Spring Break Staycation

 Not much happened in March or the beginning of April, although we did have some visitors. Marie and Antoine came to celebrate the anniversary and show their kids where they got married, which was the wedding chapel in the MGM, which hasn't been used since everything shut down in 2020.

And Jesse and Jeannette came during their kid's spring break. We went to the Venetian to walk around and get some gelato, and Jesse just happened to run into one of his missionary companions from Italy. 

We also took a very quick trip to Utah to meet Cora's boyfriend. Nope, not going to show you a picture, but I will of the cousins, just for the heck of it, in order of height, not age. FYI, the order of ages from left to right are 19, 14,13 ,16, 21, 9, and 15. That's hilarious.

Then in April we also had our spring break. We decided to just do stuff around Vegas because Joe had recently switched jobs and didn't have any PTO accrued. We let the kids each pick something that they wanted to do, and we went from there. Places we went: Teppanyaki.

The Shark Reef at Mandaly Bay - very cool, but not very big, and definitely not worth the cost.

Go-carts. So much fun.

And last, but not least, we went to Nelson ghost town, which was very cool. There is a family that owns the place, and they actually live on the property in the old hotel (first picture), and another guy who live there in a very crooked house (second picture) who does tours of the old mine there - he is VERY knowledgeable about the place, 

I thought the rules were kind of funny.

Thank goodness they didn't make us use an old outhouse, although the restroom looked like an old outhouse (below, left of the old Texaco station).

Apparently this is a popular place for weddings, in the old chapel. There was one going on the day we were there, so we couldn't get any closer to the chapel.

And that's it. That's what we did.

She's Legal

Cora turned 21. TWENTY ONE!, in case you didn't catch that. I don't think she plans on starting to drink at bars, but I guess she could if she wanted to. 

The month before her birthday she found out that she had been accepted into the Disney College Program, which was probably better than any birthday present she could ever have. She's wanted to do it for years now. If you don't know what the Disney College Program is, I will tell you, because if you Google it then you will get ads for it for the rest of the foreseeable future. Basically the DCP is a highly competitive paid internship for college students at both Walt Disney World in Florida and Disneyland in California. Cora will be going to Florida. She leaves at the end of this month (which was a very long time to wait), and she'll be there for 5 months. She will soon be finding out where she'll be working, whether that's in merchandise, rides, customer relations, or anything else that they do. I'll tell you more about her experience when she gets into it, but we are very excited for her. 

Also, Cora has been working at Old Navy as a shipping manager. She's made good money, and has been able to save enough money to finish college with. She loved it at first, but after a few months it was more stressful than not. For some strange reason, their particular store gets more returns per day than any other store in the country - and these are not just returns from things bought at that store, but things purchased at other stores too, as well as online. The regional management does not take into consideration the amount of time that it takes to process all of these returns, and does not allow extra hours/employees to take care of it, so their store is usually in chaos. Also, customers can be horrible, and I'm not talking about the occasional bad customer, I'm talking about multiple rude customers every single day. I don't know if this is just a Utah thing, or just a customer service thing, but it's crazy. I would be willing to bet that these people aren't normally rude to others in their every day life, but you get them in a store where they feel entitled to be there past closing, or they feel entitled to a discount that doesn't apply to what they're buying, or they feel entitled to a refund for something that they don't have a receipt for, etc. etc. etc., and then the monster comes out. I can't imagine ever treating someone the way she gets treated EVERY single day. I told her she should start making TikToks about her experiences, but she's not interested. On top of all of that, as soon as she announced that she would be leaving in the summer for DCP, they started treating her differently, not respecting her schedule, not including her in manager meetings, etc. She was very glad to finally be done with it all.

And finally, I'm not going to go into too many details right now, but Cora started dating someone in February, and it's still going strong. Living in Utah has made this a little challenging, because everyone thinks they should already be married, or at least engaged by now, which is ridiculous. And this is coming from adults, not just her peers. Luckily, they both have their head screwed on straight, and he is very supportive of her going to Forida, even though long distance relationships can be hard. If they can get through this, I think it will only benefit their relationship, and THEN people can start asking them if they're going to get married....maybe.

Anyway, this was supposed to be about Cora's birthday, but I guess a good update never hurt anybody. Happy Birthday Cora! 

Senior No More

Joseph actually graduated from high school in December of 2020. The plan was to take him on a trip that next summer, but then we moved, and the rest is history. We finally got around to his way-past-due trip at the end of February. We went to California Adventure for a day, and it was a lot of fun to be able to spend that time just with Joseph. 

Highlights included riding the new Spiderman ride, which made our arms sore for hours afterwards (You get out of it what you put into it, hahaha). It was the first time we had been to Avenger's Campus, so that was fun. It was also the first time we decided to try the swinging side of the Pixar Pal-A-Round (if you know, you know), which was hilariously disconcerting. Joseph went on the Monster's Inc. ride by himself because he didn't want to go on Guardians of the Galaxy with me and Joe (which is our favorite ride), and once he got on the ride he felt very awkward about being a 19 year old young man all alone on the Monster's Inc. ride, lol! At the end of the ride there's a Roz animatronic that talks to the guests, and it said to Joseph, "Nice glasses. Wanna switch?" He replied no, and then she called him disrespectful. Hahahaha! Also, we loved this random mosaic wall art we found, and spent quite a bit of time standing in front of it and contemplating the meaning of life.

Just kidding. We were just trying to find any kind of meaning in the wall. We left confused and intrigued. We would have loved to turn out ticket into a park hopper, but with the reservation system as it is right now, we weren't able to . Oh well, it was still a fun trip.

It was on Fire!

It's been entirely too long since I posted, so here I go again, trying to catch up on everything...starting 5 months ago (how time flies). We were very happy to discover the Valley of Fire State Park, just outside of Las Vegas. I mean, discover might be the wrong word, since everybody already knew it was there, but you know what I mean. We liked it so much that we went 3 times in 2 weeks. Cora was lucky enough to be visiting us for two of those times. February was a great month to go, because there is a lot of hiking/walks, and the weather was perfect for it. 

The formations of the rocks created a lot of fun places to take pictures.

We saw some wildlife while we were there.

And best of all, there are a bunch of petroglyphs.

Oh, and did I mention that I peed my pants while we were there? It's a tale as old as time - 40 something year old woman with a weak bladder from childbirth underestimates the jolting nature of jumping off the rocks. But the slow-mo jump shot was pretty cool, so I guess it was worth it???

We still haven't seen it all, including one trail that we really wanted to see, but was closed because they were searching for a missing hiker in the area (I hope they were found). We probably won't get there again until the weather starts to cool off, so for now we'll just have to enjoy the pictures and video. Next time we go though, there will be no jumping. I'm officially too old for that.