Good Stuff for Kids (in Albuquerque) - Red Light Green Light!

When we moved to Albuquerque a few years ago, one thing I liked right away about living here is that we had plenty of things to do to keep busy with the kids. Red Light Green Light for Kids opened a couple of years later and I was happy to add it to my list of places that my kids love. This week I took a couple of 7 year old girls with me to have some fun and help me with some pictures, so I can show you what it's like. And here is a link to their website so you can get the official story. They are located just north of the Cottonwood Mall.



It's a kids' play and party club, full of fun opportunities for them to use their imagination. Designed for kids aged toddler through 12 years old; I think their best age group is probably preschool and early grade school age kids. My two 7-year-olds here had a blast and were not ready to go when it was time, and when my kids were preschool-aged I had to drag them out when it was time to go. They also have a science area geared towards an older audience, getting up to those 12 year olds, along with art that is great for any age.

I am a huge fan of imaginative, cooperative play, and there are lots of opportunities for that. For instance, here the girls are grocery shopping.


My kids have always totally loved those little shopping carts! Their grocery shopping area is really fun. Each girl took a turn being the cashier.


I loved that the girls were using the register calculator to add up the vegetables and figure out how much change they needed to give back.


The girls didn't delve into the building materials, but there are some fun things to build with here.


The little farm area is so cute - horses to ride and some fun animal hats (which I should have had the girls wear but forgot).


Driving the farm truck.


Hopping around in the ball pit. When my son was little I couldn't get him out of the ball pit.


More fun pretending with the food in the diner play area. I love that there is dress-up there, and I love their nice toy food! The girls quickly made the maximum number of sandwiches and pizza and ice cream cones.






We didn't have a lot of time for the art area, but the girls could have kept busy there much longer if we had had more time.


And here they are playing with the animals in the pretend vet area. The girls were so excited about the animals in the cages. They got each set out and gave them a full checkup (mostly consisting of brushing their fur, I bet real vets wish that was how it went).




There is a corner devoted to exercise, what a great idea! The punching bag expressions cracked me up.


It was closing time and the girls didn't want to quit spinning... just a little longer!


Red Light Green Light also has a boutique toy store. They carry some really great toys, not the run of the mill plastic stuff, but nice wooden toys, those darling butterfly dress-up wings, and some good educational toys that can be hard to find.


One more thing that I appreciate is that the play area is clean! This is kind of a big deal for me. They also offer birthday parties - my daughter had a party here when she turned 5 years old, and it was a huge hit. You can see their website here for more information.

Good Stuff for Kids - Creative DIY Photo Valentines

What do you do for Valentine's day for your kids? I have to admit, I can just never drum up any excitement over buying my kids cards at the grocery store. They want to make cards themselves! And of course they want to give out candy (they are not the Valentine's pencil-giving types). Every year I try to combine creativity and candy. We've done many different Valentines crafts over the years - lots of them found in Family Fun magazine, which I highly recommend for both creative Valentines and Halloween costumes. :) Their online presence is not nearly as good as their magazine, but they do still have some fun ideas to look through.

These DIY photo valentines cards have been some of my kids' favorites in the past few years. I used professional photos, but anyone could do this!

All you have to do is take a picture of your child standing in front of some sort of neutral background, with their arms held out.

  
My kids like to pretend to hold a giant lollipop, or if they know they want to tape chocolate candy to their cards, they plan their hands for that. One year my little girl knew months in advance that she wanted to hand out Costco peanut butter cups with her Valentines. Specifically. Yum! (There were no leftovers so I don't have a picture of that!)


I used some digital scrapbooking one year. But you wouldn't have to - these are also great when very basic.
 

Looking back I don't remember how we attached the candy on this one, but both my girls dearly loved this silly fluffy phone, so they were thrilled to use it.



I had forgotten about this one, and now I think it's my favorite! It was perfect for my daughter the year we used it. She got to pick her own messages - I'm sure she was selective about who got what. I remember doing that as a kid too, just in case.



My son is no longer very interested in Valentines - I don't really think he's too old, but he's shy and he goes to a school where it is not a big deal. So I'm thinking this is probably his last valentine :(. Unless I can come up with something extra creative and exciting!

I have a lot of ideas collected on Pinterest - maybe there is an idea there that is perfect for you! Maybe there is even one that my son would do this year. :)

If you like the photography you see, you may be interested in signing up for my newsletter! I send it out something like quarterly, and I use it to announce things like Valentine's day mini-sessions.

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Good stuff for kids - Bosque del Apache

I have a fun post for you today. If you live in the Albuquerque area, one place that you really should visit is the Bosque del Apache wildlife refuge. And you should really visit it between November and February, because that is when thousands of migrating birds winter there each year. They have some great photography and lots of interesting information on their website, so if you are interested for sure check it out.

