Mom's Visit: Days 5 & 6

Wednesdays are always hectic and busy, I have lab meeting, a seminar, and the PiBBS course. This keeps me at school from 11am-5:30pm. I had Matt and my Mom come in after lab group to have lunch with me after lab group, and many from my lab joined us. We had a big group of us at the Frontier Restaurant, which is kind of a landmark in Albuquerque. It's also a good place to get a quick lunch since it has a ton of seating and they get the food out fast. My mom got to meet my adviser and a couple other people in my lab, which was nice.

Later in the afternoon I decided I should go to my class, because I had a group project due the next week. The class ended up being a complete waste of time, and I would have better spent my afternoon with family. I did, however, get a little bit done in my office so it wasn't a complete waste.

We had to call it an early night on Wednesday, because we were going to be getting up at dawn again to go to the special shapes rodeo at the Fiesta. The special shapes rodeo is when they do an ascension in the morning with just the shape balloons. Unfortunately the winds were really strong and they didn't launch the balloons, but we did get to walk around and see all of them inflated.

Mom and me at the gate. Last year I went through the red entrance.

Meghan and Jason. We got to hang out with these characters at 4:30am.

I think Matt and I look pretty awake for before dawn.

Sunrise over Spider Pig

1) This is why our relationship works 2) We really want a cat 3) This balloon is hilarious

Some shapes... Look! It's an arc and a fish, and a cactus with sunglasses...

... a flying pig, Sugar Bear, and a cute cat balloon with a sketchy cat face on the back...

All the way from New Zealand, that's supposed to be a Kiwi.

After the rodeo, we stopped for coffee and Meghan and I were dropped off for our paleoclimate class. Immediately after class I headed home for more family fun time. We spent the afternoon at the petroglyphs. I always like going to the monument to look at the petroglyphs, it's a nice hike in some of the areas, and it's also a great place to bring visitors. My mom really seemed to enjoy it, despite the wind that day.

No petroglyphs were sat upon during the taking of this picture.

We hiked to the top of this hill, there were petroglyhs scattered around on boulders everywhere.