I am not a morning person.

Nope, I’m not chipper and singing with the birds at dawn.

I repeat, I am not a morning person.

Even when we are going somewhere fun, I am STILL not a morning person (at least I own it, right?)

When my alarm went off at 3.30am, I wanted to throw it at the wall.  However, a shower, packing the car in the middle of the night and a McDonalds breakfast later, we left Edgewood Drive and made our way up the deathly silent roads to Magz and Sams house.

In spite of them being so quiet, we still almost got killed by a crazy, seriously people, just cause the roads are quiet, doesn’t mean you get to increase the ratio of stupidity to cars!

When we got there, the Suburban was already sitting there quietly, waiting for us.  It took a while to load up the car.  We had a lot of luggage.  And, when I say we had a lot of luggage, we had a LOT of luggage. So much so, that we almost didn’t fit in the damn car, and it’s not a small!! The driver said, ‘you do know we have van’s right?’ LOL!!

So, last year, I was about 3,200 air miles away from being a ‘gold member’ on Continental airlines, I was so desperate to hit the milestone, because instead of two bags at 50lbs each, I would then get THREE bags at up to 70lbs each, not only that, but col would also get the same allowance.  San Francisco, our wedding anniversary trip, took me up and over the milestone – which, at the time, everyone mocked me for being so intent on hitting.  However, with five adults going skiing, my ma-hoosive baggage allowance came in handy (and saved us all a few quid at the same time!)

During the flight, I was consumed.  If you haven’t read the Hunger Games yet, you won’t get it, however, for those of you who *have* read the Trilogy, you’ll understand.  It kind of grips are your innards until you’ve finished the very last page! Anyway, I was reading book II, Magz, a few rows back was reading book I, as was the guy across the aisle from me, who made a comment about the books and how addictive they are.

When we landed, we had to lug all our baggage (there was a LOT) on a bus, to the car hire place, where, when we arrived, we had to upgrade the car we’d booked – simply because we had too much stuff! (oops!)

Shortly after we got on our merry way, we ended up stopping for lunch a Chick fil A (not very inventive, I know) before we pit-stopped to shop for groceries in Santa Fe (about an hour from Albuquerque airport where we landed).  At first, we stopped in Walmart, however, it wasn’t one with much food in it (though there was Angry Birds and Muppets pj bottoms that my loving hubby picked up for me!!), so we had to stop at Albertsons for the meat and fresh stuff.

The only other point of interest from the long, slow, three hour drive up the mountains to the Angel Fire resort, was the pee-stop at the side of the road in the bushes…but I’ll move along!

Once we got to the cabin, we unloaded, unpacked, ate Magz’s tuna, pasta bake for dinner and after dinner, when Tracy, Ruth and Phil came over the road to visit, we drank margaritas (the first of many from this trip!)

We were all asleep by 10pm.  Party people, eh?

First impressions on the Georges cabin were good, it was spacious, bigger than I expected.  But cluttered, the owners have way too much ‘stuff’ in there, way more stuff than I would have in a rental house, but it was lovely.

We were also higher up than I expected to be, and the altitude effects hit me from the get-go, my head pounded for two to three days, it was tough to breathe at times and I had the occasional nosebleed as well.  Before you say it, no, it’s not cause I’m overweight and unfit, altitude sickness was felt by everyone in the house , even the most fit and healthy among us!

The views from the mountain tops were breathtaking, the place was covered in a thick layer of snow (which got thicker for the first few days we were there) and, since we’d come prepared (thermals, gloves etc) we didn’t feel the sub-zero temps at all!