Lets get this New Mexico trip started........

WARNING:  I took lots and lots and lots of pictures in New Mexico.  I'll try not to bore you!

The New Mexico trip began bright and EARLY on Saturday, August 8th.  Once again we had one of those stupid flights that left before the sun came up and that meant getting up at 3:30am to get to the airport in time.

Lucky for us.....our boarding passes said TSA PRECHECK (that means you don't have to go through the regular screening and don't have to take shoes off or all that other crap and you get to go in a special shorter line). 

We boarded our plane and crossed our fingers.  We were once again flying American.....and we haven't had good luck getting anywhere on time with them without a bunch of delays.  And secondly, we were flying to Albuquerque.....where we also seem to have a problem getting there without delays (no matter what airline it is).

The tickets for this trip were purchased with accumulated airline miles.....so we paid a grand total of $12 for our two round trip tickets.  That my friends.....is the way to fly!

Plane took off on time and we had a short layover in Dallas.  Grabbed a bagel in the Dallas airport to hold us over until lunch time in Santa Fe.

The husband kept himself amused on the flight from Dallas to Albuquerque doing a book of puzzles that he bought in Dallas airport.....I amused myself with mindless TV with the free stuff on the screen in front of me.

We got to the Albuquerque airport and picked up our rental car.  We knew we needed an SUV because this trip was going to be LOTS of driving.  We picked out a KIA Sorrento (an awesome choice) and headed north to Santa Fe.

On the highway to Santa Fe.....we saw about 50 of these little Spyders on a road trip....I'll have to send my friend Greg these pictures since he's an avid rider of these.

Once we arrived in Santa Fe.....we loaded up the kids suitcases and it was off to lunch before we hit the highway.  Aaron had pre-selected a restaurant in the Santa Fe Plaza. 

Del Charro it was.....and we enjoyed a nice Mexican lunch on the patio in this gorgeous New Mexico weather.  We're glad we were here.....the forecast for Houston that day was 110 degrees.....yuck!

After eating our lunch.....it was time to hit the highway.  Our final destination was going to be Chama, New Mexico......but we were taking the long and scenic journey to get there.  This was our awesome view on the way to the Gorge.

We made it to the Gorge Bridge (even though Aaron was driving) and learned that this bridge is a place where the most people jump off to commit suicide (that's sad).  They have this little crisis hotline box on both sides of the bridge just in case you want to talk to someone before you make that bad decision.

The view was magnificient!

 

It was really breezy way up there.....but we had to have a picture!

And we had to have a picture of these two kids!

And of course we had to ask a passerby if he could take a picture of the 4 of us!

The next stop on this journey was Red River, New Mexico.  Reminded me a lot of Mount Lemmon in Tucson.  A nice little mountain town that Aaron and Shay had spent some time there last year on her birthday.

We spent some time in the gift shops, art shops, and just walking along the streets enjoying the beautiful scenery and enjoying that cool mountain air.

And of course, I always need to take a picture with my favorite guy!

 

What a beautiful place this was and the weather was fantastic!

 

 

Our final destination for the day was going to be Chama, New Mexico....where we would be taking the train the next day.  So we headed back on the road and continued on the journey. 

 

Along the way, we were all on the lookout for animals.  We got lucky and found a small group of Elk.  We pulled into Chama and was introduced to the world of Chama Days.  We had a hard time getting a room in this tiny town because of their once a year festival.  Lucky for us.....I had booked it early and so we pulled into our 5 star (well not quite) motel.....the Branding Iron Motel.

 

 

It was a perfect small town old-time motel that I remember from my childhood.

 

It was quiet, clean, and perfect for our overnight stay in Chama.  No.....we did not share a room with Aaron and Shay.....they were two doors down from us.

The owner of the motel told us all about what was going on in Chama that night for Chama Days....and lucky for us the Branding Iron seemed to be right where all the action was.

But......our first stop was dinner.  We drove about 3 minutes down the road and found this restaurant.

 

Aaron and Paul feasted on chicken fried steak and Shay and I feasted on something, but I can't even remember what it was.  The only thing I do remember is that Paul found a piece of glass in his salad.....so they ended up giving him his dinner for free.

