Palazzo VS Caesar

I have not scheduled the girls for much this summer.  This is pretty normal for us.  But I do not want this summer to slip by and have them look at me all sad and whiny come September and have them say "But we didn't DO ANYTHING all SUMMER!!!"
Last summer, with Thing 2's broken arm, and our selling the house and moving, it was what Judy Moody would call a total bummer summer.  But this year I am willing to expend a little energy to try and keep it from being bummer-ish.

The first week after school was out we went to Vegas.  Hubby has had a conference in Vegas nearly the same week for several years.  We've skipped it once or twice in order for the girls to attend the "end of year festival" at school, but this year they bumped the conference to the week after school let out, so we were able to attend both the end of year festival at our old school, and the Vegas conference.
We have been to Las Vegas several times now, know our way around the area we stay in, and have gotten to enjoy Vegas.  The girls and I sleep in, lounge by the pool, wander the hotels and the area and laze around the hotel room.  When the conference is done for the day and Hubby comes back we wander around the hotels or the shops and find somewhere to eat.  Each trip we take the girls to one show - The Mystere Cirque du Soleil show one year, the Jousting Knights in shining armor dinner one year...  There might have been a couple years the girls were just too little to take anywhere... I have a memory of carrying a sleeping girl on my back all the way back to the hotel from the movie theater on the opposite end of Las Vegas Avenue.

The conference has always been held at the Palazzo hotel.  I have developed a deep love for the Palazzo.  Because:
1)  I like the Venetian hotel canal and shops, which connect the two hotels.  (not that I could ever in my wildest dreams afford anything there, it's just a nice place to walk)
2)  Denny's is right on the other side of the Venetian.
3)  There is a nice mall kitty-corner across from the Palazzo.
4)  The room is massive - a large TV in the bathroom, one at the foot of the two queen beds, and one in the adjoining sunken living room with the sectional sofa and huge coffee table.  That's right, THREE TVs.  Large ones.  The room was so much bigger and more spacious than our cute little 100 year old house, it was a real change for us.  The girls could spend an hour just jumping from the coffee table, to the couch, to the short wall room divider (covered with marble and about three feet tall), to the first bed, to the 2nd bed... and back again.  (Not that I would ever condone jumping around on the furniture like wild Indians... but...  If it keeps them happy while I can cruise the internet for a while, I'm inclined to overlook a lot of normally marginal behavior.)
This is a picture off the internet of the Palazzo hotel room.  Looking from the beds into the living room area.  It is a mirror image room of the next picture, but it's like the ones we've stayed in before.

 This is looking from the other direction.  Note the terribly handy benches at the foot of the beds.

 The bathroom was bigger than my TV room at our old house.  The huge tub and shower are off to your left out of the picture.  The door in the middle goes to the toilet.

I realize the "ooh poor me I used to be able to stay in the lap of luxury shown here" angle is pretty weak... but this is as much a diary as a blog, so there it is.
5)  The rooms on one side of the Palazzo overlook the Treasure Island hotel, where the pirate ship battle goes on every half hour or so.  The last time we stayed at the Palazzo, we had a great view of the pirate battle.  We watched it several times, the girls in their pajamas sitting on the window ledge looking out over the city.
6)  There was a little mini-market right near the elevators at ground level.  It was ridiculously overpriced, but I could get some fruit or a bagel or a cup of cereal and a container of milk.  It was workable.


So.  We loved the Palazzo.


However we learned that our love for the Palazzo will have to go unrequited.  Because the conference has moved to Caesar's Palace two years ago, and due to some financial kerfuffle and lots of shouting and hurt feelings (on the part of the conference management that Hubby talked to) they won't be going back.


