Home Again....

That was a really awesome trip.

I don't even know where to start because there is so much to tell.

This is the point where I usually close the browser and get on with life but I really want to share what a joy BJ's family is.  They made me laugh like I haven't laughed in a really long time.

I clicked with Madora like I clicked with my high school friend Connie.  She and I went to Hancock Fabrics to find some fabric so that I can make a wedding memory quilt for she and BJ.  I was driving [I offered for her to drive...giving her an out to my lousy driving but we climbed into the rental car anyway...HA...wuwahwahwah (hands rubbing together with a gleeful smile on my face)] and you have to realize that Las Vegas has the craziest roads you can possibly imagine.  The lane you are in will suddenly disappear and become NOT A LANE to drive in but a median.  Honestly, you'd have to experience it to understand.

We had an incident where my lane ended and guess what...the people in Las Vegas are not nice.  They don't see that you are having issues and let you in, they make sure that you DON'T get into the only remaining lane. 

Then there was this time when we were sitting at a stop light and this huge SUV decided that he was going to get around me (slowly creeping around my left with only a hair's breadth between our vehicles) and I turn to him and say "And what is that getting you?" and then when the traffic took off, he was able to get in front of me and I found myself saying "I guess it got you that, huh?"  We had a really good laugh about both of those incidents.

Madora and I both decided that we could be best of friends.  I've never had that opportunity with any of BJ's wives before.  (Yes, there were two before this one...it's been hard for him to settle down for some reason but it is obvious that this one is his soul mate.)  In fact, she liked me so much that they are thinking of moving to Alabama to be near us.  She is going to start looking for a job here and BJ's job with Apple allows him to move anywhere because he works from home.  I sent them the information from my realtor who did a great job finding us our home.

On to Roman...he is like a little tornado...constantly in motion.  He is six years old and not a shy bone in his body.  He calls Tom "BroHam" (None of us are sure what that means except when he says it you can tell that it is an endearment because he and Tom were totally connected.)  He said he wants to call me "Granny" which is ok, not what I would have chosen but if that is his choice, I'll take it.  We both fell in love with him.  He is all imagination and quite a free spirit.

He didn't like having his picture taken so he would find ways to avoid the camera so in the videos you will see that he hides behind Tom or anything else he can get behind if he thinks that I am filming him.  Sometimes the camera will look like it isn't filming anything and that is because I was in stealth mode trying to hide the camera from him.  The little bugger is smart and I had to work hard to get any pictures of him.

Boy and Dog having a conversation.

"Don't take my picture..."

"See how strong I am?"  Dog looks confused...

Can't even comment on this one...sigh...lol...somehow, the dog loved it.

Now Triton is slobbering back on him.

"Man Snuggling" with Grandpa.

Telling Grandpa what life is really all about...

As you can see above, he latched onto his "BroHam" quite nicely.  8-)  As for me...the first time I walked in, I had a couple of bags of toys for him.  Then the second time I walked in, I had a toy and some candy (Toxic Waste) that we got at the Atomic Testing Museum.  We went out, on our last night there, to get some hamburger buns and came back and he looks at me and says "anything for me?"  HA...I had to tell him not this time...and he was totally ok with that but I thought it was so funny how quickly I became the one with the gifts...He and I played with the Model Magic the first day and I didn't get pictures but his Mom and I played with it on the second day and below is the picture of the three characters we made.

Now, without really knowing Roman, the vidoes below won't really be that special for anyone but two new grandparents, we thoroughly enjoy watching and rewatching the video below.  What I realized on the plane home was that I was so entrenched with capturing Roman on video that I forgot to take any pictures of BJ and Madora.  WOW...what a space case.  We have several other videos of Roman but since it took me all day to get this one uploaded...this is all folks.  8-)

By Grace Alone -

Teresa



Blowing Things Up

Sorry about the format of the blog material lately...Ipads and blogging don't necessarily go so well together...It makes it all look like a run on paragraph... Today we are going to a Atomic Testing Museum. Yeah, I didn't get enough radiation while being treated for breast cancer...let's go see how they came up with the ideas for atomic bombs and radiation. I sent BJ a text message this morning and said we would be around a little later today because I was going to take Tom to some Atomic place and blow him up... LOL. We both slept really wonderfully last night. 10 hours of glorious sleep (we think it was 10 hours...every clock we own says a different time...) I had woken up at some point in the morning and looked at my Ipad and it said 8:45 and I was still so sleepy, so I crawled back in bed...not caring that I was wasting time in bed. The last two days had been so exhausting and Tom was still sleeping so... Well, the time was actually 5:45, so when we woke up a couple hours later and are looking at the time and Tom says it is only 7:45. I'm like...WHAT? It was 8:45 several hours ago. We finally figured out that the Ipad had not done an automatic update of the time since we were in Atlanta (I hadn't turned it on since then) and I HADN'T really gone back in time. (Darn the bad luck...of course, if I'm going to do time travel, I want to travel back a few years, not just a couple of hours...HA!) So, Las Vegas is all flashing lights and huge screens with advertisements everywhere you look. This morning, we were driving to Starbuck's (this is where we are right now) and Tom says, "WOW, that is Walgreen's" and we see a Walgreens store with what had to be a 100ft screen with a running sign that said WALGREENS and nothing else. Don't all these lights seem like a waste of electricity? We see an Outback restaurant shoved into all these buildings with a 100ft coke bottle to the right of the doorway. Now, we might have seen the coke bottle but would we have seen the Outback restaurant if I hadn't just been reading signs outloud? This is one CRAZY town. Well, I need to stop writing and get to living, sightseeing, and visiting more with my family. By Grace Alone - Teresa

Viva Las Vegas

Yeah, that's not a very original title, but here we are after a grueling 14 hours of travel yesterday to get here. And that was by airplane. Las Vegas...the lights are overwhelming and the differences between this world and our Bible-belt world is just crazy. This morning, I saw this girl checking into the hotel who wasn't wearing enough material in her dress to cover her posterior. There were two guys standing behind her in line openly surveying all they could see. So sad for her. That she would have such low self esteem that she should feel the need to dress like that. We went into Wal-Mart and believe it or not they sell hard liquor in the food section. Now, our Wal-Mart sells wine and beer but no hard liquor like Rum or Whiskey but there it was...Tom and I both dropped our jaws. We quickly picked them (our jaws)up and moved on with getting the few items that we needed to survive for a couple of days. High on the list was some cold medicine since I seem to be sporting a doosy of a cold right now. I feel better after shoving some dayquil down my throat and drinking a bunch of water. We got to BJ's around 8:30 this morning and he lives in North Las Vegas which is like going back into the normal world. We have been thoroughly enjoying our grandson "Roman" who just chatters away at us and entertains us. He has just pulled out the dominoes and asked us if we would like to play with him. I had some really cute pictures of him to upload here but I can't figure out how to load them via my Ipad...I'll try to get them uploaded when I get home. Well, OF COURSE we want to play with him so off we go. More to come... By Grace Alone - Teresa