Leckbee Family Blog

White Sands National Monument is near Alamogordo, NM and is an amazing sight!  The gypsum sand dunes cover 275 square miles of desert and are considered the world’s largest gypsum sand dunes.

The sands start off as large gypsum crystals that get broken down by the strong winds and thus form the sand.

The sand dunes are so amazing to see, the pictures just don’t due justice to the view of miles and miles of crystal white dunes.  These are our attempts at catching the beauty, but like I said it doesn’t do them justice.

Rachel on the dunes

I wanted to put this picture in so you could have an idea on the size, look how small Rachel looks and how far the sands just continue to go, they look endless.

Like I said the view is just amazing!!

Sarah playing in the sand

When I first heard about White Sands, I didn’t know what to expect.  I really thought that you just drove around looked at some sand and then went home.  After talking to friends I realized how fun it can be, so besides bringing sand toys to play with, the most fun comes from sledding down the dunes!!  Yes you use a snow sled and go down the huge dunes, it is so much fun!!

Mom and Rachel sledding down the dunes

Dad and Sarah sledding down the dunes

Rachel by herself

So Rachel was too scared to start from the top by herself but she would climb most of the way up and then sled down by herself.  She loved going down from the top with either Josh or me.

Sarah by herself

Josh pulled Sarah  just a little bit up the dune and then let her slide down by herself and boy did she feel like big stuff and she LOVED it!!

Rachel tried several ways to go down the hills without sleds.

Rolling

sliding

There are still other fun activities to do with the sand, like bury each other in the sand.

Burried Rachel

Burried Dad

Sarah had a lot of fun just attempting to climb back up the dune.  The dunes are fairly steep and hard to climb but she tried and had a lot of fun climbing and then sliding down.

Sarah climbing

Well I have a really cute video of Sarah but I can’t figure out how to attach a video, maybe Josh can figure it out when he has some time.

Anyways, our entire trip was just amazing and the girls did a great job in the car!!  I enjoyed spending quality time with my family and enjoying the natural beauty of  New Mexico.

We woke up Saturday morning and headed for the caverns and boy were they awesome!!  You start the (self guided) tour of the cavern by descending more than 750 feet on a paved 1.25 mile steep hike down.  Once you have entered into the cave you can explore what they call the “big room” which is big enough to hold 6.2 football fields.  We spent over 2.5 hours walking through the caves.  Luckily we had borrowed a hiking backpack for Sarah!!  The caves are truly amazing and we loved every second of being in them.  Rachel really liked it too but I think at times was a little nervous, especially when it got a little darker and when we were around big holes like the one titled “bottomless pit”.  Sarah was very good natured and liked her Sarah backpack!!  She did fall asleep in it and took a nice nap through part of the tour.

Sarah, Josh and Rachel at the top of the natural entrance

Mom and Rachel about to enter the cave

looking back at the entrance top

This is an amazing ‘curtain’ stalactite that hangs from the top of the cave and is close enough to the ground to touch (though you better not!!)

Josh and sleepy Sarah in front of two stalagmites

This is a column which is when the stalactites and the stalagmites meet in the middle, thus forming a column.  Isn’t nature beautiful!!

Since we changed our route in the last seconds we did not plan food very well.  Because all of our meals were later than planned we didn’t have dinner until 7 at night.  I know lots of people eat that late but we don’t, that is actually Sarah’s bedtime.  We ordered pizza in the hotel and ate pizza while relaxing on the beds.  Rachel and Sarah loved eating pizza in bed, and as you can see from the picture, Sarah was hungry.  Sarah, who most of you know barely eats anything, ate 2 pieces of pizza….WOW!!

The girls eating in bed

Messy face

Of course we had to stop in Roswell the alien capital of the U.S.  We were really excited to see the UFO museum in Roswell but were very disappointed in the end.  I don’t know what I was expecting but I guess I expected something a lot more entertaining, oh well,  it was still fun to get out of the car and stretch.

Rachel and the alien

This is an alien replica that was used in the TV Series ‘Roswell’.  Rachel later told us that it wasn’t an alien because it wasn’t green and didn’t have any antenna.  I guess the only aliens she has “seen” were on the Backyardigans…Boinga, Boinga, Boinga!

The UFO McDonalds was the highlight for Rachel, she loved this place.  For the rest of our trip when we asked her where she wanted to go to eat she would respond with the UFO Mcdonalds, we would then have to tell her it was a couple of hours away and no longer an option.  The entire playland had an outer space theme and was a lot of fun.