Ceasar's Palace is great.
But it isn't the Palazzo.
There wasn't a sunken living room.  There wasn't sprawl out seating, there was one little sofa, and two rather small arm chairs.  The bathroom was big, but not as big.  Denny's was a longer walk away.  The pool was closer, but the big padded couches right in front of the pool were all reserved and you get chased off by the drink girls in the skimpy costumes if you sit on them without checking with the cabana boys first.  The walk from our room to ANYWHERE was about seven minutes or longer.  There was no market, nowhere to buy any little things you'd forgotten, or a piece of fruit.  The closest food I found was a little food court. Breakfast selections were extremely limited.  But it was the most likely thing I could find without leaving the hotel, or having to sit down and have a formal breakfast. To get there I had to go down the elevators, by the pool, cut through a corner of the casino, though the hall by some shops, past a reproduction of the David, past three or very pricey restaurants, cut through another corner of the casino, and up a ramp.  Then, back, with my arms full of paper bags and a cardboard drink caddy of juices.
The first night we couldn't find a good restaurant and it was getting late, so we broke down and went back to the hotel room and ordered room service for the girls.  YIKES!!!  Won't be doing that again!
While I took care of the room service order and waited with the girls for it to come, Hubby went out roaming to find some food for me and himself.  He picked up a take out salad for me, and a burger for himself, and returned about the time the girls were wrapping up their meal.  He forgot to get me a fork.  He nearly cried.  Lucky for him, I had noticed that there was a very very limited Starbucks not too far from the elevators, and I ran down and got one.  Though of course I could have just used the room service fork... Didn't think about that until I was already back.
Too much detail.  Sorry.  This is what a $73 room service meal looks like.

We still had a lovely time, spent a lot more time at the pool than we usually do during our Vegas vacations, but I brought a lot of sunscreen, and like usual, only sunburned myself. We took the girls to the Blue Man show, they absolutely loved it.

We watched the Bellagio fountain, which we hadn't seen before.  We even waited through the break in between to see a couple of the fountain shows.

We spent quite a bit of time at the pool.

We had to walk around the Venetian to get the Blue Man tickets.

 

Of course one of the big things about Vegas is the food.  This is one of my problems with Vegas.  There is often good food, but so much more than you really want, and you pay so much for it than you'd expect.  That's why the girls and I often sneak off to Denny's for some regular food.  But you get what you pay for, I suppose.  This was my lunch at Denny's.  I swear this was the plate I was handed.  Just like this.

Compare that to breakfast I had at my new favorite Vegas eatery, Hash House a Go Go.  This is some sort of chicken eggs benedict, just as it was handed to me. It might not look like the overwhelmingly delicious dish it was, but it was Absolutely Divine. My only frustration was that we'd eaten at the Cheesecake Factory the night before and I was still mostly full from that. I didn't get to eat much of this wonderful delicacy before I was just ready to pop.
  We stopped at the Hoover Dam on the way out of Vegas.  It was pretty interesting.  We hung out in the Dam snack store and had some Dam ice cream before we left because it was so darned hot.  We looked at buying a Dam tee-shirt in the Dam gift shop, but couldn't find any we liked.  Hubby showed Thing 2 the bottom of the Dam "DON'T LET GO OF ME DADDY!!!"  Thing 1 backed away quick when she saw him turn to her with that big smile on his face. Then we got back on the Dam road and headed home. 

Of course anyone who's read all the Percy Jackson novels (like we have) knows these Dam angels are just hanging out until they can fly off to San Francisco to party with some angel statues there... I forget exactly where.

We had a darned fine time.
 

School's out, and We Have Dirt!

Last night we attended the "end of school" festival from our old school.  Stupid me took no pictures.  Thing 2 was just totally excited for the festival, but Thing 1 was a little worried that she'd be sad to see her old friends.  When we got there, the kids ran off and played and talked to all their old friends.  I saw all my old friends, and surprised myself by launching into my own melancholy.  The girls had a great time, and I enjoyed seeing everyone, but it was sad to see how much of a life we gave up to move here.  Having spent ten years down there, very heavily involved in the school, and church, there were lots of people I left behind too.  You don't realize what you're losing until it's lost.  Sigh.

