A & E

So I got a free weekend from the kids last week. However it was not exactly what you would call 'free'.

I went down to George Shrinks as my niece used to call it for clogging competition (which was a whole other story in itself that won't be highlighted here).

On Saturday after we were done me, my friend Brandi, and her sister decided to take a side trip down to Vegas. About 5 minutes outside of Vegas our 'adventure' began.

We got a flat tire.

Well for those of you who know me (or have been 4 wheeling in skippy with me) you know that I have had A LOT of flat tires in my life. I believe I learned to change one when I was about sixteen when I started driving. Therefore I was all over getting it changed and on our way.

We pulled out the jack, took the tire down from underneath the suv, and grabbed the lugnut wrench. However upon inspection of the wheel we figured out something was horribly wrong. The lugnut wrench did not fit the lugs. I didn't know if it was just me not figuring out how to get a hubcap off or if it was special rims.

Well, Brandi ended up calling roadside assistance. Out came Luis the roadside assistant man to save the day. He jacked up the car, got his tools out and inspected the lugnuts...only to find out that they were special lugnuts that require a 'key'. Yes they make special lugnuts that have special fittings to them so people cannot steal your tires. Brandi had been in an accident a couple of months back and just bought a new car, but somehow they had failed to mention or give her the special key to be able to change her tire. I had known about the keys because I had a car once that had this and I did not have the key either and had to drive all over ending up at a dealership to have them take the key off and replace it with a normal lugnut.

Well it was getting late and so Luis the roadside assistant man and I headed to a Pep Boys to see if they sold the special key. After the fact I realized how dumb that might have been for me to hop in his van with him but I figured I would have kicked him in the head if he tried doing anything.

No luck at the Pep Boys so we ended up towing the car to what they call the all night spanish tire shops. We had to take a ten dollar five minute cab ride to the tire shop in a nasty smoke smelling cab. We went into the shop explained our situation and the little spanish man ran off. A couple of minutes later he came back with someone that could actually understand English and we explained our situation. The tow truck with the car got there, they inspected the wheel and did in fact have the key to get the lugnuts off (after me looking over and seeing that they had to grind the special lugnut key down they had as it didn't fit initially).

After trying to sell us another used tire, Brandi telling them no, them telling us we must be up for another adventure, they changed the tire and two hours later we were back to being on our way.

And why were we really going down to Vegas you ask? It was because of this...

The Baja Fresh! They have the most delicious burritos ever! They come in pretty close to the Cafe Rio. They used to be where we live for about a year and one day dissapeared so I was left with an eternal craving.

We were able to get our eats which was delicious and then we walked down from the Excaliber to the Bellagio to watch the fountains. The fountains were awesome as they always are.

I think it has been about four years since I was last down there and as Vegas always does it has changed A LOT. Also I can't recall if I have ever been on the strip on a Saturday night but apparently you need some of these to wear and fit in:

They tore down a hotel that used to be by the Bellagio and built a the Aria hotel and they have constructed a lot of new walkways to basically keep you off the street of the strip but make it quite confusing to get around (not to mention it took us like a 1/2 hour to find the exit and get out of the Excaliber).

We ended up getting back to our hotel at 3 in the morning and crashed. Good times, Good times.

So I'm not a huge fan of eating cake or frosting. My friend talked me into taking a cake decorating class so I said sure why not I need to expand my knowledge base. I told my Sunday School class of kids this week that it is important for them to pay attention in school especially to science because someday they may be making their own worlds...I'm just trying to figure out how the knowledge of cake decorating can fit into this category. Anyway I digress...The class wasn't too bad. I actually enjoyed it but ended up throwing away all the cakes I made because nobody around here would eat them. Here is the cake I made in my last class. It is no masterpiece by any means but now I know how to make roses out of frosting (instead of play-do which is what I usually make them out of when feeling creative).