February 15, 2008

Friday, February 15, 2008 4:10:25 AM

I am having trouble sleeping again but this time I think it is because I am at the beginning of the cold Lexie and my mom had.  I have decided that I will likely call in sick for work tomorrow.  We left the Sand Hollow state park campground just north of St. George Tuesday.  It turned out it took us most of the way until 2PM to get our stuff together and out.  I had a good work day in the morning but wasn’t able to get much done at night.  I was amazed at how beautiful the drive between St. George and Las Vegas is.  One hundred and twenty miles seems to be a good distance for a day of driving.  It was enough driving to get somewhere but not so much that we didn’t have a lot of time to do other things during the day and we didn’t get that sore back and back side that seem to go right along with car trips.

We had planned on staying our first night in Las Vegas at the Flying J.  I called ahead to make sure it was OK to park overnight and was told that it was.  When we got to the Flying J I found a good parking place but didn’t have a good feeling about the place.  We had dinner and then I went to check on the Laundry facilities at the Flying J.  It turned out the Laundry room was out of order.  On my way back I was approached by a pan handler.  I didn’t have a template ready for an interview or I would have probably formally interviewed him.  The guy was really nice but gave me the impression that some not very nice people may be in the area.  I did some searching online to find an RV park because I didn’t like the idea of people who might be tempted to steal things loitering around the trailer all night.

The RV park I found was Arizona Charlie’s.  We had mixed emotions about how prominent the security guards were at Arizona Charlie’s but the mix favored positive.  The obvious question was why the security guards were needed but the obvious conclusion was it was better to have them than not have them.  We already had a reservation at the KOA by Circus Circus or we would have stayed at Arizona Charlies.  The cost was $30/night compared to the KOA’s $50+/night.

This is the view as seen from the top of our trailer at the Arizona Charlie's RV park.

We had a minor calamity which was a major emotional blow in that at some point in the Las Vegas traffic the printer decided it had enough and took a bridge jump head first from the top bunk.

In the morning we did laundry and went swimming.  OK I went swimming with the kids and Lexie did laundry but she chose that way.  Something really nice about doing laundry at laundry mats is that all the cloths go in at once.  When I went to bed I was worried that it would be too cold to swim.  I was pleasantly surprised to find that it was comfortable to be outside with a T-Shirt on.  As we were walking by in the lobby we heard some people make a comment of “There goes a group of the polar bear club”.  It was nice to be so fresh from Idaho that our warm was their cold and as such we had the entire pool to ourselves. 

Swimming in pools is easier now than it used to be in that Tyrell and Dallin can touch the bottom in more places and can do most of a doggy paddle.  I was thrilled at how good the hot tub jet was for my shoulder.  I haven’t had my shoulder as loose as it was Wednesday morning in several weeks if not months.  It is tight again but I don’t think it is as tight as it was.

A problem with the transition between the Arizona Charlie’s RV park and the KOA was that the checkout time at Arizona Charlie’s is 11AM whereas the check in time at the KOA is 1PM.  This proved to be easily remedied in that there was a Wal Mart just down the street we stopped in the parking lot for lunch and I did some light grocery shopping.  Really all we can do is light grocery shopping anymore in that we don’t have room for much more.  We also decided to get hair cuts.  The manager or whoever the first lady we talked to at the Wal Mart salon was simply horrific.  She did everything she could short of tell us directly to leave.  She explained that she was had other things she needed to do so she couldn’t cut our hair and there was only one stylist that would have to do all of the hair cuts.  I was very put out by the forecast of how long it would take to get our hair cut but Lexie was insistent that we needed hair cuts and finding other opportunities would be difficult.  In the end it was a good decision we waited.  I got the best hair cut I have had in a very long time.  The stylist was too good to be working at Wal Mart.

We had a long wait for the barber because there was only one working.

Finding Circus Circus proved to be relatively straight forward but it was an incredible maze to find the registration desk at the KOA.  We were disappointed in that we had heard good things about the KOA in Las Vegas but it proved to be inferior to the setup we had at Arizona Charlie’s and for more money to boot.  A redeeming quality of the campground was that it had a shuttle cart that you could call to get a ride to Circus Circus.  The kids were thrilled to ride on the cart.  I was very surprised at how small Circus Circus is.  I remembered it as being so much bigger.  I am sure the difference between what I saw and what I remembered is a combination of my own size change and my own experience.  The last time I went to Circus Circus it was from Kayenta where two story buildings are more of an exception than a rule.

The kids had a great time, I had a good time and I am not sure what kind of time Lexie had.  There was a boxing game in the Arcade that allowed you to box against another person.  The boys were thrilled they both beat me.  When we got home we had a quick dinner and didn’t have a bit of trouble getting the kids to sleep.

A little to much hog for Davey?

The boy's loved the boxing game.

Yesterday caught me by surprise in hind sight it really shouldn’t have but it did.  We were very careful Wednesday to get the trailer clean before we went swimming and to get the laundry done before going to Circus Circus.  I was feeling great that we had passed the mile stone of getting through the first laundry cycle with a clean trailer.  As it was the day after the laundry day was the hard day.  Everyone was a bit more worn out from Wednesday than they realized.  Natalyn and myself were starting a cold and the boys didn’t want to focus on school.  The trailer office failed in that some how the entire printer shelf came off of the top bunk.  I had thought the shelf was heavy enough on its own that it would do that.  The top of the printer was broken.  We haven’t checked to see if the printer itself works.  I imagine the hard drive and the DVD drive are just fine.  The also fall did some minor damage to the bathroom door.  The kids were not very effective in school and I was not very effective at work.

After our best imitation of work and school we went on a tour of a chocolate factory the name of which escapes me.  We were disappointed to find that they were not actually making the chocolate when we got there but were happy with the quality of the facility and the great narration they had about the chocolate making process.  They also had several funny sayings posted related to chocolate.  My favorite was “Man cannot live by chocolate alone. But Woman can!”.

I had been hoping to also get to the giant M&M store but after the chocolate factory we decided that everyone was too tired to extend the night.  That was a good decision I was exhausted and everyone but Davey who had a 2 hour late afternoon nap went right to sleep after some quick complaints about the equity of the world.

We are working very hard to get David to sleep in his own bed instead of ours.   Last night was extra rough because he had so much sleep in the afternoon he was having trouble falling asleep.  What finally seemed to work and what I’ll try again is a combination of shifting me to the outside and then finally me sleeping on the floor beside him.  He didn’t actually try to get out of bed after I moved to the floor but my thinking is that if I am down here I can pop him right back in to bed and he will get used to the idea that daddy is near by and hopefully adjust to the idea that in this trailer everybody is near by.  I really enjoy the fact that Davey turns to me for comfort now.  I am sure it is because I am around more.