Post 4 - Part 1

Well we are now on a train back to London from Cardiff. It is about 8:30am, so about 1:30pm at home. Anyways I have some time so I thought I would tell you about Wales.

Wales is a very beautiful place, and we were lucky to have pretty good weather. It was quite warm in the sun, and again a little chilly in the shade, perfect for exploring castles.

First we went to our hotel to check-in and drop off our bags. The Cardiff Hilton is beautiful and much bigger than the Hilton Hyde Park. It has lots of windows and a great view of the Cardiff Castle.

So once we were checked in, we walked to Queens Street Station to hop a train to Caerphilly. Caerphilly is a little town just north of Cardiff and home to one really cool moated castle called...you guessed it...Caerphilly Castle. I really liked it, although it smelled a lot of mold, and algae from the moat. On the website the warn you that people with allergies may have a hard time inside the castle. This castle is exactly how I would have imagined a castle in my mind, only with more furniture and fires in the fire place!

Post 3

This is really cool. I am now on a train, traveling to Cardiff, Wales and I am blogging. Who knew having a laptop would be so convenient? It said that there would be Wifi on the train, but we haven’t been able to find it if there is.

We got up pretty early. I woke up several times during the night, but I was always able to get back to sleep so I was okay. I’m not sure if the melatonin worked, but I think it helped. I will try it again tonight. So we got up at 5:30am cause we couldn’t sleep anymore. It was nice, John and I took our time getting ready, and then we headed down to breakfast at 6:30am. It’s weird being up that early and not really being tired. (One of the reasons we stay at the Hilton is because of the included breakfast. Usually a breakfast included with your room is a sad looking continental buffet. Well such is not the case at the Hilton. It is a beautiful full buffet with eggs, toast, meat, pancakes, juice, fruit, and lots of other things. That and collecting points towards free stays is why we choose Hilton.)

We are only going to be in Wales for one night, so John and I put a change of clothes in our carry-ons and left the rest of our luggage at the Hilton. We will be back there tomorrow. So that’s nice, now we don’t have to lug our luggage all over the place. We will do the same thing when we go to Paris, and when we go to York and Edinburgh.

We decided to take the 7:45am train from London to Cardiff, but when we got the Paddington they were having some kind of technical difficulties and trains were delayed. I guess Paddington had some kind of problem accepting trains that were arriving. So we ended up catching the 7:15am train that was delayed. So it worked out. I really enjoy traveling by train. It’s quick and way less of a hassle than flying. No huge security lineups and checking luggage. It’s great!

Anyways we are about to arrive in Cardiff so I have to go for now. Tell you more soon!

Post 2 - Part 2

After Trafalgar Square, it was off to Picadilly Circus. It was kind of cool, a lot like Time Square in New York I think, but smaller. Again it was really busy with a lot of people around. I think it must be spring break, because there seems to be a lot of families and school-aged children. The weather was good, very nice when the sun was out, and a little chilly when the clouds rolled in.

It’s really funny, because Ken took about 8 pictures of John and I, and in everyone of them my eyes are closed!! Oh well.

Once we finished looking around, we headed over to one of my favorite places in London: Harrods. I love Harrods!! It is probably the biggest department store ever. It is a very historic place in London, one of the oldest department stores in the world. You can buy anything from luggage to groceries to board games and toys to pets. It’s fabulous. They even have a museum with old antiques and fossils. John and I love it. I’m not sure how impressed Ken was, but he was starting to get pretty run down.

Harrods is owned by the Al Fayed family, so there is a memorial to Princess Di and Dodi Al Fayed at Harrods. And in case you were wondering, I bought some delicious tea and a key chain, and John bought some more of our beloved Harrods mug. Next time you are over at our house you’ll see them. They’re all he and I really drink out of.

After Harrods we were all starting to get a bit tired, so we made our way back to the hotel. Our rooms are quite small, but it is a really nice hotel. It is directly across the street from Hyde Park, which is London’s version of Central Park, not nearly as big though. John and I walked through it when we were here in September, it’s actually quite beautiful and it is home to some of the biggest squirrels I have ever seen, but that is another story altogether.

