Vegas Episode 8: The Finale

Atheist-Friend was right.  Vegas can be a little repetitive.  We gambled at felt tables.  We drank at the pool.  We ate.  Rinse & repeat.

For those looking for gambling stories, the theme was similar.  We were up.  We were down.  Up. Down.  Nothing terribly surprising, though Joe did keep his Gamblers-Anonymous wife from blowing the college fund.  All credit, debit, and banking information was stripped from my person before entry into a casino was allowed.  Smart man, that Joe.

The sights of Vegas are always interesting.  Some samples:

Their shirts read: "What Mothers & Daughters Do in Vegas, Stays in Vegas."  Joe's response?  "Like what you do in Vegas with your mom is secret-worthy."  He's such a joykill sometimes.

Elvis on The Strip.

I took this one for my kids.

Our final hours in Vegas were somewhat bittersweet.  We paid homage to the now-defunct Westward Ho hotel ("The Ho") - the scene of many sorted and sundry tales of Joe's youth.  He snapped some pictures of the new construction (currently halted) on top of what was once the diviest of the dive hotels in Vegas:

Oh what "The Ho" could have told me if only its walls could talk.  And if it still actually had walls.

I could tell Joe was a little down after our visit, so I figured I needed to add a little "sweet" to his "bitter."  Off to The Cupcakery! 

At $3 a cupcake, I'd like to say they weren't worth it.  But SO worth it.

As a preventative measure given our outbound flight debacle and Joe's need to be at the firehouse first thing in the morning, dozens of phone calls were made to ensure firehouse coverage.  We wondered where we might end up for the ride home.  Sioux City?  Denver?  Minneapolis?  What kind of adventures would our return flight bring?

We flew directly home without a sip of beer or a single American Airlines agent being nasty to us.  We picked up a pair of fuzzy pink dice for our sitter, some trinkets for the kids, and a Fantasy Football magazine.  Very anti-climatic kinds of stuff.

Thank you for enduring The Vegas Chronicles, and I promise to return tomorrow with some regularly scheduled mom-based programming. 

You've been a good sport.