Road Trip Part 1

After a really fun week of having all of the kids with us, it was time to take my sisters oldest daughter and sons back to Utah where they live with their dad. This is a happy blog so I won’t mention that we hate this. We don’t like not having them with us. And we blame Utah for this (at least in part). I am sure there are some good things about Utah but off hand I can’t think of any. So far as I can see it looks like the Antelope Valley with some snow. And it is a loooong way away. We are resentful that they don’t live here. But since this is a happy blog, I am not going to go on and on even though I could.

Anyhow…..
Saturday afternoon at 4:44pm we loaded up my sisters Suburban--- the one with the antlers, and headed down the road. After numerous potty stops, breaking up fights, car sickness alarms, 4 states and much snoring we arrived at the Ex’s place about 12:30am our time because we refused to give in to the time change. We got them all unloaded and loved up and headed for a Days Inn on the outskirts of town to sleep for awhile. I almost fell asleep in my clothes I was so beat. The next morning Monica and I woke up bright and early, poked at Lauren who growled at me (as usual) and headed off for the complimentary breakfast. When we had finished up we went back to the room, poked at Lauren again and managed to get her up and going—and headed for the border! Utah looks like Mojave. Big Deal. Desert. Wow. Can’t see that at home. That pic-- it is Utah! NOT Mojave!!

As I previously mentioned, we aren’t fond of Utah and all it has become to symbolize to us so here is Monica expressing her joy at leaving Utah.

We drove through the Grand Canyon in Arizona. It was pretty.

Soon we left Arizona and entered Nevada. Woo Hoo!

Traffic as we neared Vegas was insane. Both directions. When we got to Stateline we decided to stop and party for awhile.

It may look like my sister had already been partying based on this parking job, but she hadn’t. We are both bad parkers. And she left it that way…. We went into the casino and headed for the Outlet mall and food court. Two most important things: Food and spending more money on stuff. There were at least a million people in that mall. Monica and Lauren spotted a Bath & Body works outlet store. People, I do not get this obsession with smelly bath stuff. I want soap that feels like soap and not like a snail crawled all over my body. I don’t need to splash my body. I don’t need to grease it up. And I don’t need to smell like Cucumber-Melon or Jasmine-Nutmeg or Ode de Skunk But they LOVE IT! So after grabbing up a whole bunch of stuff we headed for the casino. We decided to play $1.00 each. Last time we were there I won about $50.00 on a nickel slot machine. This time, I lost it all! OMG $1.00 just GONE!!! Monica, however, hit it big with a $34.00 pay out so we cashed it in immediately and headed for the convienence store to get road trip snacks with our winnings. You may think that is a lot of money to spend at a gas station store, and you are right. Never the less, we managed to spend most of it.

You are probably curious about what we got, and I WANT to show you but I need to go cook dinner or Monica will beat me when she gets home from work (WHAT have you been doing all day long? Why isn't my dinner on the table??? HAVE YOU BEEN ON THAT DANG COMPUTER ALL DAY LONG AGAIN????)