It is a few miles south of Socorro, NM, so it's about a 90 minute drive from the middle of Albuquerque where we live. We have been there before, but it's been quite a few years, so I was really excited to go again (with my long lens! Photography heaven). Now, when you talk to someone who knows about this refuge, they will tell you that you need to go at sunrise. Since it is a 90 minute drive, we have young(ish) kids, and it's really cold here at sunrise in the winter, that is something that my family has never even really tried to do. This year I realized that it would also be nearly as incredible at sunset, and this is my first bit of advice for families with young kids. You do not need to go at sunrise for an amazing time - sunset is at a pleasant 5:00pm right now, and it was perfect.

We arrived at least a couple of hours before sunset. We went first to the visitor's center, which is really nice and has lots of fun things for kids to do and learn about. One of the better visitor's centers for children that I've seen from the NPS. You can rent binoculars if you forgot to bring yours (AGAIN). And your kids can get a pamphlet to fill out to become a JUNIOR RANGER. Yes, a real Junior Ranger, complete with a badge.

 
I would have taken a picture of my daughter with her badge, but she lost it too quickly for that (don't remind her, she will be sad if you do). But it was extremely rewarding for her to do some observations, record her answers, and get the special badge when she was done. I think the NPS does a good job with this program (pat on back). My son was too obstinate to do it and my older daughter didn't realize that she wasn't TOO old - nevertheless, a success. My kids are interested in conservation and biology any time (badge or no badge).

The park itself is kind of a driving tour place. There are place to stop off and go on hikes, shorter and longer. We hiked on a boardwalk that was very pretty, with nearly no birds at all except this little one.

 

The main touring loop is breathtakingly beautiful. It's really a driving kind of place, but we had a little time while we were waiting for my daughter to go back to the visitor's center and get her badge, so some of us took a short hike. We just knew we'd seen a blue heron a little ways back. So we walked back and sure enough, saw this gorgeous big blue heron - which immediately flew away before I could take a picture. Oh well. (Here is where the heron isn't.)


As the sun began to get low, the birds took to the air.


My kids got to climb up on top of the car when we stopped, so much fun.


There are something like 17,000 sandhill cranes at the refuge in the winter. They have the most interesting call (actually they have more than one call, but there is one especially distinctive one). You might hear it in the bosque around Albuquerque as well. You can hear a nice recording of it here.


And the snow geese are absolutely beautiful. There are more than one kind of white goose wintering at the refuge, but these are mainly snow geese. They migrate from as far as Siberia and northern Alaska and Yukon Territories. All the way to our little neck of the woods (my kids were very impressed at this distance).




As the sun set, more and more birds flew. It was breathtaking.







And on our way home we stopped at the Flight Deck boardwalk, for one last bit of heaven. (Kid perspective - "hey Mom, these binoculars work for free!") A really great day trip, and you don't need to leave at 5:00am for a very impressive show.


This is kind of an afterthought, because I really just wanted to talk about the Bosque del Apache. But since we didn't need to be there early, we decided to take a side trip to the VLA (Very Large Array). We've been wanting to visit there forever and never quite managed to do it. It's about an hour from Socorro, so we decided to go there first.

There is also a nice visitor's center, a movie that we liked, and you can go on a short but informative walking tour. We learned a lot about radio telescopes (well, my husband probably already knew that stuff, but the kids and I didn't). You can go right up to one of the dishes - it's ginormous.


From a photography and kid perspective, I think the coolness of the VLA depends a bit on the orientation they have the dishes in. There are 4 arrangements, ranging from very close together to a maximum distance of 22 miles across the Y orientation. We got to see configuration B, which is kind of spread out but not as far as it goes. I believe they change the configuration every 6 months. So, to me, it would have been a little cooler if the dishes had been closer together. But we still enjoyed it a lot.


The visitor's center there is open almost every day, so you can visit any weekend. But they also offer guided tours on the first Saturday of the month. More information on their website.


I love finding good things to do outside in nature with my kids - in winter! And, if you decide to visit also, my last hint is: find your binoculars ahead of time! :)

Great stuff for kids - Albuquerque butterfly pavillion

If you have lived in Albuquerque - with kids - for very long, you are probably very familiar with the Biopark, which includes the zoo, Tingley Beach, the Aquarium, and the Botanic Gardens. Our family has spent countless hours at all of those places.

Yesterday we had a wonderful surprise when we went to the butterfly pavilion at the Botanic Gardens. They have added 16 new species of butterflies this season, and they are amazing! They have all the old sorts of butterflies, which we have always loved, and now they have a bunch more too.  As soon as we walked through the door, we were nearly mobbed by butterflies - my kids kept saying "Mom, they are so friendly!  They have never been friendly like this before!" :)  They landed in our hair, on our shoulders, and on my camera lens.  * Note - you should never touch butterflies, but if they decide to land on YOU, that is okay, just don't touch them with your fingers. *





We especially love it when we can see their proboscis.




