Our Albuquerque Weekend!

We had a very nice weekend.  On Friday after school, we drove over to Albuquerque and went to a temple session.  Then we spent the night at a hotel.

On Saturday morning, we went and got crickets for Hairy, drove by the old Spruce Street Chapel where I went to church as a kid, and then to a quilt shop.  We had coupons for free fat quarters that we got at the hotel, and I dropped off five child-sized quilts for Project Linus.

This is the batch we dropped off yesterday.  I have five more about ready to turn in next time we're in town.

After our trip to the quilt shop, we went to the cemetery to visit my parents' graves, and to see how it looked with Daddy's death date carved in.

Thhey did a good job carving in the dates.  However, they didn't shine up the whole stone--only the part where the added the date.  I guess I'm going to go online and see if there's some way we can clean off the calcium deposits from the sprinkler.

After the cemetery, it was off the the American Quilters' Society Quilt Show.  This year, it was held at the Convention Center in Albuquerque.  John , at the quilt store, gave me a set of tickets he wasn't going to use.  He said he wanted me to have them because of the work I do for Quilts of Valor.  The dad went with me, and we saw lots of AMAZING quilts.  They were gorgeous.  Not one of them, however, was a quilt that someone would feel comfortable cuddling up in.  They were too fancy for that!

This was a LONG quilt that had a bunch of smaller quilts attached that depicted sites you would fine along Route ^^.  You can't tell from the picture unless you look REALLY closely, but the dad is standing next to the Holbrook, AZ depictions.  One of them is the Wigam hotel that is on the main drag there in Holbrook!

There sure were some gorgeous quilts!

This one was my personal favorite.  The picture is gorgeous, but that doesn't to it justice.  Wow!

After the Quilt Show, we went to eat at "The Cube."  We heard about it on Guy Fierre's "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives."  It was pretty good.  I wouldn't go so far as to say, "Terrific," though.

The dad ordered a pulled pork sandwich, and I ordered the Guadalajara Dog.  That's what they made for Guy on the show.  Notice we chose a table right under the "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" sign?

The front of the restaurant.

Since we were kind of in the area, I had one last place I wanted to stop.  When I was a kid, I spent A LOT of time at Ernie Pyle Library.  It was walking and biking distance from my home, and in the summers, I bet I went there two or three times a week.  I loved that place.  So we decided to not only drive by, but we went in and took a few pictures!

I loved this place.  I was so excited as we walked up the sidewalk that I could hardly contain myself!

Ernie Pyle was a local hero.  He was a famous war correspondent during WWII.  He was killed in action, and his home was turned into a neighborhood library.  They library is tiny, tiny, tiny, but as a kid, it always seemed to be busy.  Yesterday there were several people there, as well.  This is a display of some of Ernie Pyle's personal belongings.

This is the Children's Room.  This was my spot!  It was a whole lot smaller than I remembered it.

But in a lot of ways, it was still the same.

This little stop on our journey brought back lots of great memories!

After we got home, we made our contributions to the Branch Linger Longer.  The dad made chips and salsa.  I made fried rice and a dessert.

The dad is going to be out of town all week, so we figured if we were going to keep up with our New Year's Resolution, we better make the dessert from one of the "101 Things..." cookbooks.  This one is from the "101 More Things To Do With a Cake Mix."  We made Butterschotch Pecan Cookies.  I guess it was more of a "Nailed It"  than a "Failed It."  They weren't anything to write home to mom about, though.   They all got eaten at the Linger Longer.   (As I look at the pictures we took yesterday, I'm wondering why in the world the dad didn't let me know I needed to run a comb through my hair.  Yikes!)