To Vegas

We start this trip with heavy hearts. Thursday night Steven Butler went to be with the Lord after a 2.5 year battle with brain cancer. He leaves behind his wife and my dear friend Tracy, Sam age 15 who is Parker’s best friend, Max age 13 who is Preston’s friend, Spencer age 10 and Molly age 8, my sweet special “little girl” friend. We are sad that we will miss his funeral and this time with this special family. Please keep them in your prayers.

The taxi arrived right on time at 8am. We loaded up and got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. We traveled with 2 large bags which cost $25 each and 8 carry ons which contained 3 laptops, 1 Wii, my hiking stick, and various books, knitting, and DSs.

We flew from HSV to ATL. Grabbed lunch there then on to Las Vegas. This plane had screens on the backs of the seats. WAY COOL! Preston purchased a $5 game set which he and Parker shared by switching seats. Ray enjoyed listening to music. Parker and I watched The Office, some World Cup soccer, an old baseball classic game and followed the plane on a real time map. I knitted most of the time and listened to the book Snow Blind on my iPod. All in all those screens made the 4 hour trip go very quickly.


We arrived in Vegas around 3:45 local time. Grabbed a taxi to take us to Circus Circus. Checked in to room 27703, on the 27th floor of Skyline Tower.

We opted for pizza in the room. After pizza revived us we went down to the Promenade/Casino/Circus area. The boys had a free ride on the roller coaster, the Canyon Blaster, which was really awesome -2 loops/ 2 corkscrews. I gambled $1 and won 5 free games but won no money. Thus ends my gambling career. We went to the Circus and saw an amazing juggler. He juggled 5 bowling pins, 4 bowling pins and a soccer ball on his head, some rings, and then got on stilts and bounced the ball on a platform which he was balancing on his forehead while juggling 4 bowling pins. Not bad. But all in all…I gotta say…. We aren’t loving Vegas… we are too cheap and I find incredibly disturbing to see thousands of people feeding money into machines. And KIDS - I just don’t understand why in the world people would bring their kids, babies just weeks old, to Vegas. For us Vegas was the best place to pick up the RV. In fact we can see the RV park right below our window. I think we’ll all be ready to get on the road.

Best parts of the day:

Ray: it was Friday and I wasn’t at work

Kerry: TV on the back of airplane seats and almost completing Leanne’s first knitted dishcloth

Parker: Coaster

Preston: the flights b/c they had the computers on the back of the seats and the juggler and roller coaster

Saturday we are supposed to meet the RV guy at 10am then off to Wal-Mart then Hoover Dam.