We were pretty bagged by the time we got back to the hotel, so we just lounged around. I think Ken went right to sleep, but John and I watched some tv, and he did some work, because it was only 6pm and we didn’t want to go to sleep and wake up and 2am, unable to get back to sleep. So we ordered some room service (nothing exciting just a plain chicken breast with fries). This is my life now that I am trying to avoid gluten. And then we finally went to sleep around 7:30pm. Neither of us could really keep our eyes open anymore.

We took some melatonin, which is a supplement that is supposed to help you readjust to a new time zone, or it’s good if you do shift work where your shifts are changing. Apparently is helps your body resent it’s internal clock. So I will let you know what happens.

Tomorrow we are off to Wales!

Post 2 - Part 1

Well I didn’t sleep a lot in my little pod, but I was able to rest quite well. Ken and John didn’t really sleep either. Once we landed in London, we made the journey to the baggage terminal, it’s about a good 10 minute walk or so. Then once we collected our baggage we took a taxi to the Hilton Hyde Park. In past trips to London, we have taken the Heathrow Express from the airport, but we discovered that it is about the same price and less painful to take a cab, especially with 3 of us, and with luggage for two weeks. It was actually quite nice because we didn’t have to take our luggage all through Heathrow and then onto the train and then on the tube to get to our hotel.

It really is nice to be back in London. I loved riding in the cab and looking at the familiar scenery. It’s really cool how there are little farms with cows and horses, and then right next door there are apartment and commercial buildings. I love how green London is. It’s lovely to see flowers and spring grasses. I really could see myself living here. I love how when you drive down the street you see tons of people and little shops and restaurants. It’s hard for me to describe, but the city just feels alive all the time. I love people watching and riding on the tube reading the free trashy papers. It’s so quick and easy to get around. And I love being able to walk through the park in the moderate climate. I’m sure Calgary has some things like that, but it’ll never make me feel the way London does. I mean I love Calgary, because it’s my home and it’s where my family is, but sometimes I wish I had grown up on this side of the pond. But anyways.....

Once we checked into our hotel, it was only about noon. It was about 5am our body time, but we decided to push through and do some site-seeing. So we hopped on the tube (the underground subway-that’s Ken and I on it above) and headed to Trafalgar Square, this was on the of the things on Ken’s list that he really wanted to see. John and I have been there before. It was actually pretty busy, lots of people around.

Post 1

I can hardly believe that I am here, sitting on a plane, blogging. It is so cool! iWeb is really a neat program and another benefit of having a macbook. I am blogging without an internet connection and then later on when we land in London and get to our hotel where there is Wifi I will post this entry. This was probably the main reason that I switched from blogger (which I really loved dearly) to iWeb. I was thinking about how there will be times on this trip where I won’t want to pay for Wifi, but I will still want to blog, and I didn’t want to have to bother with copying and pasting, and the one bad thing about blogger is that it always takes a long time to upload photos. So I headed down to the mac store and got some excellent tips about blogging with iWeb and off I went: The Crusty Chronicles. Anyways enough plugging Mac and iWeb.

I am sitting in the Business Class cabin of a 777 heading to London, England. I must be the luckiest girl alive! This is the first time that I have sat in Business Class where they have the little pods. The seat reclines like a Lazy Boy, and will also flatten right out into a bed. I am going to try and sleep soon, because when we get to London it will be 11:00am local time, and 4:00am my body time. We are going to push through and stay up as late as we can, but catching some zzzz’s will help. These pods really are cool. You have your own plug-ins, personal entertainment unit, remote control, it’s great!! We are so lucky to have been able to book on miles! You also get a little kit that has slippers, ear plugs, an eye mask, a toothbrush, lip balm and other inflight necessities. I really do feel extremely spoiled.

That’s Ken, wearing the slippers. The food was pretty good too, although it was a little hard for me because I am trying to avoid gluten and dairy. So I had to pass on these beautiful rolls, and this gorgeous little cheese plate. And the killer was at the end of the meal they came around with ice cream. And normally when you think about ice cream on a plane, you picture those little vanilla dixie cups with tongue depressor that you were supposed to eat it will, well this was not that. This was a chilled bowl with a perfectly rounded scoop of chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry ice cream. I am salivating just thinking about it again. But alas I passed. Instead I had fruit, which was really yummy too. Fresh strawberries and blackberries.

Anyways I am off to try and sleep for awhile. I imagine I will be pretty bagged tomorrow, but I will see what I can get written down.

