The trip

Ok so I have been home one week, a whirlwind of a week for sure and I guess I should fill you in about our trip to Las Vegas in case you want to read them. It turned out really long so you might want to read it in installments if you even find it remotely interesting! I tried to come up with something along the 12 days of Christmas theme but wasn't very successful. Sorry! But if you are feeling creative I would love to see what any of you could come up with. might be kind of fun. I will award a prize to the most creative I promise. LOL

Day 1: (Sunday) Worked, came home packed, made it to the airport on time, had a great flight and landed safely about 1/2hr late about 11PM. Grampa, Gramma Alma and her son-in-law were there to meet us and Paul did the driving since Grampa doesn't drive well at night anymore.

Day 2: (Monday) Got up late, had a lovely breakfast and headed off to Yucca AZ to see my maternal Gramma and her husband, Grampa Paul. Pretty good day for a drive, all was well.

Day 3: (Tuesday) Did some sun tanning, did some sight seeing, (photos to come soon) and learned a new game that took me forever to win and had a lazy day. The new game was called Manipulation and it's a blast. Would love to teach anyone if you haven't ever played it.

Day 4: ( Wednesday) Thanksgiving day with Gramma and Grampa in AZ. My uncle was supposed to come but never showed up. Took a nice long walk with Grampa, had a lovely dinner and almost ate too much food.

Day 5: (Thursday) Left about 11 am to head back to Las Vegas to have Thanksgiving dinner with my paternal Grampa and to get to know his new step family (he remarried a couple of years ago after my gramma died). we arrived at my step aunts house right on time and had a fabulous time. After dinner the ladies played a really fun new game called "eye ____" something I can't totally remember while the men watched TV and slept...something very American about that! I am going to make my own version of the game to have on hand and I would love to play it again sometime if we ever get together for a game night or something. Of course it didn't hurt that I won but I think it would have been fun regardless.

Day 6: (Friday) Stayed up late, got up late and I spent a big part of the day working on typing up work instructions for my grampa on how to use his e-mail, Word, etc.

Day 7: (Saturday) This is where it starts to get interesting! After church we went over to the other aunts house for another dinner. Three Thanksgiving dinners in 4 days! Doesn't get much better than that! Anyway after dinner I was sitting on the couch playing a marble logic game and had a first row seat while a guy who had come to take out a step cousin on a date was busted for cheating on his wife! It was completely crazy but five min. and couple of cell phone calls later it turned out that this girls aunt works with the guys wife! Of course her dad called and told her and then he proceeded to get out his rifle to give it a good clean! Was really funny in a strange way. In a town of 1.8 million people for this one guy to have started dating this girl who doesn't even live in the same state and then for her aunt to work with his wife and for them to have mutual friends for her to call to confirm that yes he was infact still married and yet they were still together was all really incredible to watch. Sort of gave the whole place a small town feel!
That night we played Dominoes for several hours and once again it took me forever to win but it was so much fun. My grandparents really get into that game.

Day 8: (Sunday) Time to head home. Got all packed and called the airport just to make sure everything is ok with our flights and got this news: "Oh I am sorry that flight has been canceled." "Canceled? What number is that?" "568" (or somethine along those lines.) "No that's not right we are supposed to be flying on flight 589." "Oh well in that case you have to come to the airport just in case but Bellingham is having a huge snow storm and the airport is closed.!" This was the first we had heard of the storm so needless to say we were shocked! So off we went to the airport but instead of just getting dropped off we had grampa go and park until we knew what was going on. So yes our flight was cancled. Thankfully for us we could go back to grampas but since it was weather related the airline wasn't going to help people out except they did have specailly negociated rates with Terrible's Hotel and Casino! That really is the name and no we didn't go stay there! So we are all standing around for the latest word and I am trying to figure out how I will get a hold of the chior director to let him know that we won't be there for the dress rehearsel the next night when a familier face comes into view. My brain does a double take and I am not sure sure I am seeing things correctly because who should appear but the choir directors son, Bert! Turns out I wasn't imagining him at all. He and his aunt Carol, who also know from choir, were down there visiting her son for Thanksgiving and they were slated to be on the same flight out. Really made the whole place seem a little more like home for sure. So to make a long story short they needed a ride back to Carol's son's house and it ended up that they were staying only about 10 mi. or so at the most from where we were. I volunteered grampa to take them home and we all piled in for our first trip back from the airport. grampa has an unlimited long distance plan so after making several calls home to whatcom co. to see how things were mom and I made our first trip to the strip on this vacation to see an art exhibit of Ansel Adams photographs. The exhibit was fantastic and I also visited the Harley Shop on the strip to do a little Christmas shopping!

