Las Vegas Day One

Here is a picture of me, Jimmy, and Tina. We flew out of the Houston International Airport. We had to get up at 3:00 in the morning so that we could get to the airport on time. Never again will I book a flight out at 7:00 a.m.

Since we left SO early, we arrived in Vegas at 8:20 a.m. We took a shuttle bus to the hotel but had to check our bags since it was too early to check in. We were starving but no one was serving lunch yet. We wound up eating a second breakfast at a restaurant inside the hotel.

We walked around a little, gambled a little, and were then able to check in. We went to our room and took a nap to recover from our early arrival time.

We stayed at the Luxor on the strip. Here's a shot from inside the hotel. We stayed in the pyramid portion of the hotel. It was very cool inside.

After a nap we were ready to go. Jimmy and I took a cab to Treasure Island (stop laughing - the two hotels are pretty far apart and we were still really tired!)

At Treasure Island we stood in line for almost an hour to pick up our tickets to Mystere, which is one of the shows that Cirque du Soleil performs.

We ate dinner at Kahunaville where Tina bought me a drink that was larger than my head!
This was a huge seafood appetizer that Tina and I shared for dinner. The grilled shrimp were fantastic
The waitress was sweet and took this picture for us. Tina wanted to have photographic proof that I actually had a drink.

We still had a little time before the show so we went to the casino and gambled a little. I won some quarters but the drink had obviously gone to my head because I was unable to convert the number of quarters I won into dollars. A text message to Veronica later and I knew that I won $18.00. However, by the time she got back to me I had already lost it! Oh well, easy come, easy go as they say.

Mystere was AWESOME! I had no idea what to expect out of it and it was breath taking. I am really glad that we went to see it.

After the show Tina persuaded us to walk back to the hotel. "It's not that far," she insisted. We walked by the Venetian and saw the gondolas and by the Mirage. The volcano was erupting but we were too late to get a spot up close enough to really see it.

We then started walking back to the hotel.

We walked . . .

and walked . . .

and walked . . .

An hour later we stopped for a bottle of water and I drank half of it in one drink.

We proceeded to walk some more.

A total of an hour and a half later we were back at the hotel.

So many people told me that the hotels were not as close to each other as they seemed, and you know what???

THEY WERE RIGHT!

Oh, well. It was really neat to see everything all lit up at night. However, due to some construction, you could only walk on one side of the street at some points so it was pretty crowded.

When we got back to the hotel we gambled a little and then turned in early. (Is it considered jet lag when you fly somewhere with a two hour time difference??)

Meagan Competes and Succeeds!

On Sunday afternoon Meagan competed in her first Bible Drill competition. She earned a rating of Superior. We are so proud of her. She has worked very hard all year to learn all of the books of the bible, lots of scripture references, and being able to find any part of her bible in less than 10 seconds. Her skills amaze me. I am proud of the hard work she has put into learning all of this new material. I also want to thank the wonderful people who organize all of the Bible Drill activities at our church. Miss M, Miss S, and Miss W your hard work is appreciated!

Meagan will continue on to the Association Drill in a few weeks and hopefully on to the State Drill next month. We know she is going to do a great job!

We're Back!!! (said in a sing song voice)

I haven't blogged in forever (my mom has reminded me of this EVERY time she talks to me) so here's a quick recap:

March 9 - 13 The last week of school before spring break is always crazy. I can't even remember what I did to tell you the truth. Oh yes, I remember now . . . the weekend before (March 7th) my DI team competed in their regional tournament. Meagan and I left the house at 5:45 AM and didn't return until 8:00 PM. Yes, you read that right. We were gone from the house for a total of 13 hours! My kids did a GREAT job, even if they didn't win a medal (sniff . . . sniff . . . sniff) I thought we were all done with DI and then come to find out people from Central Office were coming to school on Friday morning to watch my kids perform . . . when I hadn't planned on my kids performing. Anyway, I freaked out and then got over it and the kids did their play again. And everyone loved it. Big sigh of relief. Crisis averted.