I've moved!!

Check out my new website!

At Home with Crusty

I am kind of missing blogging so I thought I might share with you some of the things we do while we are at home.

We (read: I) bake cupcakes

They were yummy, chocolate cake with strawberry buttercream icing, all made from scratch, can you believe it!!

We go to hockey games

We watch our boys play basketball

We play with our adorable nieces

And we plan our upcoming trips

Can you see what the book John is reading is? Fodor's Italy - for our honeymoon!!!

Also, we finally bought a king-size bed. We have wanted one for a really long time, and Nick needed a new bed, so we decided it was time. Nick will get our old queen-size and we bought ourselves a king-size. It is so big!! A few years ago John and I went a little crazy buying beds and could not find a mattress that we were both happy with. They seemed good at first, but after a couple of weeks we were rolling into each other or we had sore backs. Then one night while watching TV we saw a commercial for a Select Comfort Sleep Number bed. At first we were a little skeptical, but they was a 30-day trial period, so we decided to try it. It's really cool because we can each adjust it to our own needs. Once we got the bed and put it together we loved it, I am actually quite sad to see it go. But I am also excited about the bigger bed. Here is a photo of us putting it together:

I am really getting excited about our trip to England in April. We have our train passes, which we found out that if you actually call Britrail you can get a better deal rather than doing it online. We were able to get a family pass for John, Ken (John's brother is joining us), Jack (we are meeting him after his travel studies) and I which was way cheaper than buying single tickets. We are starting out in London, then heading to Cardiff in Wales, back to London, then to Paris to meet Jack, then across to Dover, back to London, then to York for a day or two, then to Edinburgh Scotland where we will stay for a few days, and then back to London which will include a second trip to Stonehenge, and finally head home. I probably sounds a lot more hectic than it really is, but the train travel will make it fast. I am really excited to go, I can hardly wait to blog all about it.

And tonight John and I have begun making plans for Italy so I am super excited about that too. Italy sounds so romantic, the perfect place for a honeymoon! We are getting married in June, but won't be heading away for our honeymoon until September. We decided to wait and go when it would be less busy, all the crowds will have headed back to work and school. At least that's what we are hoping, and actually that's how it was in London and Paris in September when we got engaged. I can hardly believe we are going back to Stonehenge before we are even married, but Ken and Jack really want to see it. It will be cool to go back to that same spot again, I just can't believe it is happening so quickly!

Well anyways I will maybe write some more about our plans before we go...

Thursday, time to leave....

Well Thursday was fairly uneventful. We were able to get a late check-out, so we slept in, ordered room service and then packed up. We took our suitcases down to the bell desk, and headed back to the casino in the Venetian. I bet on the upcoming UFC fight, which is on Saturday. For any UFC fans out there I bet $20 that Dan Hederson will beat Rich Franklin by decision in the 3rd round. If I win, I get $65US, which would be great! Then John made a couple sports bets and played some more Blackjack. I played a couple hands of 3-Card poker, tried my hand at the MegaBucks, and before we knew it was time to go. Flying out of Terminal 2 (the charter terminal) at Las Vegas McCarren is definitely the way to go. It's much smaller, therefore there are way fewer lines, and you move through security much faster.

The flight was great, a little turbulent, but otherwise really good. I looked out the window and saw this beautiful sky so we had to take a picture or two.

We got into Calgary about 7:10pm, and drove home. It was a great trip. I think 5 days in Vegas is the perfect amount of time. Enough time to do lots, and not enough time to get sick of all the people! 

Looks like we will be home for awhile now, our next trip is to England and Scotland in April. I can't wait, but it is nice to be home for a while!

Last full day in Vegas (for a long time I think..)

So we got up and ate breakfast a la room service which was great. Then we decided to walk over to the Mirage to see if John and one of the other guys on the trip, Kurt, could get into a poker tournament. John signed up and then we went and waited in the Sports Book for Kurt to show up. After a few minutes he did, so I decided to head over to Caesar's to check out the Forum Shops. I am hooked on Kiehl's skin care so I wanted to stock up at the store there because I don't know when I will get to pick up more. I had a good time shopping on my own and I didn't even go through all the shops, I stayed fairly close to the entrance. I got a couple things on sale at Anthropologie. The sales were really good, and then I made the mistake of going into the Fresh store. They sell skin care, lotions, soap, make-up and all that lovely stuff that I can't get enough of, so I had fun trying out all the stuff in there. It's super yummy and addictive.