These big butterflies with the owl markings are new - I'm not going to embarrass myself trying to remember which kind this one was, because there were something like 4 different kinds that look like this on the outside. :)  But they are big and really interesting.


This big butterfly is a blue morpho, from Costa Rica (years ago when my husband and I went there, we remember seeing the blue morpho in the jungle).  Its outside markings are brown and owl-like, so my son was slowly approaching it in hopes that it would spread its wings to fly away, and I could see the gorgeous blue inside.


But just then my daughter said "Mom.  MOM.  Take a picture of THIS!"  A butterfly had landed on her hand and was "licking" it.  (While I took this picture, the blue morpho flew away, and just never settled for another try, though we did chase it around for 5 more minutes.)


They have also added a dragonfly pond, just next to the butterfly pavilion, and it was beautiful!  There were hundreds of dragonflies swooping over the plants and water.






So if you haven't been to the Botanic Gardens lately, it's worth taking a trip before the butterfly pavilion closes after Labor Day.  There is more information on the city's website here:
http://www.cabq.gov/biopark/garden/exhibits/pnm-butterfly-pavilion

S'mores Ice Cream Cake - Great Stuff for Kids!

It's summertime! The kids are done with school (thank goodness - the last couple of weeks are exhausting for moms!) and we are in full summer mode around here.  My oldest daughter is now finished with elementary school (I will be crying about this come August when school starts) and we decided to celebrate with a party for her & her friends, celebrating the end of 5th grade. 

The girls baked individual pizzas, crafted some fun fabric-wrapped flip-flops, did some beading, and watched a movie in our new camping trailer (for some reason the trailer made it much more fun than our family room).  To top off the evening, we needed a good summer cake.  When I got my latest copy of "Cook's Country" (which is my favorite cooking magazine) and saw the cake inside the back cover, we knew we had to make it.

Some of my family likes cakes and some do not.  (Me - I am not so picky about treats.  But I humor them.)  Ice cream cakes are a great compromise.  Plus a cake like this, that looks complicated, makes me look - for a few minutes - like some kind of amazing mom.  Rest assured that it's really very easy - no amazing-ness is needed.  In fact that is one reason that we like ice cream cakes.  It's also cheap and fun.

Naturally I waited too long to start and had to take pictures late at night.  One of the quirks of making ice cream cakes is that you have to plan ahead a little.  You should really make them the day before.  I started at 9:00 pm, but that is better than not starting the day before at all.


The first step is the graham cracker crust.  Heat the oven to 325 degrees.  Spray a 9" springform pan with vegetable oil spray and line the sides with parchment paper.  Crush 8 whole graham crackers into crumbs (1 cup) and combine with 4 tablespoons melted butter and 1 tablespoon sugar.  Mix until it resembles wet sand.  Press into the prepared pan bottom.  Bake about 12 minutes, until it's fragrant and beginning to brown.


For the fudge layer (I love how that sounds): Combine 4 oz bittersweet chocolate, 1/2 cup heavy cream, and 1/4 cup light corn syrup in a medium bowl and microwave until melted and smooth, about 1 minute, stirring halfway through.  I recommend melting chocolate at 50% power only.  Cool to room temperature, about 30 minutes.  The fudge layer will be a delicious liquid, and hardens to the perfect consistency when frozen.  Pour the cooled chocolate mixture over the crust and smooth into an even layer; freeze until firm (at least 15 minutes).  Spread 1 cup marshmallow creme over the fudge in an even layer; again freeze until firm.


Now the fun part - spreading the ice cream.  You need to soften the ice cream for a few minutes before you start to try to spread it.  I had some help with this part.






When you do get the ice cream layer smooth, cover it with plastic wrap and freeze until very firm, at least 4 hours.



Adjust the oven rack to 6 inches from the broiler element and heat the broiler.  Place the cake on a baking sheet, take off the plastic wrap, and arrange 22-26 large marshmallows, cut in half, on top of the cake.  Broil until the marshmallows are lightly browned, 30 to 60 seconds, rotating the cake halfway through. 

May I add that you should watch this step very carefully.  I have been known to light marshmallows on fire under the broiler, burning them completely to charcoal.  (Fortunately you can cleanly peel the black mess off in the back yard and just start over - and yes, if you're wondering, I have done this.  It wasn't with s'mores cake though, it was with sweet potatoes one Thanksgiving.  Twice.  With flames.)

Refreeze the cake if it's too soft, and it's ready to serve.  The girls at our party enjoyed the s'mores cake very much!  The little bit left didn't last long in the freezer either.  



If you haven't tried making an ice cream cake, this is a really fun one to start with!