Out Of The Desert

Good morning Monday. While I'm fairly certain that I could have slept in another few hours, the cats had other plans, so here I am greeting the world exhausted and sore from car rides and revelry. The weekend recap goes something like this.

Friday morning we rose as early as usual and headed out on the road well before the sun rose. We luckily timed things very well and our first stop was the Insect Lore Bugsuem. It's one of their distributions centers and the Bugsuem is a company store as well as a museum of insects, live and otherwise. We all enjoyed the stop very much, but then it was back on the road. We stopped for lunch in Barstow and then kept right on going, arriving in Las Vegas in time for dinner and a trip to the Pinball Hall of Fame. Yes, that's a thing. We all played some pinball and killed an hour or so before crashing for the night in a comfortable, well priced, off the strip hotel.

Saturday we awoke early and started the day at Shark Reef, a small, but impressive aquarium at Mandalay Bay. Then we wandered beneath the casinos for a time before heading back to the hotel to get ready for our friend's Wedding renewal event, which was the reason for the trip. The wedding was at a fantastically decorated place called the Artisan. Paintings hung on the walls and ceilings and we're told the place is quite a hopping late night spot. Lucky for us we were there fairly early, so it was just lovely to look at. The event itself was wonderful, fun and even the children quite enjoyed themselves to the point of exhaustion. We met some wonderful, much more interesting people than ourselves and were humbled to be invited really. I fear there were people there that I should have met, but didn't as well, so I'm waiting for the good pictures and a post event, "who was that?" discussion. Obviously I got very few photos of the trip as I often fall into habit of experiencing rather than documenting. The husband usually takes care of that, so if I find some good photos he took to steal and share, I'll do that.

Sunday morning we again rose at the crack of dawn and headed back. We didn't stop anywhere good on the way back, we just drove. We did learn that if you want to avoid Sunday gridlock in the desert between Nevada and California, seven in the morning is an ideal departing time. We'd heard such horror stories which is why we left so early, but our drive was uneventful. After about eight hours we were home and it was unpacking, laundry and taking care of the orders I received while I was gone. I've got a healthy stack of those here ready to ship.

Today, it's a no school day for the kids and the husband took the day off to recuperate. I have a doctor's appointment in the afternoon, but then I really have to get back to tatting business. I have linen pieces I want to make, sold pieces that need remaking and all I did was crochet in the car. Three days off always means three days of working much harder to make up for lost time. Deep breath and begin.