I'm back

Hello. I'm still in the land of the living. The kids went to visit the grandparents for a week so Mr. Fantastic and I headed off to Las Vegas for a few days. All in all it was fun, because how can 4 days alone with your husband without the kids NOT be fun? We stayed at the Mandalay Bay hotel, walked several miles a day, but ate enough to gain weight anyway. For my birthday, hubby took me to a restaurant called Hugo's Cellar in downtown Las Vegas, Fremont Street. It was possibly one of the nicest and most romantic restaurants I've ever been to and the food, service, everything was fabulous.

Other than that, we did the usual Vegas stuff. I didn't have much luck gambling. I tried to spend $5 on a video poker machine, but the computers in the casino went down just then and it wouldn't work so it gave me a ticket thing to use on another machine. I spent about 10 minutes trying to gamble, then gave up and cashed in my ticket. We saw all the fancy hotels, went to our hotel pool and spent a bit of time lazing around in our hotel room doing nothing, which is what vacations are all about anyway isn't it?

After we got back I headed to Lubbock for my Uncle's 70th birthday party. Here's the birthday boy with his daughter:

Looks pretty good for 70, huh? We all had ice cream sundaes and the kids swam. When I'm 70 I hope I have a pool with a basketball goal and kids who will throw me a surprise party! Here's a picture of the kids with their cousins and second cousins:

I'll have to admit here that I'm not exactly sure which boy cousin is which. The teenage girl on the left is my cousin Stacia's daughter Kelsey and the other two girls are my brother's daughters. You know my two.

I met up with the kids and my parents in Lubbock and they took me back to Midland for a few days. We did a few things there, but mostly just hung out while the kids played outside. Dad is in the middle of radiation for skin cancer (basel cell, not the bad one) so he was a bit tired after having the kids all week then trekking to Lubbock on Sunday. Mom and I did take the kids to the children's museum and an old-fashioned soda fountain.

I had a great vacation, but it's good to be home. Right now my boys are playing upstairs with the neighbor and I plan to repot some plants tonight. My eggplants are finally getting ripe so I had grilled eggplant for lunch. Ahhh. Life is good.