White Sands National Park - NM

This was a lot of fun! You wax the sled and you actually go pretty fast. It is really amazing - the sands are 275 square miles! We only went in about a mile and all you could see from the top of the dunes is sand in all directions. Its softer and whiter than any beach sand I have seen. Its actually gypsum and its just like powder!

Carlsbad Caverns

This was such a neat place! Pictures don't show really what it was like at all. Its one of those places that you just have to be there to see what it was really like.

‎The cave is 750 feet below surface. Largest Cave camber in North America. The biggest room stretches 14 football fields in length! Was 98 degrees outside, but 56 degrees down there. We walked 2 routes, 1 mile each. One route, an elevator takes you down the 750 feet in 1 minute, the other route you walk down from the natural entrance.








That is an original ladder installed in 1924 and goes down 90 feet like that! I sure wouldn't have wanted to climb down it - even when it was new :)

Roswell, NM - The Alien City

Roswell, NM is well known for its "alien sighting" back in 1947. There are alien statues all over the city, and there is an Alien Museum, and alien souvinear stores all over the place in that city. So, while we were so close, we took a trip up there, just to say we'd "been there and saw it" We even ate lunch in a McDonalds shaped like a flying saucer!

Our "30 homeschool points" Fun Days #2

And here is the 2nd fun day... we went to a park, fed the geese, went to the desert zoo, and went for a peddleboat ride - all in Carlsbad, NM.

Our "30 homeschool points" Fun Days #1

Not sure if I wrote about this before, but we heard about a fun way for the kids to work for "points" for a fun day off school and decided to try it. It really helped the attitude towards school and gave them incentive to get their work done. Each day they could earn up to 3 points... one for completion of all worked planned for the day, one point for neatness in writing (otherwise I could hardly read some of the writing - they were just trying to get it done fast) and one point for good attitude towards school and not complaining that they didn't want to this or that. Every 30 points (about 2 weeks, or a few days more) we would take a day off school and do something fun, of their choice. Amazing how that little incentive worked!! Here are some pics of the first fun day... We went to the riverwalk in Carlsbad, went for a walk/bike ride, played at the huge playground, and played in the water.