Tuesday, August 31, 2010

My Latest Phobia

Okay, so I keep hearing about how bedbugs are the latest plague.  I gave this a bit of thought whilst we are on our road trip, inspecting sheets and pillows for any sign of the little blood suckers.  I felt pretty good about the fact that I saw no obvious signs of bedbug (is this one word or two?  I'll just switch back and forth to be half right) activity, I'm not a hotel room fan by any means and am always semi-grossed out by the idea of a hotel room and what activities may or may not occur there.  But bedbugs are in a whole other realm of grossness.  Apparently they are nearly impossible to get rid of, in fact, even moving doesn't work because they just hitch a ride to your new abode and continue to terrorize.  Ugh.

After the fact, I am doing some blog surfing and come across the fact that there is actually a Bed Bug Registry.  This is good, except when you find that one of the hotels you stayed in on your trip had a bed bug report in this very registry.  Namely the Flamingo Hilton.  Figures.  It only had one or two reports, not a lot for such an enormous hotel, but enough to cause me to FREAK OUT.  Crap.  We are getting ready to paint our bedroom so this gives me a reason to tear everything apart looking for the aforementioned signs. 

I looked up all the other hotels we stayed at and am pleased to announce that none of them had any reports attached.  My dilemma now is that Mike stays at a lot of hotels on his work trips, some not so nice.  Now I will have to have him check every hotel he is even thinking about checking into on the BBR to make sure he isn't bringing home any more boarders than we already have.  Mot to mention than now I have another thing to think about at 3:00 in the morning, along with motorcycle accidents, alcohol poisoning, job loss, teen pregnancy, cellulite, bills, blah, blah, blah.

Here's the scarier part...if you pop in Seattle as a location it throws back a lot of hotels with bed bug reports, including the Arctic and the Edgewater.  Gah.  It's just a matter of time.

Sunday, August 29, 2010

Happy Birthday Me!

 My life is now complete



Other than playing with my new toy, I am also having fun playing with Mr. Trevor...

Trevor and Kourtnie are leaving on Tuesday, Sam starts her new job on Wednesday, and Drew moves out on Wednesday.  School starts in a week and a half and I add a few more hours to my schedule the following week.  This summer went by so fast but I'm looking forward to the fall, mostly because I am anxious to see Liv.  I miss you!!

Monday, August 23, 2010

On the other side...

Cutest Sun Devil ever.  We miss you already Liv!


Grossest motel room ever...somewhere called Willows, California...sounds way prettier than it was.


Me and Liv in her new home away from home.  :-(


We saw a lot of cacti.  They are pokey.

We left Liv on Monday the 16th, and headed to Vegas to meet Mike and Jack.  Sam flew home after a night in Sin City with Momma...woohoo.  Not the way she expected to see Vegas for the first time, I'm sure.  She gambled and lost a grand total on $2.00 in a penny slot machine.  I lost $20 in the dollar slots and it took the same amount of time.

Gracie and Jack didn't like Vegas.  Me neither.
Jack taking a beating from Rocky at Planet Hollywood Las Vegas



Then the gorgeous St. George Temple.  St. George was hot, we had the bestest frozen custard in the world at Nielsen's Custard.  Nice pic, Jack. 


Next it was crazy beautiful Zion where we literally had to kick the squirrels to keep them away from us.  Damn tourists.  We had a picnic in the park next to the lovely Virgin River.  The most beautiful place in the world, I need to go back and spend more time hiking this incredibleness.

I'm so glad we took the opportunity to travel and see Utah, it helped to take my mind of how sad I was to leave Liv behind.


Me and Mike at Ruby's in Bryce Canyon.

These rock formations in Bryce Canyon are called hoodoos, it's like being on another planet.  Really eerily beautiful and the kids learned some things about geological history.

Next stop was Park City, Utah.  Totally upscale but rustic ski town.  We rode the luge slide and the alpine coaster.  Unfortunately the zip line was closed to anyone under 100 lbs due to wind, Jack really wanted to go on that.  I made myself go on the ski lift, 40 feet above ground, and I'm so glad cuz it was beautiful up there.
We spent two nights right there in the village in a cute condo with a loft for the kids.  We then drove to Salt Lake City with a quick stop in Provo....
The mother of all temples in Salt Lake.  I really wanted to sneak inside but I'm pretty sure I would burst into flames.

Inappropriate but funny.

Spent my birthday in Boise, which is surprisingly charming.  Dinner at PF Changs, followed by a power outage at the hotel.  It was over 100 degrees so our room got a little stuffy.

Spent Sunday driving home from Boise.  It only took about 7 hours, less then we thought.  It's so good to sleep in my own bed and I'm pretty sure I'm not going to complain about Seattle weather for a while.  We loved our trip though, we saw so many amazing, beautiful things.  Next year Yellowstone.

I'm counting the weeks until Liv comes home...October 8th can't come fast enough.  I'm not so sure I'm going to get used to this.  It's just very weird.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

T minus 7

7 days from today.  The contents of Liv's room are stacked in the corner ready to go.  Being positive, looking forward to vacation time and seeing Gammy and Rhonda.