Viva Las Vegas

So tomorrow morning we are off to Vegas for a few days. Seymour is meeting us out there. Haven't been to L.A. to see him since Thanksgiving 2005, so it will be good to visit with him. We'll be seeing The Blue Man Group while we are there. I'm looking forward to that.

And of course I am downloading photos from my camera in preparation for the trip.

Here is our first Thanksgiving dinner in the new house...not the first we've ever hosted, but the first I've totally cooked. Well, Daddy did the sweet potatoes, mostly, and Mom did her green beans. We hosted T-Day 9 years ago when Rachel was christened, as our house was closer than Mom and Dad's, but Mom and Dad brought the turkey and dressing that day. We just got that buffet in the background a couple of months ago to fill in that corner and it was perfect for serving the dinner. We have a big painting to put over it but haven't ever gotten around to that....I put rolls and fruit salad on the table and the rest was on the buffet. That's my great-grandmother's china we're using.
Here are The Babies and Corey at the Fort Worth Zoo the day after Thanksgiving. Why do we call them The Babies? Because they call each other "Baby" all the livelong day. Apparently her kids even call them that....

They haven't set a wedding date yet. maybe this summer.

Here we all are at Cattlemen's Steakhouse in the Stockyards after the zoo. Yum. Love me some steak.

Then we took Gene to see Billy Bob's. After playing pool there for about 45 minutes, right after the band struck up and The Babies decided to try two-stepping, I remembered that I'd heard a friend from high school was managing the place. So I asked about him and lo and behold there he was! He gave us the grand tour of the joint. It's a huge place....the world's largest honky tonk and all that....he took us around all the nooks and crannies, showing us the private party rooms, took us up top to watch bull riding for a few minutes, showed us the beer and liquor lockers, showed us the backstage area, took us back to his office for a few minutes where two underage gals were getting written up by the TABC...then gave us primo seats at the owner's table center stage during the concert that night. I don't follow country too much, but the guy we saw was good. Kevin Fowler. Does a great live show if you ever get the chance to see him.

This photo is for my oldest brother, a huge Willie fan when I was growing up. It's on the wall of fame there at Billy Bob's.

Here's the nieces in Florida that I went with my parents to see in a Christmas show. They are all done up in their stage make-up in their "pajama people" costumes.

Here's John, The Drummer. Tall as ever. This was after he played at The Granada. I have some photos of him on stage, but they aren't too good. Sitting in back, he was mostly in smoke and shadows. It's a non-smoking place, but they pipe in smoke for stage effects. Of course, the non-smoking policy didn't keep John from lighting up a few times on stage. Bad John.

He should be getting married in the next week or so. Hope he has a beautiful wedding. :-)

So I'm growing my hair out again. I'm undecided on how good it really looks, but it certainly is easy to deal with. I wear it pulled straight back in a pony tail at home or when running errands. No bangs to fight. I have a cowlick that makes bangs a PITA.

And last, but not least, my latest FO. The Fetching pattern from Knitty. Ignore the bad manicure. Love this pattern. You really can't go wrong with it. I was going to do a different pattern and even have one glove done, but decided I like this pattern better. It's the only Christmas/Hannukah gift I am knitting this year. I need to get started now for things for next year. I was going to do a headband/ear warmer to go with them, but I don't have the printer hooked up to print off the pattern. I guess I should see if it is an easy enough pattern to just copy down....

Christmas gifts are going out late this year. Again. I suppose by now everyone expects mine to be late. We just ordered Hannukah to be delivered today...after Hannukah is over, of course. Sheesh. I don't celebrate eihter of these holidays myself, so I think that is why they always sneak up on me so much. I've done all the shopping for everyone. I'm waiting on Peter's gift to be delivered and I want to get Sara's birthday gift before I mail that package off. I went to four stores looking for something fairly specific for her and couldn't find anything and decided to stop fighting the crowds. Hmmph. I'm pretty sure my brothers are all teaching their children something about patience being a virtue, so I guess they'll all just have to be virtuous for a while.

We've gotten a lot of food this year. Corey's boss sent us a ham. A HUGE ham. It took me over an hour to cut it all up and bag it and I have this huge ham bone now for a gargantuan pot of beans. It's enough ham for the two of us to eat ham every week for months. We got some mighty fine harry and david snacks. LOVE that stuff. And some cheese. We love cheese. One of the cheeses is Camembert, which I am very fond of. That little wheel will disappear the day I open it. The other two cheeses are new ones for us. We got hooked on different types of cheese when we lived in Europe. They have a whole different cheese culture over there than we do...no pun intended, LOL!

Wow. It's after 1am. Guess I'd better get to bed. I'm in trip mode, where I don't want to go to sleep. But tomorrow will probably be a full day after we arrive, so I need to get some rest. I still have some things to pack in the morning.