We had made reservations at Emeril's Del Monico restaurant, and ended up making expanding it to include two other couples, Kurt & Beth and Terry & Susan. We had a great time with them, and once again the food was spectacular.

Beth and Susan.

Kurt.

I tried frogs legs for the first time. I can't believe it, but Kurt ordered them as an appetizer and insisted I try one. They looked almost like battered prawns except you could see the green and the little flipper. I felt guilty about it for the whole night, because I felt like I ate Kermit! But it was good, it tasted like a combination between chicken and duck. Check it out:

I ordered the Butternut Squash ravioli to start, then the Lobster Bisque which had a huge chunk of lobster in it and was extremely creamy and delicious, and then they Vine-Ripened Tomato Salad. It was so good, and I was so full after.  John had the Gumbo which he absolutely loves, and then Steak and the Parmesan Truffle Potato Chips which are to die for. So yummy!

After dinner which we ate quite early, around 5:00pm we headed back to Caesar's for the group show: Bette Midler!! We were really excited about it and we both enjoyed. The divine Ms. M was very witty, and sand all her hits. She still has great legs and a great voice. It is a very glitzy Las Vegas show with showgirls and everything. I would definitely recommend it, especially if you like Bette Midler. I wish I could have taken pictures, but you were not allowed, and I didn't want to risk getting kicked out.

After Bette Midler, we decided to try our luck in another poker tournament. So we went over the play in the 10:00 tournament at Treasure Island. It's a $60 buy-in and about 20 people entered. It was funny because John and I went out at almost exactly the same time, with the same hand (Ace-King). We played for about 2 hours, we probably went out in about 13th-14th place or very close to it. Which means no prize money. But oh well we gained experience and had some fun doing it!

We were tired so we walked back to the Venetian and gambled some more. John played some Blackjack and I played some 3-card Poker. Neither one of us did very well but we ended up staying up until about 2:30am. John played a few minutes of Roulette and won a little bit of our money back and we hit the sack!

Yaaaayyy, Pictures!!

Here are some pictures finally. Check out our room, isn't it spectacular?!?!

Look at how the credenza lights up, isn't that cool?

Here are some pictures from our dinner Monday night at The Steakhouse at Circus Circus:

The french onion soup was awesome, very cheesy. Even the butter was shaped like beef!

I had the chicken and it was really good. They must marinade it in something cause it is so juicy and flavorful. John got the steak and crab legs. Look at the size of them, he says they are to die for, the best he has ever tasted. Oh and the steak isn't bad too.

We thought this would make a good picture, everyone at our table piled up the crab legs on John's plate.

At Circus Circus they have this huge net over the casino and they had Trapeze acts throughout the day. We caught the beginning of one.

Here are some photos from our Heninger poker tournament, John went out 19th and I went out 12th. We both won $100 gift certificates from Chinook Centre which was cool (even though we organized the prizes).

After the tournament, we hit the spa, and then Tao. Here is me at Tao, I love that place!!

We sat upstairs which was different, check out the size of the koi fish in the pool, it might be hard to see, but they are huge!

Okay, I think we are all caught up on pictures now! Sorry for the delay, I will do my best not to forget my cord again!

Tuesday in Las Vegas

Today was a really fun day. We got up a little early because John had to go to his Manager's meeting. I just lounged around the hotel room and watched some TV which was nice. Then we headed over to Treasure Island for a group lunch. We just ate at the coffee shop there, so it was good, but nothing spectacular, but the company was great.

On a side note, I actually ran into some people I know from Calgary that I haven't seen for about 5 years, so that was kind of cool.

Then it was time for our group moral building event. Can you guess what it is?? A texas hold'em poker tournament! It's actually really fun. Treasure Island sets us up 3 tables in the poker room with dealers and chips, and even an announcer. We always have a lot of fun. We also always make sure that everyone gets a prize, this year we did Chinook Centre/Market Mall gift certificates in different denominations. So John finished in 19th place and I finished in 12th place. We had a lot of fun. And everyone always sticks around and watches and cheers everyone on. It's a lot less pressure when you are playing with friends/people you know. I think it is the most successful and exciting part of this Manager's Trip. I don't think there was one person out of the 27 that played that didn't have a good time.

