Friends and Fun

Once back from Vegas, Charley was happy to see the "Morses"!

 Paula came over bearing birthday gifts - a quilt she made!  And she stuffed the pockets with tiny toys - what a neat idea!

  Halloween Day - Trunk or Treat pics to follow!

And Grandma's gifts arrived - Charley loves the guitar!

  And she had to eat cheese and crackers on her tea set plates!  Thanks Grandma!

Final Day in Vegas

And what a beautiful day it was!  I took Charley to the Nevada Southern Railway to ride their Halloween Express train.  She loved it!

And she got to wear her THIRD costume - a ballerina!

While waiting for the ride, we got to take a short jaunt on this engine

Getting off this train...

...and onto the real one!

Then we picked Dada up from his conference.  The Embassy Suites had swans inside (very sad for the birds).

And Charley LOVED this Elvis!

 That was it!  We drove home that night, fortunately this time was uneventful (except for battling sleepiness).  Charley decided to pee on a toilet in a gas station, so for her usual candy reward, I bought her this ring pop. She quickly fell asleep with it.  So - she got to finish it at home the next morning!

Vegas - Day 3

Today was kind of a mish-mash kind of day, with kind of a random assortment of unplanned activities.

We started the day by going to a place called Kids' Club - think McDonald's playland on a huge scale, and paid admittance.  Problem is, you had to have SOCKS to go into the play areas, which I did not.  So I had to usher her in and sit out in the lobby.  Sometimes she'd disappear for what seemed like an eternity, and just as I was about to break all the rules and go in barefoot to find her, there she'd reappear!

 I'd found a Halloween website that listed everything going on in Vegas, so I thought I had another cool event planned like the one the previous night.  We spent an hour in a traffic jam (that was due to Harry Reid's motorcade's accident), then another hour searching around for two places I'd jotted down, and never found either.  With a cranky kid and a cranky husband, I finally redeemed myself by remembering the Silverton Hotel - the "best free entertainment in Vegas" for kids.  So we went - and it was cool.  They have mermaids!

 And lo and behold - there was a Bass Pro attached.  Lucky for me (phew, off the hook), lucky for Charley (She LOVED the mermaid) and lucky for Rod!  And, they happened to be having a little Halloween event for kids that night.