Giving Thanks

A few years ago I wrote about the 50th Thanksgiving that my in-laws had spent with another couple. This year marked the 53rd, held at my sister-in-law's house, 40 in attendance.

Here is number one nephew Bob carving one of two turkeys.



No, that is not a used car lot.



It was nice enough outside for my niece to play with the dog.



Minnesota people will appreciate this pic.



These are the original couples. The rest of the pics are just people having fun, chilling out, some watching football.









All in all, a very nice Thanksgiving, so good to see people we have known for so long, to share what they have experienced this past year. The food wasn't bad, either.

Endless Road Trips

I started a new job in March, as a court abstractor. This requires that I travel over the year to 18 counties in Oklahoma. Some I visit several times a year. My territory is pretty much the northwest quadrant of the state. Hubby goes with me on most of these trips, makes it more fun and we get some quality talk time in the car.

Many of these counties have courthouses that are in fairly small towns, so it's kind of amazing when you drive into a tiny town in Oklahoma, to the county seat, and see something like this.



This is in Sayre, Oklahoma. If you watch "The Grapes of Wrath" in the scene where the Okies are fleeing Oklahoma, there is a fleeting image of this courthouse in the background.

This is a statue in front of the courthouse.



And this is where we stayed, an original Route 66 motel. It was updated and quite clean, and had wireless internet. Right across the street from a Route 66 museum.



The same three night trip, we visited another county, Roger Mills (town of Cheyenne, population 778), that built a brand new courthouse in the eighties, during the oil boom. Very nice building with lots of paintings and sculptures, but they preserved some of the old.


What the sign says is that this is the records vault built in 1907-1908.

Protected the court records in the courthouse fire of 1916.

State Historical site of Oklahoma.

Next to that is this globe sort of thing made of horseshoes.



And last but not least, we have the veterans memorial.



Those are two of the courts and towns, I have lots of pics of the others coming up. Stay tuned.

Rumors of my Demise Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

To those loyal readers who have kept checking back for another post while this blog has been neglected for two and a half months, thank you! I even missed my three year blogiversary last month. I could say that I was having a hard time topping the last post featuring my daughter. But the real reasons for the neglect are 1) I started a new job last March that requires travel almost every week (which I will elaborate on in a future post), and 2) I got on Facebook. Soon after signing on, I realized that I am at least ten times more likely to get a comment from anything that I post on FB than I am here. And since I am a blatant comment whore, well, you can see why FB has lured me away from the blog. I have missed it, though, so thanks for your gentle nudging back to it.

When we last checked, Jessica had turned 21. She asked me about a year ago if I would take her to Las Vegas for her 21st birthday and I was happy to oblige. We went over Labor Day weekend. To those of you who have followed this blog from the start, you may remember my first November 4th post was about my dad, and how I met him in Las Vegas on Labor Day weekend. This past Labor Day marked the 25th anniversary of that meeting. Sadly, this trip we had to visit him at the cemetary, but it turned out to be a very nice visit. We hadn't seen his headstone, it has a cowboy hat on it. We sat down in the grass and told Grandpa stories and we could almost feel him laughing with us.

Other than that, we did the usual Vegas stuff, played some slots, went to a fancy restaurant, looked at the shops in Caesars Palace and Bellagio, saw the water show, visited the grand canal at the Venicia.



That is a key lime pie martini with graham cracker crust on the rim of the glass. To die for!

We had to go to Hoover Dam.



Full circle, that's me and Dad 25 years ago at Hoover Dam.




We stayed at the Luxor, the pyramid shaped hotel/casino. Because of the interesting shape, the elevator goes up and sort of sideways. They don't even call it an elevator, it's an inclinator. The evening we boarded along with several very loud, inebriated young women, it was quite amusing watching them try to stay upright.

We took this picture of the Hard Rock Cafe for my son, the guitarist. Figured he would appreciate the huge axe. He pointed out that the G string was missing.



And, of course, we had to have a picture in front of the famous sign. All in all, a wonderful weekend with my daughter. I have to say I am honored that my 21 year old wants to spend a long weekend in Vegas with me!