Today I showed up to pick up the girls from their last day of school to find every parking space full, and cars all along the road in all directions.  I've never seen it so crowded!  What am I missing?  What is it all the other parents know is going on that I don't?
They have a tradition at the school to "clap out" the fifth graders, who are going on to the 6-7 grade school next year.  All the other kids and teachers line up and the outgoing fifth graders, dressed in wild wigs and apparently the most colorful, outrageous clothing they could find, run between the clappers.  It was kind of cute, I wish I had taken my phone so I'd have a picture.


The girls wanted to do something special after school.  I agreed to take them out for pizza for dinner, which has recently been redecided to just go get a pizza and come back and eat in front of a movie on the TV.  That's our idea of a celebration.  One woman I was standing with said she's going to take her kids to the amusement park, about an hour away.  Oooh, good idea!  Wish I'd thought of that!  Hmmm, not too excited about going, though, and the girls wouldn't want to go without Hubby.


SO glad school's out, this has been a really hard year for Thing 1.  Thing 2 is planning on having twice as much fun as normal, to make up for having a broken arm/no fun last year.

Instead of starting a new post, I'm just going to throw in some pictures of the garage deconstruction.
In order to take some of the slope off the horribly sloped driveway, we're digging down to lower the garage floor, then will slope it out to the road.  The cement was horribly pocked and pitted and needed to go anyway.  As soon as they took off the cement in the garage, they hit very hard rock that had to be jackhammered out.  A one day scoop job turned into a week of jackhammering and dragging rocks out.  You can see the lowered garage floor under the garage door.

The funny thing is that Hubby and I simultaneously and independently both came to the conclusion that we can use the rocks pulled out of the garage to build a rock wall in front of the house, to the right, to make a place to put some trees.  The excavator, a very nice little retired guy who's been finding every way he can to save us money, said he's built a couple of rock walls and will be happy to put the rocks aside, then move them over where we want to, and put the dirt on top of it.  The rock wall will be off to the right.

We just finish the basement and moved to the garage, before the basement even stopped smelling like new paint.  We must be gluttons for punishment.  My bank account is totally crippled.  I'm so looking forward to this being all over with.  The kitchen, which we knew when we moved in needed to be remodeled, is probably pushed back five years.  Sigh. 

Photo stalker

We went downtown for Hubby to see Thing 1's art at the exhibit.
We were walking toward the gallery, and I happened to turn around and see a very old little man on the street motioning in our general direction.  Some people were coming the other way, and I thought surely he's with them.  We walked a little farther, and I noticed he was still following us, with a little smile on his face, and he motioned to me again.  He seemed pretty harmless so I went back and talked to him.

Turns out he lived just up the street, and saw us and thought we were a cute family.  He offered to take our picture. I think people in town see so many out of towners, they have been conditioned to be "tourist friendly."  


I let him take a picture of us with my phone.
Several people we talked to that evening talked to us like we were tourists, we quickly learned to smile and nod and accept their hospitality, and not tell them we are actually locals unless they asked specifically where we were from. 

In any event I got a picture of myself out of it, since I'm usually the one behind the camera, and consider myself less photogenic than the rest of my cute family, it is kind of rare.

Everyday Art

Thing 1 has been taking an art class after school this year.  With the decrease in art on a regular basis from our last school to this one, the after school art program has been a life saver.  The class meets at the school, Thing 1 just stays late once a week for it.  The teacher loves her.  One of my favorite days was when they had done a shaded pencil drawing.  I came in to pick up Thing 1 and was standing over her admiring her work after everyone else had gone.  The teacher agreed with me that Thing 1's picture was amazing, then picked up her drawing and invited me to come over to the board where she had already posted the other kid's drawings.  She held it up to show me the whole group.  The difference in skill level was not subtle at all.  Thing 1 was obviously years ahead in this area.  What I thought was funny was how the teacher didn't say anything at all negative about the other kid's drawings, or point out how much more advanced Thing 1's looked... she just watched my face with this cute little smile, wanting to see it register with me the comparative difference in Thing 1's picture.   Of course we LOVE the teacher too.  She seems very equal in  her praise for all the kids' stuff, but it seems the class in general recognizes that Thing 1 has a knack for it.
The teacher is affiliated with a very prestigious art center and gallery in town.  She told the kids that two of their projects, a vase and a chair painting, would be considered for the kid's art show at the gallery.