 

After leaving the restaurant....we parked back at the motel and checked out some of the activities going on.  There was live music in the tent next to the motel and an all night softball game.  We went and hung out at the softball game for awhile and then decided we were just too tired and needed to get some sleep.

 

Tomorrow is the train ride!

 

Here's the bloopers.....old people trying to learn new technology!

We take LOTS of pictures when we go on a trip.  This way we can weed out the bad shots and only enjoy the good shots.  However, sometimes these bad shots are really funny.  Especially when us old people start messing with technology.

So today......enjoy the bad shots:

 

Paul practicing the art of taking a selfie while purchasing a selfie stick

Let's see......how do I work this thing again?

 



"Here, let me help you do it" (because of course I know everything)

 

Okay....get ready and let's try it again, but you should be smiling this time

Nice shot.....but shouldn't we learn how to take it without the selfie stick in the picture?

We really need to learn how to make the proper adjustment to get rid of that selfie stick in the picture

Darn it......we still don't have it right!

YES.....WE FINALLY GOT IT.  What a great "on the boat selfie" picture we got!

 

Not sure what he's doing on this one.

 

I took a random one of myself later in the day that actually came out kind of cool.

 

 

I am laughing all over again just looking at these pictures and remembering us two dingbats trying to get that all figured out.  Oh well.....who cares -- we had a blast!

 

Sneak Peek of New Mexico

WARNING:  I took thousands of pictures in New Mexico.

We saw some of the most beautiful country I have ever seen.  I had to capture it all in my camera.

I thought I was going to be bringing you the blooper shots from NYC.....but I still need to locate some photos......so instead you'll get to see some of the beauty we saw on our New Mexico vacation.

The photos are magnificent and the trip was amazing!  Can't wait to share it with you.

The last night in NYC (sad face)

The last night.  What should we do?  Wanted to see a show, but we had to get up really early and we still had to get our packing done.

We rode the subway back to the hotel after our trip to Ellis Island and decided to get the packing all done so that we didn't have to worry about that in the morning.  We freshened up and decided to just be spontaneous and do whatever moved us at the moment.

Our first stop was to a little neighborhood bar by the hotel, where we enjoyed our first beverages to get us going for the night.  The Irish Parlour Pub.  A cute little place where we enjoyed a couple of draft beers before heading for TIMES SQUARE!

What a nice and quiet time to sit there with my honey and plan our evening and talk about the amazing time we had visiting New York.

We jumped on the subway over to Times Square and looked at some last minute show tickets.  But in the end we decided we would just have a leisurely evening, eat some dinner, and not have to be in a hurry to be anywhere.

Our next stop was another bar.  Needed a little more beer to get this party started.  We found Emmett O'Lunney's Irish Pub and popped in for another couple of beers.

Nice quiet bar.  We found ourselves sitting at the bar.....which is something we never do.  It was nice to chat with each other, drink our beers, chat with the bartenders and peruse the menu.  Their menu looked really delicious.....but we weren't quite ready to eat yet.  So instead....we enjoyed a couple of these:

A Stella Artois (my choice) and a Shiner for the husband.  We drank these down and then went outside to see what was happening in the land of weirdness (Times Square).

I took a couple of these because he looked so darn cute.  We walked up and down the square a few time checking out all the strange people that were out there.  It is always an interesting sight.

There is lots of these girls out there that felt like they could wear no clothes and then paint themselves.  I saw them hustling lots of money out of men for a picture.....but got disgusted when I saw them posting with 12 and 13 year old boys (and the parents paid for it).  I know my husband was interested, but I just kept hustling him along.

It was starting to get late and so we headed back one more time to Emmett O'Lunney's for another round of beers.  As we sat there and talked, we decided we didn't want to eat a big meal.  There was an awesome little pizza place 2 blocks from our hotel where we had the most amazing Sicilian crust pizza the last time we visited.  It was late, we were getting tired, we had to get up early and this place was open 24 hours.

Took the subway back to our area and ordered a Sicilian pizza to go.  While it was cooking we hit up the Duane Reade drug store (just like Walgreens and someplace we visited every single night) and got a couple of beers.

Took the pizza back to the hotel and drank our beers.  This pizza was DELICIOUS!

We had transportation to La Guardia to pick us up at 5:30 in the morning.......so we headed to bed to try and get a good 4 hours of sleep.