After the poker tournament we headed to the spa. It's the Canyon Ranch Spa at Venetian/Palazzo and it's apparently one of the best in North America. I went for a pedicure, which was fabulous and you get to keep the nail polish which I thought was cool. My feet feel so smooth now. It was great but a little pricey. John had a massage but was really unhappy with it. It was supposed to be for 80 minutes, and John said it was only 70 minutes at max. Plus he said it was just a bad massage, the therapist went way to fast and she didn't communicate with him. So he felt pretty unhappy and ripped off. Which was really too bad, especially because it was so expensive.

After the spa, we went to Tao for dinner. I made us a reservation there a couple of days ago, and we were a little disappointed because even though we had a reservation for 7:45pm we weren't seated until 8:20pm. That kind of put a downer on it for us, especially because John was already a little choked about his massage. But once we got a table the service was excellent and the food was even better. Just as good if not better than we remembered it. If you ever get a chance to go there, you have to have the Lobster Dumplings. They are so good. Tao is a really neat place, and although it was very noisy and busy tonight, we still really enjoyed it. I think next time we will just go earlier.

After Tao, we went to Godiva in the Palazzo shops and got chocolate covered strawberries. They were mouthwateringly good. The chocolate just melts in your mouth, but they too are expensive: $4.50/strawberry! With our chocolate craving satisfied, we stopped in the casino and lost some money playing 3-Card Poker and Blackjack, and then Roulette and Wheel of Fortune. And now it is off to bed. Hard to believe this trip is almost over!

Las Vegas so far.....

Well, I cannot believe I did this but I forgot the cable for my camera! Errrrrr! I even looked right at it and thought, I need to pack that. But noooooo I forgot it! Which really sucks, because now I don't have any pictures to add to my posts. And that's my favorite part!!!! I guess I will just have to add pictures later. Brian Heninger has the same camera as me, so there is a small chance he brought his cable with him and I can borrow it, but we'll have to see.
Anyways for now, we'll have to make due with words.
So the flight here Sunday night was great, it even left a few minutes early and arrived a few minutes early. (I watched Grey's Anatomy on the plane on my new laptop and it was fabulous, great sound and even better picture!) We got our luggage quickly and were in a cab and off to the Venetian in record time. The Venetian is really nice, but they spray this fragrance everywhere that's really perfumey, and it makes me feel slightly nauseous. Thank goodness it doesn't smell that way in the rooms. The girl at the check-in desk was unusually friendly for Vegas. She was making small talk and being all helpful. Usually we get really surly check-in people so it was a nice change. I think it might have something to do with the slowness and bad economy.
Our room is on the 28th floor, and all the rooms at the Venetian are suites so it is huge. We don't have the best view but you can see the Palazzo tower and pool which looks nice. And really we don't spend a lot of time looking out our window anyways. There is a super comfy king size bed, with this beautiful credenza that lights up (wait till you see the picture!). And then you step down to this little living room area with a sectional, a flat screen TV, a table and chairs, and a little desk/workstation area. And don't even get me started on the bathroom! It's massive, with 2 vanities, a soaker tub, a stand up shower and a separate toilet area (there's even a phone in there! Who talks on the phone when they are on the toilet? Eww). It's really beautiful and they are giving these suites away right now!! Only $99/night. Isn't that amazing? I think the Americans are starting to freak out a little. The bed is amazingly plush and comfy too. I love sleeping in fresh sheets. It's amazing the difference between the hotel bed here and the condo bed in Maui! The bed in the condo in Maui was old and flat, and felt like sleeping at Grandma's house.
We didn't really do much Sunday night. We were a little hungry so we ordered room service which was outrageously priced. $5 for this mini bottle of coke!! And it wasn't even that great. Then we watched some TV and hit the sack.

