Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Vegas Baby Vegas!!!

Normally, “What happens in Vegas, Stays in Vegas,” but I thought I would share a little about our most recent trip.  I attended a training conference in Vegas last week for work and being my evenings were going to be free to sight-see, Chris decided to come with me on the trip.  It was so nice to have him with.  We left the day before the conference at 6 am so that we would have a whole day together.  With the time change, this gets us into Vegas really early in the morning.  The conference was at Caesars so it gave us a chance to stay in the middle of the strip which was a lot of fun.  We watched a lot of football, ate really well, and did some gambling each evening of the trip.  I am even proud to report that I did not fall up an escalator, rip my toenail in half, scrape my knees on the bottom of the pool, or have any drunk friends walk me into an endcap in Walgreens this time around!  It was a much less adventurous trip this time around than it was the last time I was in Vegas!
Chris taught me how to play Paigow poker.  I had never been one to play card games but I had a blast playing this game.  It was very easy to learn and is slow moving which I like.  This means you can lose your money slowly and drag out the time, but it can also mean that it can take a long time to win as well.  One evening while there, I won $65 over the course of 2.5 hours.  A perk of this also is that if you are gambling in Vegas, the casinos provide you with free beverages.  Chris and I were both feeling really well after 2.5 hours and we even came out ahead.  Over the course of the 4 days we were in town, we lost more than we won but we chalk that up to entertainment money.  We still came home with some so that is definitely a nice positive.
Rachel and John were in town on Friday night with John’s mom so we were able to meet up with them to go to the Cubs/Cards baseball game.  Chris came out a very happy dude when the Cubs won the game.  He has been to two Cubs games this year and they won both so I told him we will have to go see more next year being he seems to be good luck for the team.  Maybe sometime in his lifetime he will be able to see the Cubs win a world series.  After 100 plus years of not winning a series they have to be up for one someday. J  I really have no room to talk considering my team is the worst team in the AL this year and currently have 99 losses on the season (please don’t make that number 100…)
I was hoping after this terrible baseball season to look beyond to football and cheer on my team to victory!  Unfortunately, this season is looking like a loss so far for my Colts as well.  It has been a long year for me as a sports fan.  Hopefully they learn to start functioning without Payton on the field and actually win a game this year.  Sunday’s game looked much more promising but they need to learn how to throw the ball again in order for the offense to start putting points on the board.  I have faith in you boys!  Prove everyone wrong who thinks you are a one man team!
Ok – I’ll stop with the pep talk.  Just trying not to be a Debbie Downer the whole football season.  All in all, everything is well in our household.  It‘s just another week in our normal lives!

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Family Time

This past Labor Day weekend, Chris and I went home to MN and ND to visit family.  The original plan was to drive the whole way but after coming across some great flight deals we ended up flying to MSP and rented a car to drive to ND and back.  The was probably the best decision we could have made as it saved us about 20 hrs of driving, gave us more time with our families, and saved a lot of whining and complaining about being in the car for so long (mainly from me as I get so tired with my fatigue problem).  The only bad part about this decision was that we could no longer bring the dog with us and with everyone out of town or busy for the weekend, we ended up putting her in the kennel. She HATES it there.  Being a rescue dog, she thinks that we are leaving her and never coming back so they usually have to pull her into the back room when we take her there and it breaks my heart.  Chris ended up having to drop her off this time which is the first time he did that so he got to experience the sadness this time instead of me.  The good thing about it though is she is so excited to see us when we pick her up, she can hardly stand it.  We are so lucky to have found such a sweet girl at the shelter and we can’t imagine life without her at the moment.
Anyways, back to our trip.  We were able to pack in a lot of fun this past weekend: MN State Fair with every kind of food you can imagine on a stick (even spaghetti and meatballs on a stick), met our nephew Charlie for the first time, spoiled my niece (she has to be the cutest kid ever even if I am a little biased), had a wedding reception picnic with family and friends, motorcycle ride up and down the Missouri river (had to turn around twice because roads were still blocked from the flooding), Dinner with Mom and Steve, Bonfire with the Dosch’s, two rounds of the board game Redneck Life, lunch at the MoA with the in-laws and my dad/step-mom, and three hour flight delay home which led to a two hour game of Settlers of Catan at the coffee shop in the airport.  All in all the weekend was very relaxing even though we crammed in so many things.
It was so great to see so many of you this past weekend!  The time went by way to fast.
Bessie