Here are the rest of the portraits from Thursday. I had a plan to take so many more, but the cooperation of the younglings did not allow it.

Malcolm’s little “Kingston” the horse was helping me set up the studio

But I guess I didn’t have permission because he was snatched away

So I had to use an owl

Brendan the cutie

Brothers!

Trevor wasn’t thrilled to get more pictures taken, this is the best one I could get

Friday we left the rental house and drove to Carlsbad to visit the caverns. I had hoped that Black Friday would be a good day to go, but was I wrong. It was packed. The first thing we learned as we arrived in the cave 750ft underground is that they had run out of food in the little cafe after the first 30 minutes of being open. We were hungry but decided to do the tour first anyway.

Can you see Trevor? This place is huge

The sign says “Mirror Lake” upside down because you were supposed to read it upside down in the reflection

Brendan asked me to take this picture because it looked like an eye.

I wasn’t really able to play photographer in this cave. The boys liked it, but the walk got long. Bill had to carry Brendan quite a long part of it. Shannon had to carry Malcolm while Jon chased down fast walking Kieran.

When we got out of the cave and back to the visitor center, we learned the restaurant was out of food too. We drove down to the main highway and the cafe there was having service and food problems too. We ended up having a very late lunch at McDonalds.

We stayed at a hotel in Carlsbad Friday night. We picked this one because of Brendan’s all time favorite hotel amenity- an indoor pool!