The walls are white stucco. The dark wood ceiling is high above me, with large wooden logs supporting it. The floor is large square tiles. At this time of day, the birds are calling outside, much like they would at my house. There is a cool breeze coming in, although the sun is already shining in on the other side of the house. It is very dry here and Ray and I drink water throughout the day and night.

We arrived in Santa Fe Wednesday night. Yesterday we spent resting and recovering. We did some laundry and made potato salad for supper. Chris kindly met our plane. We went to dinner at a very nice Greek restaurant in Albuquerque and then went back to the airport, because our luggage did not come on the same flight we did. Then he drove us to Bonney's house, where we said hello to everyone and went to bed.

The sky is bright blue, with mountains on the horizon. We took a walk yesterday. The houses are pinky-brown, with walled yards enclosing small trees and shrubs and flowers. Some are different from Athens and some are similar. There is lots of butterfly bush and lavender, but not much lawn. This is, after all, more or less, desert. Bonney and Hank were at work. Nick went in at 2, working at the children's museum. I remember going there with Molli and Amelia when they were very young. They particularly enjoyed the face-painting. Amelia was some sort of cat, I believe.

Wednesday went quite well. Ray took a shorter-than-usual walk. I did not bake any farewell cookies or bread. We were packed and ready to go by 8:30--or at least 8:35. We dropped off Nate and Lidet and Polly drove us to the airport. By the time we got on our plane, I had received two calls about the second part of our trip: Oakland to Albuquerque. It had been delayed by a couple of hours. So when we arrived in Oakland, a Southwest agent helped us rebook to a different flight, leaving earlier and going through Los Angeles. We arrived about the time we had expected, 7:40, but our bags went on our original flight and were there a couple hours later. The view from the window all day was magnificent. Peaks above the clouds during the first half of the trip. The flight from LA to ABQ was over the desert, cloudless and bright. Mountains with a dusting of snow, huge amounts of bare sand, punctuated by green spaces, houses and golf courses. We even flew over a canyon, jaggedly cutting through the light brown stretches.

Of course, we had no meals on any of our flights, only endless rounds of peanuts, pretzels, and beverages. At the end, I started turning them down. We did have a lovely meal in Oakland, where there were several good choices near our gate. We chose Andele (?), a very authentic Mexican restaurant. I had a snapper burrito, which I couldn't quite finish and hated to leave. It didn't seem like it would travel very well though.

We had free wireless in that airport, I think. I spent my time trying to delete the duplicate photos that have accumulated from downloading pictures from my phone. I now have more photos than can be loaded into iPhoto and want to figure out some other way to get them onto the computer, not using iPhoto. It is very frustrating. I delete and delete and I have almost 6 GB free space. I set it up and it starts copying, but gives me a message before it is through: there is not enough space... Yesterday, I managed to get them all off, but iPhoto still crashed.

We miss our young niblings from Seattle. On Monday, we took Lidet to a little place called LaConner and then drove home down Whidbey Island. We bought gorgeous strawberries and had them for dessert. Some old friends of Polly's joined us, visiting from Spain. Tuesday was the day Polly and Jim picked Nate up from his soccer camp. He had a good time, but was pretty exhausted from three days at sleep-away camp. We enjoyed our time there, helping with child care and cooking and becoming more familiar with Seattle and their routines there.