Day 9: (Monday) Second trip to the airport today. We looked on the internet and it still said Bellingham was 9degrees and snowing but like good little lemings we packed up and showed up once again knowing that we weren't going anywhere. So this time rather than pay for parking we just had grampa pull up to the curb and I went inside while Bert put luggage in and out of the van to look like we are doing something. After a little while it was clear the news was the same so we left and went back to grampas house. We introduced Carol and Bert to Dominoes and played a few games before borrowing grampas van and heading to the strip once again. bert wanted to spend the night at the Aladdin so we dropped him off, then mom and Carol and I did some window shopping and visited this place called the Fremont St. Experience. it is a covered shopping area that has the worlds largest movie screen as the roof, (12+ million LEDs) and they do musical shows above your head every hr. Was quite interesting. Didn't much care for the music but the whole experience was intersting. There were this street artist painting really beautiful pictures with spay paint which I found completely fasinating.

Day 10: Got up really early because were supposed to be at the airport by 7:30 and we had to pick up Carol first. We were dubious but this time they assured us that we were going to get home today so Grampa dropped us off and we got in line. We got our bording passes, through security and were sitting at the gate ready to board when the captin came out and said that in this weather airplanes don't like to stop at the end of runway so we needed to wait because he was waiting hear from the crew in Bellingham. After 3 hrs. of waiting our option was to go to Seattle or stay in Las Vegas. Seattle sounds like a good option, closer to home and all that but the problem was that once you got to Seattle you were on your own to get to B'ham. People that had gone on before to Seattle had spent anywhere from 9-16 hrs. on busses or shuttles to make the normally 2 hr. drive and that didn't sound good to any of us so we chose to get in line to get our luggage off the plane. When we went to go collect it all of our bags came through except mom's! There we were and mom and no clothes, nothing but her purse! This time I decided to rent a car and ended up with a lovely van. We headed out once again and our first stop was the Rio for their international buffet. The food was fabulous and with all the Las Vegas coupon books and directories that I had been collecting in the last few days, pretty affordable! While we were there we did some shopping, saw a really fun holiday show and I got my very own string of tourist Rio beads! Very important I assure you! LOL Stopped at Ross to get mom a few things and had another lovely evening with grampa and gramma.

Day 11: (Wednesday) Since we had the van we took grampa, picked up Bert and Carol and did a little more sightseeing. We went out to Red Rock Canyon which was very interesting. It was really cold and windy though so we didn't get out and walk about too much. A couple of pictures and a visit to the nature center and that was about it. Dropped off grampa and headed to the airport for trip number 4! Dropped off the van, got the bill corrected and off to get in line. Once again we made it all the way through line, through security and to the gate only to hear, as we were just about to board, "Attention passangers. There is only about a 20% chance that we will make to Bellingham and it's getting slimmer by the minute. If you would like to get your luggage and stay please line up at the counter. If not we will be boarding in a few min. but be advised that you will be on your own if we land in Seattle." Once again we didn't like that idea and so go into line. Now i didn't check my bag and mom didn't have any luggage, hers was still missing somewhere but Bert and Carol needed theirs. So we are standing in line when they come on and say that "they are sorry but they don't have time to get any bags off so your luggage will be going on without you if you have chosen to stay." What's more but they didn't tell anyone that boarded that if they landed in Seattle they didn't have a ground crew there so their baggage wouldn't be coming off either! So now there are three people without baggage, mom's is still missing and I was supposed to call grampa and have him come and get us once again because Carol's son had an unexpected meeting come up so he can't come get us. I must say at the point I was finished. I was tired, I had been cordinating trips and doing most of the driving for the last 4 days and I just couldn't call grampa and have him come back one more time. Thankfully Bert could see that I was overwhelmed and he stepped up and made the call. grampa came and got us but needed me to drive us home since it was late by this time. Bert and Carol came home with again since her son and his wife weren't really home and we had a great evening. We had dinner and then mom, Carol and I put up their Christmas tree and mom and Carol decorated it while Bert and grampa played a couple games of Dominoes. Finally took them home late and prayed that maybe tomorrow would be the day. Our concert was in two days and I still didn't have the program done. I had planned on doing it on Monday when I got home and it was now Weds. night and I still wasn't home! Good news, we got a call tonight saying that mom's bag had been found and had been trucked from Seattle to Bellingham! Yeah.

Day 12: Today was our 5th trip to the airport and this time Carol's son's car was fixed so he picked us up for a change and off we went! Grampa and gramma were getting a little weary of saying goodbye but this time we were pretty sure we weren't going to be back. The weather had finally cleared and the morning flight had made it all the way so we were pretty confident. This time we did make it onto the plane all the way home. And wonder of wonders all the luggage was waiting here in Bellingham when we got here! We finally arrived home about 9:30 and after unloading our stuff I was up till 1AM getting the program done but it was ready to go to the copier the next morning. :-)

It was a crazy, fun and memorable trip to say the least. I have some pics that I need to post but since getting back I have worked every day since but one, sang in two concerts, gone to class two nights and taken my Chem final so I haven't had much time on the computer. I hope things slow down a little because I feel like I need a vacation to recover from my vaction!