So, did you miss me?

I hardly know where to start. Let's see you know the highlights of Friday. Saturday was great fun. We all straggled into the little cafe restaurant in the hotel where we were staying for breakfast. As irritating as the check in process and the NOT clean part of the hotel was, the breakfast buffet was reasonably priced and was great for a large crowd of 24 to eat quickly and with little fuss and bother.

We then put in a couple of hours poolside. The weather the whole weekend was just incredible. It was in the mid 80s and crystal clear blue skies...very welcome after the recent smoke and ash. Also there was no wind. Just awesome. If you've been to Vegas you know how unusual that is.

Then in the afternoon we split into groups to shop or gamble. Or, as in my case, help my only single sister, Sis #3 who lives in Georgia, work on her Match.Com profile. Yep, she's going to try the online hookup. She's the proto-typical 40-ish executive with grown children. She's been single for ...mmmmmmm, I want to say 10 years? She works, works, works and has been very successful but is ready now to think about men and date seriously. With her work and travel schedule unless she wants to troll bars or meet someone at work, and let me say she'd rather stick a fork in her eye, Match dot com is it for her to try and meet someone new.

The sisters spent at least a half hour debating what her best feature was. The profile lists practically every body part. Sis #3 was advocating for her calves. Calves? Huh? What? Who says their calves are their best feature? Sis #2 advocated for eyes, but Sis #1 (me) and Sis #4 said legs. And in our family even if it's only two votes...majority rules. So the legs have it. Or got it. Whatever. Obviously with that much discussion over each question we only finished half her profile before we had to go get ready for dinner.

Dinner was at AJ's Steakhouse at the Hard Rock. Good food. But the place was really too small to accommodate our group. Live and learn. It didn't stop us from having fun, but it just would have been nicer to not be so cramped.

I've got some pictures for you, but remember that I took these with my phone, so forgive the crap picture quality.

This is sort of dorky, but I love the fountains at Bellagio. The music, the water, the night were just so awesome. GG and I could have stayed there a lot longer, but alas we were with a group. I guess hanging around for three different songs is a little excessive. But, I liked it! I really, really liked it.

This was also taken Friday night. It's Beanie, his girlfriend and BFF. We are in Paris casino hotel and they were pooped so they sat by the fountain while we browsed and shopped. Light weights. Sheesh!

The following pictures are all from the dinner Saturday night.

We were at two long tables. The light is poor quality for my phone and there wasn't much room between tables to get a good shot. So, there you have it.




This is a picture of the nieces and nephews that attended. Hard to believe that it's only like one-third of the group.

These are the birthday people.

L to R: Beanie, 21; nephew 30; SIL 40; Bro 40; Bro 50

Fun was had by all. We got together in one of the hotel rooms after gambling a bit at the Hard Rock and drank our own booze and entertained each other and caught up a bit. Everyone got a kick out of Beanie and his friends who went to their room and had a Monopoly marathon ate snacks and drank. One beer. Each. Well, Beanie and BFF because his GF is too young to drink. My brothers couldn't believe it. Can I just say I was thrilled to pieces that Beanie doesn't seem interested in drinking or gambling? Praise be. I did note that Shmoo was looking at Vegas with a wicked twinkle in his eye and told us more than once he can't wait 'til he turns 21. Lord help us all.

Sunday most of us forgot about the time change. GG and I had discussed it on our way Friday, but after long hours and late hours we got all wonky and forgot. Anyway we all pretty much met for brunch in our same little cafe and began leaving one by one. It was fun, but just went by too fast.

On the way home we got a little surprise.

POP! One of our tires blew. We've never had anything like that happen before. Ever. GG is pretty meticulous about taking care of our cars. He thinks we ran over something. Pretty scary when a tire blows when you are going 75-80 mph. We got all new tires even though we had probably 6 to 10K on the other three and you can't replace just one. He decided not to take any chances. See? I told you he was meticulous.

Sis #4 who came early on Thursday stayed over Monday too which was nice. The day was still chock full of seeing her off, the tires, carting Shmoo back and forth to school, and getting the laundry caught up and prepared for the work week.

So another adventure in the history books. Bear with me catching up with all of you. My google reader tells me I have 158 posts to read. Yikes! Thanks for all your comments and good wishes on our trip. Now I've got Thanksgiving and Christmas to think about and, what else, books!