James is 4!

WARNING:  there are A TON of pictures.  This will probably be a LONG post.

Saturday James turned 4 years old!  What a big boy.  To celebrate we decided to take him to Carlsbad Caverns.  He and Doug both had Friday off so it was the perfect weekend.  We drove down on Friday, went swimming, had dinner, walked by the river and went to bed.  Then Saturday was the big day.  We thought the caves would be a huge hit because James LOVES tunnels.  

The Birthday boy!

He decided to open his presents right away.  Too excited to wait.

He got a life jacket for swimming.

A Camera since he loves to take pictures. 

Some gardening tools from Grammy and Grandad 

After breakfast we headed to the Caves.  It was a free week so we thought it might be packed, but it wasn't!  We didn't even have to wait for the elevator.  The elevator drops 750 feet in 1 minute, so about halfway down James started freaking out.  Once we got to the bottom he was pretty panicked.  We decided to wait by the snack area for a while and see if we could get him used to it.  No such luck.  So we started waking to see if we could distract him.  Again, no luck.  By this time he was really freaking out so we decided that I would take him back to the top and Dad and Mikey would see the cave. I didn't mind since my back was hurting so bad I could barely walk.  Mikey LOVED it.  He didn't stop talking the entire time.  He kept saying "I see a rock" at one time someone said, "Your going to hear that a lot today".

Me and James had fun hanging out at the top, playing with his camera and doing some of the other activities they had for the kids.  Smokey the Bear was there and James liked taking pictures of him.  He also saw a giant bat, did a puzzle, and colored a helping hand.  

James and "Mickey" in the visitor center

James took a picture of Smoky the Bear

James and Smokey

James and the bat

Mikey and Dad with the bat

After the caves we decided to take Mikey back for a nap while Dad and James went swimming.  Mikey didn't actually take a nap, but James had a blast swimming with his new life jacket.  Then James got to pick his Birthday dinner.  And what do you choose when you are 4-years-old?  McDonalds!  We tried so hard to get him to pick something else, but no such luck.  

After dinner we decided to go swimming again.  Mikey had gotten over his fear of the water by now, and loved jumping in the pool to us.

James loved swimming in the hot tub.
We could not get him in the big pool for too long

After swimming we went back to the room for cake.  I had made James a tunnel/cave cake but it didn't really make the drive.  So it didn't look too good.  But it served it's purpose.

 Sunday we were just going to drive home, but Doug was feeling really bad that I didn't get to see any of the caves.  So we decided to go back for a little while so I could see it.  We decided to try again with James, this time walking in instead of taking the elevator.  We didn't get much closer than this before James refused to go any further.  So me and Mikey went in and James and Dad went hiking around the park.

Family picture at the cave

Dad took a picture of James

Then James took a picture of Dad

James took another picture of Dad

 It was really cool!  And again Mikey was talking the entire time.  It was so funny.  Walking in was much further than we thought it would be and it took an hour to get to the big room.

A pool of water

I think this was called Whales mouth or teeth or something

Once we made it to the big room I was so tired that we decided to take the "short cut" and didn't get to see it all, but we saw plenty, plus Mikey was asleep in my arms at this point.

Finally made it to the big room

Once we got home James had a few more presents waiting.  He got this bed tent from Grammy and Grandad which he LOVES.  You can see why we thought he would love the caves.  He was so excited to go to bed in it he didn't even ask to sleep in Mom's bed.

We had a really fun weekend.  We love our little 4-year-old and are so glad to have him in our family.