Thing 1 was thrilled when it was announced that both of her projects were chosen.  Only three of each of the two projects were accepted from her school, and Thing 1 was the only one who had both of hers accepted.

My folks came down to see the opening last month.


Thing 1's vase was one of my favorite things she's done with the program.

 

She was really proud of how she'd made the tendrils come up around the vase, how it looked kind of like it was growing. It had really annoyed her that a couple other kids saw what she was doing and started to copy her, with their own snaky parts winding up the side of the vase.  When I was picking her up that day, she had to stop and write a little circled C copywrite symbol on the bottom.

Her chair picture was a "book chair." 

It was a really exciting afternoon for her. They treated the kids like professional artists. One of the museum staff came around and interviewed her on camera.   The exhibit was called "Everyday Art," and in the interview Thing 1 talked in a kind of formal "interview" voice and explained how she sees art in objects that she uses every day.  She must have said "Every Day" eight times.  It was so cute to see her a little flustered but totally excited and proud of herself.

I sure hope some day she has an exhibit of her own in a gallery somewhere.

Moms

We celebrated Mother's Day for my mom at my brother and sister-in-law's house on Saturday.  My whole family was there, my sister and her husband came down, and my nieces were all there.  It was lovely.It was the first day they'd had their pool open in their new house.  The three youngest girls - my two and my brother's youngest - did not get out of the pool except to eat, and then when we FORCED them because Grandma was opening her presents.  After the party ended, and my SIL let our girls join her youngest for hot bath in the big master tub, and then a demonstration of my brother's 3D home movie theater system (it really is better than in the public movie theater,) and a half hour drive home, it was 11:00 pm before we got the kids to bed.
Hubby had a plane to catch on Sunday morning, and had to leave at 8:30 a.m.  So breakfast was a lovely if rather quick celebration.  Everyone gave me their presents - the girls had made all of theirs this year, precluding Hubby's need to take them on a quick Saturday afternoon shopping trip that we wouldn't have had time for anyway.  And I must say the girls did a LOVELY job.  Hubby really excels in the gift giving department, though he just can't seem to avoid the jewelry stores, despite my firm lecture of "We're remodeling the house, and you brought me back that incredible fish necklace from Australia, so we just can't afford for you to blow a big wad on for me on Mother's Day, so DON'T DO IT!"
Can you believe this?  I'm complaining about getting too much jewelry for Mother's Day.    
Anyway, Hubby sprinted out the door, and I sprinted to get the girls ready for Church ("Please please please can't we skip it?  We're tired, we're so tired, and I think my stomach feels weird.  Yeah, I'm sure it does. There's something weird going on down there.  I think it's my stomach.  Please please please? No?  Did I tell you I have a toothache, too?") and we made it on time.
Both girls promptly fell asleep, one laying across my lap, one gripping my arm.
In the middle of the meeting I had to wake them up to go up to the front to sing with the rest of the kids.  Thing 2 was a little disoriented and kept trying to go the wrong way until I bodily turned her around and pointed to all the rest of the kids in the church lined up in front.  Thing 1 started whimpering and saying "I don't WANT to!" and I whispered to her in my best hushed but serious whisper; "You mean to tell me Every Other Child in this church loves their mother enough to go up there and sing to her, but you're the Only One who is refusing, and is sitting down here in the congregation?  The Only One not singing to their Mother?"  Yes.  I used guilt. I feel guilty for using guilt...  She harrumphed and started dramatically trying to get around me between the pews, refused to climb over my legs to get to the aisle, so I stood up and helped her sidle by, completely embarrassing her, as anything that draws attention to her at all embarrasses her. 

