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So far this week:
We drove to Junction on Sunday afternoon to catch our flight. It was my first time to head that direction and well, there’s just not much to say about it. I heard that there are a few wineries to visit, but that was about it. We did a quick drive-thru at a fast food restaurant because the airport is so tiny that they only have a small news stand. We checked in and then had to drag our checked luggage to another location so it could be loaded onto the plane. ?? yeah. The flight was a little over an hour and a little bumpy with some strange noises. We made it and it was really cool to fly into Vegas at night. You could see the lights well before you were over the city. It reminded me of flying into NYC for the first time. After retrieving our luggage we piled into a shuttle and were off to our fabulous hotel, Planet Hollywood. It was a great hotel with very large rooms. The bathroom was as big as my bedroom. Not kidding. We unloaded into our rooms and then I met with Rob. He’s a seventh grade teacher at my school. We decided to feed some slots and have a few drinks. I think we made it back to our rooms around 1:30 or so. (Vegas is an hour behind GWS time.)
The next morning we were up bright and early for our first day of the conference. We checked in, received a bag to carry our stuff, a name tag, and BREAKFAST! I’m not much of a breakfast person when I first wake up, but they did a good job for the conference. We had choices of mixed fruit, yogurt, cereal, bagels, muffins, 2 different breakfast sandwiches, juice, coffee, and water. I won’t bore you with all the details of the conference. I know that the majority of my readers are not teachers and I will save them. I will just say that it was totally awesome and worth every penny that the school paid to send us. Most of the speakers were entertaining and motivating. I learned a lot!
Okay, I’ll give you some pictures to entertain you. I’m starting with my hotel. : )
Here’s the room..
Here’s the view from the room…..
Here’s part of the bathroom…..
I forgot to tell all of you that each room had a different theme. Our room had an Adam’s Family theme. We had the picture in the bathroom of the entire family. A picture in the bedroom was Uncle Fez’s head (is he the bald one?) with Thing on top of him. Another wall had a mini electric chair attached to it. A little creepy, but I loved it.
Here’s a picture looking down into the casino from the mezzanine….
We didn’t venture out of our casino until Monday night. I’ll post some pictures of other casinos and tell you about my new favorite Italian restaurant tomorrow.
I went from ….
Snowbunny
to …..
Vegas Hottie!
I made it back to Colorado last night. I have lots to tell and pictures to post. BUT, I am tired.
So here is my list of things to come…..
1. Ben Harper concert in Vail.
2. Vegas
3. Conference
4. Food in Vegas
5. Fires in Colorado
6. Spamalot in Vegas
7. Cool things in Vegas
Okay, I’m sure that you get the point. Off to bed. I have a busy weekend and will try to be back soon. I miss you all. I have to catch up on all of my reading soon. But, I have been thinking about y’all. : )
Just wanted to let you wonderful people know that Chrissy? she may not leave Vegas! It’s warm, it’s beautiful, and she’s enjoying it! She’s thinking that if she moves there, more of us will visit her then. Sounds good to me, you in?
She has no internet connection. Well, none that is free, at least. She’s really missing the internet folks so she may end up paying for it one day. She’ll be back Thursday night. She’s taking lots of pictures, and I can’t wait to see them. Could they really be cooler than the pictures of Colorado? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
All of the kids were so excited to be at the top of the hill. They had their carefully engineered sleds. They had their helmets. They had their dreams….. Ready….Set….Go…….um, yeah. We need to use more duct tape next year. lol Most sleds didn’t “go” as much as they were dragged down the hill on the first run.
They were pushed down the hill. They rolled down the hill. They skated down the hill. Only one sled (made by a group of girls) made it down with just a push. It went fast! It was so much fun! I thought we were going to go off the jump, but I was stuck in the middle and couldn’t bail out. The sleds started falling apart so the kids were just grabbing pieces and taking off down the hill after the first run.
Saturday evening was spent at KT’s house. We had a grand party with lots of friends and liquor. It was a stock the bar party, so there was plenty to choose from. It was great to catch up with everyone. (even if I don’t remember having a few pictures taken or something about a video???)