This week was also Texas Public School Week. I had helped my counselor and principal put together a calendar of activities for the week so I was busy all week making sure we were ready for the events planned for each day. Monday was simple - kids wrote about what they wanted to be when they grow up, Tuesday seeds were planted, Wednesday college t-shirt/field trip day, Thursday made a graduation hat out of 500 cupcakes, and Friday we planned a picnic. Did I mention that a front blew in on Wednesday night bringing rain and temps in the high 40's??? Needless to say, the picnic was shot. I delivered fruit cups and decorated water bottles to each teacher and collapsed in my room in the afternoon and waited for the day to end.

Why did I want the day to end you ask??? Because we were going to VEGAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and I needed to pack!

Garrett's PTA Program

In Februrary the kinder and first grade studnets performed at the school's monthly PTA program.

Here's a picture of Garrett at our house before the program. I got some really cute ones during the program but there were too many other kids in them to post them on the internet.

The kids sang three songs. Garrett's favorite was the Groundhog Hop. It's a really cute song about the groundhog seeing his shadow.

Garrett LOVES music and Miss Y. Thanks for all of your hard work!

Playtime at the park

At the end of January we had a beautiful weekend. Meagan was gone to Bible Drill so Jimmy and I took Garrett to an elementary school near our house. We went to practice shooting baskets for basketball but when we got there we discovered that the school removes their rims during the weekend. (Bigger kids will come along and hang off of the rims and ruin them.)

We walked a couple of laps (all of our elementary schools have 1/4 mile tracks) and then played on the playground equipment. This is the school where Garrett went to prekindergarten so these are his old stomping grounds so to speak.

I played around with my new camera some more. I'm getting better with it but I'm still no where near where I would like to be with it. I have learned to be more patient between pictures so I'm getting better pictures now.

These pictures turned out nice because of the bright sunlight. (Well, in my opinion anyway.)

The Young Scientist

I mentioned in a previous post that Garrett had won at his school's science fair. Well, I finally found the cord to the camera so here are the pictures.

If it hadn't have been for Garrett constantly nagging me, I probably wouldn't even have done a science fair project with him. At his school entering the science fair isn't required until you get to second grade.

Anyway, he kept nagging me and so the week before the science fair we put together a project. He made a ramp out of a piece of wood and two different boxes. We measured how far his toy car traveled with both ramps. He had said the higher ramp would make the car go farther and he was right.

It was so cute to watch how serious he was during the actual experiment. He got a piece of paper and wrote down the numbers off of the measuring stick after he let each car go down the ramp.

His project will go to the district science fair at the end of March. All six of the elementary schools in our town send projects to the district science fair. Winners from the district science fair go on to compete in the Coastal Bend Science Fair which takes places in a large city about 45 minutes from us.

We will just have to wait and see what happens!

Amazing Coconut Pie

This is one of the desserts I served at the Pampered Chef party that I had on Thursday night. (I also made a Pineapple Upside Down Cake.)

Everyone really enjoyed it. I had a living room full of people and we had a good time.

I also got lots of free stuff for hosting a party. I'll do a post on those items when they come in.

For now here is the recipie for this amazing pie:

Amazing Coconut Pie

(found on the back of a Baker’s Angel Flake Sweetened Coconut bag)

Ingredients
2 cups milk
¾ cup sugar
½ cup all-purpose baking mix
4 eggs
¼ cup (½ stick) butter, softened
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/3 cups coconut

Directions

Place milk, sugar, baking mix, eggs, butter, and vanilla in blender container; cover. Blend on low speed for 3 minutes. Pour into greased 9 inch pie plate. (I spray mine with Pam.)

Sprinkle with coconut.

Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 40 minutes or until center of pie is set and top is golden brown. Serve warm or cool on wire rack. Store leftover pie in refrigerator.

Makes 8 servings.