They sang. I could barely see my kids' heads between the other kids, and I don't know how much Thing 1 actually sang... but they were up there.  I was minorly frustrated that it took so much manipulation on my part.  
I sat in the congregation listening.
Based on my brief blog research, what most mothers, including myself, would really like for Mother's day can be summarized into two categories - 
1) pretending (ironically) that you don't have kids for one day (aka doing a lot of uninterrupted sleeping), and/or 
2) having no battles with the kids, either between the kids themselves or with you and the kids.
My kids rarely fight, and they don't often fight with me... much.  But the sleep thing... that I could have gotten into.  But alas, alack, I knew it was not in the cards for me.
I got a little teary.  It was very sweet.  I heard the woman on the other side behind me sniffling.  Then I started crying.  Not totally sure why.  The embarrassing thing is when it didn't stop after my eyes kind of welled up and I sat there thinking why in the world am I doing this?  Do I wipe my eyes, the gesture of which brings attention to the fact that I'm crying?  Or do I just sit there letting the tears roll down my face and hope my shirt doesn't get wet?  And of course you can't sniffle because then everyone for five pews knows you're crying... but if I don't sniffle and my nose backs up and becomes a huge problem...   Then my face got red, and I started wondering if this is a hot flash.  I haven't really started getting hot flashes yet, but I think they must feel something like this.


By the time the kids were done singing and they came back down, my face must have been Stop sign red, I had tears running down my face, and I couldn't find any Kleenex in my church bag.  Thing 2 looked me in the face and asked a couple times if I was all right.  Fine, fine, that was just sweet.  They both snuggled up to me again and fell back to sleep.  I regained control.  The meeting ended.
I let myself be talked into going home, and skipping the two other meetings. They were obviously tired, and I was too.


The skipping church bargain was that when we got home and they'd changed clothes, they had to nap until church would be over.
Thing 1 slept until well after the prescribed time, Thing 2 slept about 20 minutes then came in and laid next to me whining that she wasn't tired.  After shushing her unsuccessfully for a while as she was keeping me awake I told her to quietly play the iPad until her sister woke up.

Then because Thing 1 hadn't read the biography she was supposed to have completed by Monday I read it to her. She hadn't read it for the past two weeks because she'd been able to tell in the two pages she had read that there was a noticeable lack of magic in the book (rendering it totally uninteresting).  It really is a great biography about Wilbur and Orville Wright, which is why I chose it, and it took me two hours to read it to her.  She loved it, as I expected.

She was pretty stoked by the time we were done, I think she wanted to try out a few flying ideas in the back yard.  I was pretty tired.  
Then because Thing 2 is in the district spelling bee on Thursday and only got the words last week, I spent about 10 minutes guilting her into letting me help her spell some of the words on the list.  We worked on that for about an hour.


We read with Hubby on Skype, I ordered a pizza to be delivered, I watched part of a movie with the girls, then sent them to bed.


Mother's Day is fine, it's often nice, but it's rarely all it's cracked up to be.  Expectations are too high, the kids try so hard to give you a wonderful day but so many other things get in the way.

They looked so cute I forced them to pose in the back yard.


Because their gifts were really nice hand made treasures, I feel compelled to take pictures.


Thing 1 made this plaque in school. 

 Thing 2 made a magnet.

 

They both made a fused glass thing at the school arts festival.  It was an optional craft, neither one wanted to do it, but I reminded them repeatedly that mother's day was coming up and I like glass and THEY HAD BETTER GET OVER THERE AND MAKE ONE.  So I got these!  They're not huge and I'm not sure what to do with them... make them into necklaces, or hang them in the window... not sure.  But they're neat, and the kids were pretty excited to give them to me.  Which is even neater.

Thus ends Mother's Day for another year.

Let there be lights

The bathroom lights.  FINALLY!

