Labor Day - El Malpais

Three day weekends for us equal outdoors, (short) road trips and camping. The mornings have developed a lovely crispness indicative of the coming fall, motivating us to squeeze in as much camping as possible before the end of the season.

Eli is learning his colors and he's pretty good with most of them except red, which he either calls pink or orange. His new thing is to name the colors of things he sees. Everywhere we went on this trip there were lot's of crows. He called them, "Black ducks."

The lava fields were very sharp. I just brushed my knuckles across a rock and my skin was shredded. I sat Eli down for a second and he kept saying, "sharp" and wanted to be picked up again.

We visited some caves in El Malpais formed by ancient lava and we tried to see how far we could go in with Eli. Once it got pitch black he started to complain a little and after 15 minutes he had "mama," on repeat. In hindsight it might have helped to give Eli is own flashlight, but even that probably wouldn't have given us enough time to make it to the end. It was really interesting, though.

Eli loves plastic toy animals. He spends hours moving them about from place to place, feeding them, washing them and showing them things. When he refers to his lion, tiger or dinosaurs he does so in a raspy, growling voice.

Elijah says the most random things. I asked him about his shark and our conversation went like this:

Me: What's your shark doing?

Eli: Eat

Me: What's he eating?

Eli: Hot [air] balloon

Me: What's that taste like?

Eli: Orange

Me: Sounds yummy.

David has a minor obsession with smores- an American camping tradition. If there is a fire burning he's making them. Breakfast, lunch or dinner, he's not particular.