The driver was right on time to pick us up and we headed to La Guardia.  We had never been to this airport before.....so we got to have another new experience and we got to drive over the Verazanno Straight bridge.

I just have to say......it looks like an aiport out of the 60's and was probably the most shabbiest airport I've ever been in.  And I speak as an expert who has been in LOTS of different airports.  (for the record the Albquerque Airport is the most beautiful airport I've ever been in.  I LOVE that airport)

Lucky for us we had first class seats going home and Paul didn't even stay awake for the breakfast.  I myself, feasted on quiche, fresh fruit, croissants, fried potatoes, sausage, and juice.  They really know how to feed you. 

We arrived in Houston about 10:30 am and unfortunately for us ended up having to go straight from the airport to the store to make pizzas.  Our assistant manager had been in a motorcycle accident on his way to work and never made it. 

Oh well......that's how life in the pizza business goes.  But oh what a wonderful trip we had!

P.S.  Don't think that there's not more of the NYC trip to see.  I still have a couple more things to share with you.

Not much of a life lately

It's almost 11pm.  I have a pot of beans ready to eat along with some jalapeno cornbread.

The husband is still not home.  I got home around 9:30pm......hoping he'd be right behind me.

These hours are killing us. 

We've got 2 new computers sitting here that we need to set up.......we'll be lucky if that happens in the next couple of weeks.

It's long days and long nights right now.  Business is TREMENDOUS right now.  Hopefully we'll be able to get a full staff and get them trained to do an awesome job.  Until then.......we'll be working long hours.

I spent a couple of hours in the kitchen today making my husband fruit bowls and veggie bags -- so that he'll have something nutritious to eat while he's working these long hours.

This makes it easy for him to grab something quick to take to work with him......after all, you can't eat pizza every day!

We did have one small break this week.  Paul was scheduled a day off on Wednesday (ha ha ha ha ha).  We went out and got ourselves those new computers and then had lunch on the patio and enjoying some time to ourselves.

Of course, as soon as we got home........he went to work at the Zone and I went to work trying to keep everything else in our life done.

Oh how I wish we had those awesome days this summer when we were getting to pretend that we were world travelers.

Lost blogs that never made it

I was just checking to see how many of these posts I have made.  776!

That got me thinking that I should go back and read some of these from the past and see what was happening to us back then.  This all got started by reuniting with a good friend from high school on Facebook.  She introduced me to her blog and I enjoyed reading it so much.  She passed away almost 2 years ago and I really miss her blog and reading about all the little details of her life.

Instead of going back and reading old blogs, I saw that the DRAFT folder had a bunch of incomplete blogs written in there.  Waiting for me to come back some day and finish that thought.  Sometimes I would start a new blog and just put down the headline to remind me of what topic I wanted to write about.   But it never happened.  Now my DRAFT folder is a graveyard of incomplete blogs partially written.

So today.....we are going to honor those long forgotten snippets.  Here are the very  first 3 partially written blogs.

THE JOYS OF BEING THE BOSS - March 2, 2010

While being the owner of your own small business is stressful, challenging, and busy....it does have it's perks too!

For instance, every two weeks or so we'll wake up and just feel like we need some time away. So we just take off a morning and go do something that we enjoy and takes our mind off making pizza for awhile. It's nice to make those spontaneous decisions and not have worry about reporting to someone.


JOB WELL DONE - March 3, 2010

The measure of how good your children are is when they are out of the house and in the general public and not necessarily how good they are at home!


GOOGLING - July 28, 2010

Have you ever googled yourself? Amazing things that you can find. I used to sit up late at night and google Pizza Zone and it was fun to see what I discovered. Reviews by people that we never knew existed.....and they were all good!  

I found a blog by someone who wrote us a stellar review.....he had some very nice things to say about Pizza Zone. You can read that here:
http://www.chasingdelicious.com/reviews/pizza-zone

We've also found articles in pizza magazines where we have been interviewed and quoted:

Also found where we were interviewed for an article for a newsletter for the company that we use to do our e-mail marketing:

Well now that I've probably bored you with my uncompleted work.........here's some pictures from New York City for your viewing pleasure.  I took a gazillion pictures!