My friend who had helped me pick out paint colors and such came by today, and assured me that they're lovely.  The reason, she said, that they're not wowing me is because they aren't the pendants that I had pictured in my head.  But if I didn't have that picture stuck in my head, I'd like the lights more.  But even these lights I think they should be further apart.  And you can see if they were pendants, they'd be hitting you in the head.  Why would the contractor put the light holes there?!?!

She assured me the lines on the lights match the cabinet pulls, and the other stuff in the bathroom.
I know she's right, and they are nice, but they're still not what I had pictured in my head.

 The doors for the bedroom closet finally came today!  The whole drama of the closet is done!  Except now I get to put in all the components.  I started, but had to stop to make dinner.  Darned those kids and their tiny stomachs!

 You can see where the IKEA cabinet stops, and where my clever cabinet maker took it to the ceiling, and added the top part for the door to close on.  He cut the piece down so that little cloth drawer thing will fit in right at the top.  You wouldn't know they weren't built in!  Turns out I didn't save a ton of money, what with the custom doors.  But I saved some.  And now since it's all IKEA component-like, I can figure out what I want in it.  The left side has to be open at the bottom, you can just see the little panel there on the left- that's the access to the water main. 
All that's left is a chandelier for above the bed there!
 Oh, and putting everything away.  I half filled Hubby's bay in the garage with cardboard boxes this week.  When he comes home tonight he'll have to park in the driveway.  But progress comes with sacrifice!

I Fought The Lawn, and The Lawn Won

While waiting for the dishwasher repairman today, I decided to mow the front yard.


There is this whole mulching vs bagging issue.  I had no idea there was an issue until today.  I just knew my husband had a discussion with the guy at Home Depot about mulching.  So I figured we were mulchers.  I would mulch.


So I started mowing the lawn.  I did not bag, I mulched.  I left behind an unsightly trail of lumpy clumps and skimmed lawn trimmings.  It was unattractive.  Then I remembered hearing my dad say something about if you go over the lawn again, it will cut the leftovers even smaller, and that would improve the mulch.  Or something like that.
So I mowed again.
It didn't improve anything.

Many women in my situation would call their husband at this point.  But my husband is probably talking to the vice president of a VERY MAJOR company that I may or may not be able to mention, or is in a meeting with a group of highly paid executives, or whatever, and just can't take calls from his wife about the lawn mower.  So I don't call him in the middle of the day.  
I turn to my other go-to guys.
My Dad, first, because he's retired.  But he was here until 10:30 last night installing my new bathroom lights (photos to follow) and then had a two hour drive home.  This is a man who usually is tucked in bed with the covers pulled up to his chin and snoring by 10:00.  My mother informed me he was still snoring when I called around 9:00 a.m. this morning.
So I called my brother.
First I need to say I got totally lucky in the brother department.  I knocked it out of the ballpark, so to speak.  In the whole sibling department, really, as my sister is INCREDIBLE, but at this moment I'm focusing on my brother.  Who is married with four daughters and has a busy full time job, yet he took an hour out of his morning to advise me on lawns, lawn care, lawn mowers, and lawn mower maintenance.  
After we had discussed everything else that needed to be discussed, we got down to the brass tacks of lawns, and mulching.  First he told me I need to bring him my lawn mower blade so he can sharpen it.  Because nothing slows down a mower more than a dull blade.
Then he told me that unless I'm trimming less than an inch off the lawn, and unless it's hot enough to turn my yard into the compost environment required to properly mulch, I should bag.
All right.  So I wrap up the conversation and go back to mow again, this time with the bag.  I went ten yards, hit a metal sprinkler head and bent the blade out of shape.
A trip to Home Depot later, I returned with a new blade ($17, cheaper than having a blacksmith repair my old one, the Home Depot guy assured me), and proceeded to mow for the 3rd time in one day.  
But now my law has that lovely tartan pattern that my brother said is typical of Wrigley Field.
Totally not worth it.  
I am definitely a once over mower.