Sunday was Easter and the family always gathers at Mom’s house for lunch. I sat in the dining room with Alison and didn’t move the entire day. I fed her yummy sweet potatoes and we played all day! Aunt Chrissy & Alison
Monday was spent sleeping in a little, not a lot, just a little. I then when to lunch with some friends and went shopping and wandering around downtown. It was fun to have no agenda, but to just walk around and end up on the river. Monday night was a family dinner. Lovey and Alison had a grand time playing together, until they had their first fight. It was so cute to watch. I went home with Marshell and Sara for the evening so I could keep Alison on Tuesday. We had a big day of shopping planned. (or so I thought) We made it to see everyone at Sara’s work and they all told us how beautiful she is and how much she looks like Marshell. She does look like her daddy. I took her to my old job at PHG and visited with some friends. We went home for lunch and a nap, made it to the mall, and then back to pick her mommy up. My last night in town was dinner at my favorite Mexican restaurant and then hanging out with KT for about an hour.
I got up EARLY the next morning for my flight. By early, I mean 4 AM. My flight was at 6. It was pretty empty on the flight. I managed to sleep about 20 minutes before we landed and I began my 3 hour drive home. The drive was beautiful and not nearly as scary as the one in December. I was exhausted and took a nice long nap that afternoon. : ) I don’t know when I’ll be back, but KT is trying her best to get me to go to Destin in August…..
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Wish me luck tomorrow! We are taking 100 middle school students to a mountain….putting them in cardboard bobsleds held together with duct tape…and letting them race down. (and they think we are rednecks in the South!) I should mention that the kids engineered the sleds all by themselves after watching the movie Cool Runnings. I will definitely have my camera with me!
I’m feeling better, but I don’t have anything to talk about. I’ve been in bed for two weeks and that leaves me with a lot of nada.
So, here are my top ten favorite snacks. (I know. I’m random. My am-track has derailed. lol - Jason, I know you get that one.)
10. Cheetohs! I love the crunchy, cheesy goodness. I prefer plain old regular ones, but occasionally spice things up with the hot ones.
9. Pickles. The whole dill kind. I don’t want the sliced or halves or whatever. I like them crunchy and cold. My boss loves them, too. I frequently put a jar on his desk with a thank you note for being awesome. (job security! lol no, he is awesome.)
8. Wheat Thins… I like the original best. I’ve tried to eat the different varieties. I usually like the the first time and then the flavors are too strong.
7. Ice cream. in. the. Winter. I know, weird. I love ice cream when it’s cold outside. I heart the Edy’s dot thingies. Can’t remember what they are called…. the ones with that are in the nestle crunch coating. Yummy!
TIME OUT! Had to grab a pickle out of the fridge.
6. Fritos with french onion dip. Talk about bad breath. hehehe I love the crunchy fritos and yes, the deliciousness of french onion dip. Good stuff.
5. Mandarin oranges in the plastic jar, not the can. Yum! I almost Always have a jar in the fridge. I eat them straight out of the jar for a snack or on top of a spinach salad. I love, love, love them.
4. York Peppermint Patties. I need these after the pickles, fritos, and french onion dip.
3. Don’t judge me. The jalapeno and cheese taquitos from 7-11. We love to walk over there on our breaks and get 2 for $2. They are crispy, spicy and cheesy. Is there a better combination? I know…gas station food…priceless.
2. TWIZZLERS. The strawberry ones. I ate a pound of twizzlers last week while I was sick. Nothing sounded good, so twizzlers it was. Jason and I usually manage to eat a package during the first 3o minutes of a movie. Healthy, huh?
1. O-R-E-O. I love ‘em. I don’t dunk. I just eat and then drink milk. (Whole Vitamin-D aka Full Fat milk) Who doesn’t like oreos?
What do you like?
