Viva Las Vegas!!

Me & Deb getting ready to leave.

The famous sign on the strip!

Before miles of walking...

Our "menopause" fans!!!!

Us with one of the stars of the play.

Downtown

My good friend Debra drove 8 hours to get to my house. We've been friends for 38 years. We have taken trips with our spouses (Zions every year for my birthday, Cancun, etc.) and when our kids were little we always hung out and went camping, had bar-b-q's, etc. Back in the old days we were on softball teams together, and we performed at numerous Belly Dancing events. Maybe someday I will post a picture of us in our awesome outfits. We sang in a quartet at our high school graduation. The one thing we had never done is take a girl's only trip. So we headed to Vegas for 3 days. We stayed at the Luxor. The funniest thing was, when we were unpacking in our room we both pulled out our fans. We are so alike. We can't stand it hot when we sleep. We walked for hours, and shopped for a couple hours each day. We don't like wasting our money on gambling so we did other stuff instead. We went to the funniest show"Menopause the Musical" It was hilarious. We so related to the characters in the show. We got on stage in the finale and danced in a chorus line. It was great. I ventured out of my comfort zone and drove one night to Fremont Street in old downtown Vegas to watch the street performers, and listen to the bands playing. We had a great time and are planning a yearly girls get away.

The Tree Monster!!!!

"The Monster"

Mandi safe with grandpa!

The grandkids resting on the hike

Izzy by her (and her families) trees! We find them each time we go to Duck Creek!

Ali

The girls in the stream boulder hopping!!

It is funny now, but I guess it wasn't funny when it happened. When we were camping at Duck Creek in July, Doug and I took Ali and Mandi on a hike. We were using walkie talkies and so they were in front of us most of the way. Well, on the way back they wanted to find the trailer by themselves and said they knew the way down the mountain. We told them they couldn't go farther than we could hear them. When they went around a corner and couldn't see us, we saw the "Tree Monster" and decided to play a joke on them. I screamed like something was wrong and Doug disguised his voice and told them that he was a monster and he had grabbed grandma and had taken her away. They were silent for a minute and then Ali came on the radio and was screaming for her grandpa and told us Mandi was crying and running down the hill. Doug had to tell them he was okay and would be there in a minute. So we both went down the hill and when they saw me they were so relieved to see that I had escaped. I felt so bad for making them scared. We told them it was just a tree that looked scary, so when we went back to Duck Creek this weekend we took them up the trail again and showed them the tree. Mandi was a little nervous about seeing it but was okay once she saw what we were talking about. We had a fun weekend with 7 of the grandkids. They played in the stream and we fished, fished, fished. We caught over 300 fish in 2 days.