Back From Las Vegas and Christmas...

The trip to Las Vegas was pretty crazy, as they usually are. But, this one was especially crazy. The weather both ways was stormy and scary. We left a little after 3am on 12/21 and took the long way around, through Salt Lake City, to hopefully not get too hung up in the alternative little 2 lane roads - The SLC route is all freeway. The weather was very nasty in all the higher mountain parts, especially in the dark. It snowed and blew hard for about 1/2 of the trip. Luckily we took the 4 wheel drive Jeep, which handled it all pretty well, considering what was happening. We had a number of boxes of wedding materials and Christmas gifts that we ended up attaching to the back of the Jeep on the little trailer hitch attached platform we use for the dirt bike. Its about 2 feet by 5 feet and after triple wrapping all the boxes and cinching them all down well, all survived without problems after we got all the frozen ice and road sludge off of the outer tarps.

The quoted time for the trip was about 9 1/2 hours, but it ended up taking us almost 12 hours. My arms and legs hurt for days from all the stress of driving through it all in the ice and snow.

While there in Las Vegas, we stayed at the Hilton, where the wedding was held. The wedding went well as did the big dinner afterwards at Benihanas. All the family from Pam's side were there and I got to met a lot of them for the first time. Ryan and Chris from my side of the family also drove in from California and we had great visits. They also took back all the Keithley family Christmas gift boxes that we brought down on the Jeep.

We ended up staying an extra night so I didn't have to drive back on my birthday, which ended up being a good thing for the extra rest and extra trip to Frys Electronics. We got some great deals on some parts that are hard to come by around here.

Tom, the groom from the UK, bought a Apple IMAC from Frys. He had to get one so he could support his customers that bought them for their kids - Apple is hooked into their schools over there also I guess. I had really never played with one, but am really quite impressed with the hardware part of it. Enough said about that...

All in all, things went well in Las Vegas. Pam and I didn't do much of the entertainment that was available. We mostly visited with family and friends that we hadn't seen in a while, coordinated social events, and did a little light gambling which turned out as expected...

On the trip back, we took the shorter, more direct route and again encountered some real nasty areas of snow and ice, but made it back safe and sound.

When we finally did get home, the cats were REAL happy to see us and all was in pretty good shape. Our neighbor, Boyd, had been coming over to pick up all the gifts that had been shipped here during our trip. Thank goodness for that as the weather here was awful also and he said that in the hour or so that the gifts were sitting outside under the porch, by the front door, the wind and snow had started to get them wet, but he saved them all. Well, except for some 'Real Expensive Pears' that T&A&A sent. They either got frozen or something, because when we opened them up, they were black and mushy. All the other gifts were in great shape and we thank all the senders for the good thoughts...

I cannot start to discuss all the great gifts we received and are so grateful for right now, but will soon. I have been trying to recover from the trip, host our guests and deal with the weather. It snowed here enough last night that Jade and Tom were out sledding down the driveway and had big fun.

I will write more as I climb out of this pail of Morass that I have been working on here in DaHo...