We decided to enjoy our scenic route and made a few stops to streach our legs.  One of the stops we made was in Capitan, NM the home of Smokey the bear.  I remember watching commercials with Smokey the bear on them but little did I know there was a real Smokey.  In 1950, a little 2 month old bear cub was rescued from a forest fire in the Capitan Moutains.  After he was treated for his burns they shipped “Smokey” to the national zoo in D.C. and he became the living icon for the campaign on fire safety.  So Smokey lived in D.C. for 26 years until his death and they flew him back to New Mexico to be burried at the base of the mountains he was found in.  See how educational family vacations can be!!  Anyways, the girls were just happy to get out of the car and run around.  Rachel did enjoy learning about Smokey but Sarah just ran around like a crazed child. 

So Josh and I wake up on Friday morning ready to go and we turn on the news to find the interstate that we are suppose to take down to Carlsbad is actually closed due to snow packed and icy roads which have caused lots of accidents.  Yes for those of you who live outside of New Mexico I did say that they CLOSED the interstate for a couple of inches of snow.  So Josh pulls up the state’s highway weather conditions map and there are warnings and  caution, and closed signs on all the roads we could take to get to Carlsbad.  We look at the weather and the entire south east part of the state (the part we are suppose to be driving thru) have winter weather advisories for the entire day.  So Josh says  we will just have to drive thru some snowy roads but if we just head south instead of east then we will be in bad weather less time.  So after we get on the road we are driving around and we are suppose to be in a bad spot full of winter snow storms with snowy roads.  Well I will just let you see the definition of snow packed roads in New Mexico.

Now those are some snow packed roads and yes you can see that the sun is shining and it just looks very pretty.  So when this is what the bad stuff looked like we decided to reroute our trip to a little more direct, scenic route.  We took I-25 south through Socorro and then took HWY 380 thru Corrizozo, Capitan, and Roswell and then from there headed south to Carlsbad.  It was a lot of fun to explore the small towns that make up so much of this state!

Rachel is on spring break this week so we are trying to do fun activities each day.  One of the things she wanted to do was go to the zoo with our friend Tania and her little girl Gina.  According to Rachel it was an “awesome day”.  Sarah decided that she did not want to stay in the stroller at all and after the first exhibit she was out and wouldn’t go back in!!  It was fun and my little monkeys climbed on anything that would sit still, they had a great time which is all that matters!!

my monkeys looking at the monkeys

Rachel, Tania, and Gina looking at the animals!!

The giraffes were one of Sarah’s favorite parts of the day.  She would just turn around and tell me look mommy giraffe,  look giraffe coming.

feeding the fish

Feeding the fish and ducks are always a highlight for the girls!!

For the last 2 1/2 months Rachel has been receiving an allowance for cleaning her room.  We have always struggled with her cleaning her room, it has been a battling point every night.  So we decided to try an allowance to see if that would help.  I am glad to say that it has!!  Rachel still has her days where she refuses to clean her room and those days she doesn’t get an allowance.  It has been a wonderful experience, especially when she realized that she needed to clean her room every night to save up enough money for what she wants.  It has been a good lesson for her to learn the value of money and also teaches her the importance of paying tithing on her allowance.

Rachel has been saving up to buy a Build-a-Bear.  She loves this place and wanted a new animal more than anything!  So after 2 1/2 months of saving (and a coupon that came in the mail) she was able to go and get her new animal.  It was really cute how excited she was to get her new animal and then afterwards she told me that this animal was the most special to her because she worked so hard to earn the money to buy it!!

Rachel with her new lamb, Chloe!

I wanted to make St. Patrick’s day fun for Rachel and I wasn’t completely sure how to do that so I just made some green food.  Sure enough, that was all it took to make the day fun and special for Rachel.  We started out the night before by baking cookies together, it was a lot of fun, especially when I was told that it probably wouldn’t work to make cookies green.

Just look at that color

The finished product

Rachel really had fun helping make these green cookies, and once you got over the look they still tasted very good.  When we were mixing the dough Rachel asked if we were really making playdough instead and she wanted to taste the dough to see, she was very surprised to see that it tasted like normal cookie dough and not playdough!!

green noodles

playing with the noodles

For dinner we had green spaghetti and the girls thought it was great.  Sarah had a lot more fun playing with her noodles and would tell us  ‘green noodles, green noodles’ she as so pleased with her green noodles.   All in all I think that the day was a special success for Rachel, oh what fun we can have when we are young.

Sarah at the hospital

Sarah at 6 months

1 year old

Sarah at 18 months

2 years old and loving life!

It has been an adventure having two little girls and we are so grateful for both of them.  Sarah has brought a lot of joy into our family and has always made you melt with that huge smile of hers.  I just can’t believe that she is already 2!!  Next thing I know I will have two kids in school.