we couldn't take her with us.

Without missing a beat, we changed our minds and decided instead to go to Cochise Stronghold, AZ. We bought an Arizona road atlas at a gas station along the way, and we were organised.

Semilla was very glad to be with us. 

We stopped along the way for some snacks, and to consider our route...

Here's a little friend we met. Such a big, shiny abdomen! We have been learning all about black widows (same family as red-back spiders) and how spiders are cool, but not good to touch. 

We camped on the west side of the Dragoons. This is the view, a short hike from our camp. 

Looking west over the Arizonan plains.... Is that Tucson in the distance?

The vegetation here was a little bit different to what we are used to seeing. I'm not sure if this is still Chihuahuan Desert this far west?

Ocotillo!

We all had a great time, running around in the desert air (and bike-riding and hiking and climbing rocks). 

The sunset was spectacular!

On the road - a break from our unexpectedly long bike ride. Imogen has a seat behind Ayesha and Paloma has a bike-trailer behind Howard. We can really get going - much faster than ever before!
And Semilla is wonderfully tired by the end of the day - she had to drag herself out of the tent at marshmallow-cooking time....

Lots of interesting things to see... 

Century plant! They were everywhere, and made great sticks for Semilla to chase and Paloma to ... create elaborate imaginations and games about witches (with Imogen in tow). 

What's over there?

The highly toxic native coral bean!

More gorgeous views.... 

Our little home away from home for four lovely nights...

There were some lovely little creeks too - we discovered this one on our circuitous way out (I'm sure we could have found a short-cut, if only we had a map...)

Oh, and by the way: Paloma is awesome.