'Take me out to the ballgame...'

The Roesler girls have survived their first professional sports game! The Cleveland Indians against the Colorado Rockies, that's baseball for all you people like me who are sports clueless. I guess it's Spring training time here, and I guess that's a big deal. It was fun to sit only a few rows up, right behind first base, but I was afraid of brain damage from one of the many balls that flew erratically into the stadium. I don't think any of our girls are going to be sports fanatics, but they did enjoy the staple of all good sporting events ----- (overpriced) snacks!!
It was 25 degrees here today! The kids actually complained about the heat! Imagine! Madie kept saying, "WHY is it so hot?"
Speaking of Madie, she has obtained permission to practice her piano on beautiful grand piano in the condo clubhouse!
When we came home from the game, Scott barbequed the best steaks ever, which we ate with a big salad and roasted veggies!
In the realm of illness, Anika has joined the feverish ones! Hopefully everyone will fell better tomorrow - we are planning a laid back, stick around day at home!

Thursday

Scott's parents met us here in Phoenix, they were flying in from Mexico, and they arrived on Tuesday, about an hour after we got here. Yesterday morning (Thursday), we all went to a big mall with a Spanish flair and crazy cheap prices. Fred bought us lunch and they headed off toward home in the afternoon. We swam and Scott Barbequed chicken poolside! I moved kids around as Anika had been sleeping in our walk in closet! Now Shaina and Tia are sharing a room with twin beds, and Madie is in the biggest/highest Queen size bed EVER, and Anika is on a matress on the floor in Madie's room.
It is amazing how warm it is here, we're running the air conditioning!! The complex is beautiful, and most of the people are very friendly. Even the poor older man resting on his air matress in the pool...4 girls in new snorkeling equipment make quite a ... er...splash! Actually, my family can totally clear the pool AND the pool area pretty fast!

dropping like flies

So maybe going from -20 to +20 isn't as good for the body as it is for the mind! Shaina and I were both brewing a (post drama) cold as we left, I'm feeling better and I think Shaina's on the mend, but poor Tia is going down! She has a fever and cough - I'm drugging her up and hoping we can use the major league BASEBALL tickets that Scott gleefully brought home yesterday. Scott is up early today and off for a run in his brand new (45.00) New Balance runners. There was a small mishap with nachos and haagen daz last night...

We are never getting in the car again.

When we left this morning at 8:00, it was +10!!! We cheered every single didgit the weather improved, to a whopping +22!!
Today we saw the Hoover Dam, got to walk on the new Hoover Dam bridge, (too cool!), watched Scott jump between 2 time zones, - '10:00 -(jump) 9:00'!! Watched Anika jump between 2 time zones (?) - '9 o'clock, (jump), 30!!'.
We saw cacti bigger than us, pulled Scott's motorbike out of the trailer, stopped for burgers and frosty's, saw lots of bathrooms, saw a resteraunt menu that included 'rattlesnake snack - when available, please allow 30 minutes', went 'hmmmm' about that, completed our 100 count American Flags, watched several movies in the car, and ARRIVED in PHOENIX, barely worse for wear!

Vegas BABY!

Everytime we travel through Las Vegas I feel like everyone is saying, "who brings their kids to Vegas?", but that didn't stop us from teaching Anika, when she was 1 and we were travelling through, to say "Vegas Baby!". Now she thinks that's the name of the city, and everytime she talks about it she says "when we were in Vegasbaby..".
Taking an anotomically obsessed 3 year old to Ceasers Palace with all the greek myth statues and art is a treat, because then when you sit down with her to wait for the rest of the family who have gone into the bathrooms, she might point to a painting directly above the man who is sitting on a bench across from you and say "Mommy, look at that boy! ..... He has a penis!!". And then all you can say is, "yes, yes he does."
And while the mature (er) children of the family may comment that the scantily clad billboard picture is 'disturbing', the same 3 year old might laugh hysterically and say "hahahahahaha butt!!!".
HOWEVER! The dancing water fountain, timed to music, was awesome, as were the live flamingos, the ducks the girls chased across the park, and,oh yes, the PLUS 10 weather!!

HOWEVER!! The buffet, oh the buffet!!

What the room may have lacked in lustre was more than made up by the buffet at the Flamingo!!!
If you are counting calories or not interested, please skip this post, however my own Mother requested a play by play of my vegas meal, so here it is...dedicated to the woman who raised me!
The buffet at the Flamingo is divided into 3 sections, 2 food sections border the desssssssseeeeerrrttttt section, which was difficult to drag Anika past without stopping!! (okay, we stopped, but we didn't pick anything up until after)
There are stations for different types of food, seafood, asian, mexican, etc, etc, etc!! You could make your own noodle soup, putting all kinds of noodles, veg, meats, wontons, cilantro, mint, etc into a bowl, which you took to the counter to be boiled and topped with broth. mmmmmm! The mexican food included tiny tortillas which you could warm on a frying pan before adding all the different mexican toppings you would expect, also a nacho bar, (lost a couple of kids there, and Scott whispered to me - 'they're eating nachos!!??' there was prime rib and all the veg fixing you would expect, there were big crab legs and huge shrimp, some delicious salads, there was sushi for Tia, who peels off the gross seaweed and yucky rice just to get to the fish (and yes, she's grossed out by....a sandwich??!!). The buffet stretches on and on, and it is difficult to know where to start....or finish.
BUT the heart of it for the kids, of course, was the desserts!!!! There is a serve yourself soft ice cream bar with sundae toppings such as gummy bears, cookie crumbles, sauces, m&m's, and lots more, lots of really good cookies, we had a delicious chocolate raspberry mousse cake, Scott had a made to order crepe with cherries and whipped cream and chocolate sauce, there was a yummy green tea pudding thingy in a tiny cup, we shared a bunch of different things. The piece de resistence for Anika was the fresh cotton candy on a stick - oh, and the chocolate fountain - she left covered in chocolate from cheek to cheek and up to her elbows on each arm, clutching her bag of cotton candy - much to the amusement of the waiters and customers alike.

if it sounds too good...

Murphy's law states (I think), that if you see rooms in Vegas (on the strip) for 35.00, you should book them right away, because if you show up at said hotel and request said rooms, they will charge you 80.00. Also, as this room was REALLY a 35.00 room, which was probably perfectly lovely in the early 70's. Murphy would probably also tell you that if there are beer caps under the bed and dirty carpets where things stick to your feet when you walk across it, that it is perhaps not the cleanest room we have seen thus far. Murphy would KNOW that no matter how many times the slightly frantic Mother tells the 4 'happy to be out of the car' children NOT to LAY DOWN on the carpet, they gleefully forget every 4 minutes and do just that. SO. Instead of the 2 35.00 ajoining rooms we had anticipated we had 2 queens in a room with no underlay, and 4 children who ademently refuse to share a bed with anyone....