Since we are on the topic of food, I had a cheap and yummy dinner tonight. I had 2 margaritas, 3 tacos, and fried cheesecake with ice cream all for $12.70. Unbelievable. Usually two margaritas would be $10. We had a great happy hour. We = me and Mary. We had a “meeting” for school and decided to do it over dinner. We are the smartest teachers ever! Do you know how much more productive we would be if we had margaritas at school?! Legalities, schmagalities.
Good night! Much love to you all!
Here are a few more pictures of Colin. He is such a cutie. I can’t wait to meet him in person.
I know. You just want to kiss him, don’t you? Speaking of meeting this new addition to our family…. I will be home on March 21st!! Actually that’s not true. My flight gets in at 12:05 AM, so technically it will be March 22nd. : ) I will be in just in time to catch a few hours before heading out to race. If you haven’t signed up yet, here is the website with all of the information PRAY for a Cure .
Come out and see everyone. If you can’t make it, give the money and get a T-shirt. You know it’s a good cause. : ) I’m coming in town just to be there. BTW, I was so excited the other day. One of my girls wasn’t in my literacy class first thing in the morning, but made it to school for my Algebra class. I casually said something about missing her first thing in the morning and that I’m glad that she made it to school that day. She replied by telling me that she had been at the doctor getting her shot and thanked me for telling her about it. I often wonder if I share too much with the kids, but this told me that I didn’t. One of our teachers has a small group of girls that meet once a month for lunch. They met today and asked if I would come in next month to share Stephanie’s story. They want to see all of the news casts and hear about her website. I’m excited and can’t wait to share with them. Plus one of my girls makes awesome brownies and I know she’ll bring them.
I don’t know what my plans are for the weekend, but I will give you an update later.
My laptop (the Compaq) is sick. It no longer connects to the Internet. The little blue light on the front stays orange showing me that it’s not working. It’s so sad. I wasn’t sure what was wrong at first, so I asked Roark to take a look at it. He is very much a tech guy. He said that the wireless card is no longer showing up and that I needed to call HP. If I would give them all my info, he would talk to them for me.
I had nothing to do on my Saturday night, so I dial HP. I listen to the options, choose one, and then get told that I have to call another number. I’m not prepared for this so I’m scrambling around trying to find pen and paper. My call is then disconnected. Urgh! I call back and get the number. Isn’t it irritating when you dial a number and they want you to call another one. Just put the correct number out there first. Make it easy on us. If we’re calling needing help, it’s not too bright to have us call another number. You may end up with one irritated customer.
Luckily for John, I’m pretty easy going. John, the HP techie, and I are on first name basis after spending so long on the phone waiting, waiting. He wanted to do a system recovery and reset my computer back to its original form. This means that I would wipe out EVERYTHING on my laptop. So, I had to back up my pictures, itunes, and documents. The pictures took the longest. I had a ton of pictures on my laptop. We started chatting about Memphis and Colorado, since I had to change my address on my warranty information. Molly then took off to look out the window, so I jumped up to take a look. There were 5 deer wandering up the street. I opened the window just a bit to try and get a picture. It was too dark and then a car came. Molly tried to jump out of the window and I had to pull her back in. Meantime, John is sitting patiently listening to everything.
Pictures Backed-up: Check
On to the itunes, I quickly started the back-up and I think our conversation went to school, snowboarding, or computers. I talk a lot, so there is no telling. I do know that John has two cats, Ren and Stimpy I loved that cartoon when I was in middle school. Jana and I had drawings of them that some of the boys gave us. I think it was Tyler and Nathan that always drew them for us. See how easily distracted I am.
So, I finally get everything backed up and we start the system recovery. Now, John has told me that he will get me started and have me call back in the morning to report if it is working or not. My computer only took 16 minutes to recover, so he stayed on the phone. We chatted some more and laughed about how I was spending my Saturday evening.
Then, I restart my notebook, cross my fingers, my toes, my legs, whatever I could get crossed and hold my breath.
It didn’t work. The damn little light is still orange and the red X is still through the little computer showing me that I don’t have wireless. : ( So, John is shipping me a box to send my notebook to the doctor. I’m lucky that it is still under warranty. Poor computer. It’s not even a year old.
I hope you had a great Saturday night. : )