Monday morning we headed down the the Grand Lux Cafe (the Venetian cafe) for breakfast. It's from the creators of the Cheesecake Factory, so the menu was like 8 pages and the portions were huge. John had bacon and eggs, and I had fruit with toast. It was really good. The fruit was super fresh and tasty. We ran into Michael & Lana (Michael is the General Sales Manager at Heninger) and decided to share a cab to the Las Vegas Premium Outlets. We got some good deals. They have added a whole new block of stores so there is a lot more selection. I finally got John to try on some new jeans. He hates shopping, but he was in desperate need of a couple more pairs of jeans. The one pair he owns was getting worn and holey, but also when we go to England in April he will need at least two pairs, because I am not sure if we will get to do laundry and we will be gone for at least 2 weeks. So he got 2 pairs of Lucky Brand jeans and they were buy one get one 50% off, so he was happy. I also got a pair of jeans and a shirt for steals too. We even picked up some shirts for the boys, so all in all it was a successful day of shopping.
When we got back from shopping, we had some time to chill and change and then we headed out for our first Heninger group dinner. It was at The Steakhouse at Circus Circus. Once again it was a fabulous meal. No complaints, although some of our guests got a little drunk and noisy. Luckily, John was able to pay the bill quickly and we were on our way. We caught a glimpse of the trapeze artists that perform over the casino before we left. I got some good pictures which I promise I will show you later. We got back to the Venetian, we went to Godiva for dessert. Unfortunately they were out of our favourite chocolate covered strawberries, so we got chocolate covered fruit kabobs (strawberry and banana). They were really tasty. Then John played a couple hands of blackjack and it was off to bed again.
Not very exciting stuff without pictures is it? Oh well there will be pictures later!

Viva Las Vegas....

Well here we are again, bags packed, and ready to hit the road to the Calgary airport. We are off to Vegas our first trip of 2009. I have a feeling that it will be one of very few to Vegas this year. I really think that we have worn it out. Neither one of us is really looking forward to it. Which is really too bad, because Vegas is fun!

Anyways I'll write more when we get snuggled in to the Venitian!!

I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night......

So yesterday, we went to the airport for our 1:30pm flight out of Kahalui to find huge line-ups of unhappy, disgruntled people. The boys and I got all our luggage together and got a spot in line while John went and returned the rental car. By the time he got back, the line hadn't budged one spot. It was crazy, so John went to make a few phone calls and when he got back we remember his Platinum Aeroplan AMEX card!! Which gives us access to the business class line. So the boys and I stayed in our current position while John went to the business class line to wait, it looked incredibly long too. But while we moved about 5 people, John got to the beginning of his line, so much to the chagrin of everyone else in the line, we jumped in with John and made it through in know time. They had already delayed the flight again to 2:45pm, but had to make it even later because they couldn't get everyone checked-in in time.

Air Canada is really unbelievable. You would think that they might have brought in one or two extra staff for their mistake! But no, they didn't, they let 3 agents check-in the whole plane. They added a fourth briefly but then she must have had to go on her break. And as we were sitting at the gate, one of the flight attendants went around telling everyone that there would be no fresh food on the flight and that there was already limited items, so not enough for everyone. I appreciate that she took the time to do that, because at least then we had sometime to get some snacks to bring with us.

We finally took off around 3:30 or so and the flight was good, it actually went quite quickly, just over 5 hours. 

Then we landed in Vancouver. 

We got our luggage and then they announced that they were giving out hotel vouchers for people who had to spend the night in Vancouver. We didn't know that they were going to do this, so we had already booked 2 rooms at the Holiday Inn Express. They hadn't made this announcement until after we already had our luggage, but I decided to go wait in line and see if the voucher would be good for our hotel. After close to a 30 minute wait, we were told that they had Holiday Inn vouchers but they weren't sure if they would work at the Holiday Inn Express. We took two anyways and decided to try our luck. When I booked the hotel, I made sure that they had a 24-hour shuttle service, so we weren't worried about getting there.

It was close to midnight at this time and we hadn't had a meal since breakfast, so we looked around the airport for somewhere to eat, as the hotel probably wouldn't have anywhere. We found a Burger King and ate some food there. Once we were done we went to look for the shuttle. We found a phone to call for it, and the guy on the other end told us that their 24-hour shuttle means after midnight take a taxi and we'll reimburse you. John was livid, he swore a little and told the guy that we had 10 bags including golf clubs and it would probably take us 3 taxis to get there. Anyways to make a long story short, the shuttle driver came and got us, and we tipped him very well because of it.

The hotel was pretty nice, but they didn't take the vouchers. We didn't get to sleep until probably 2:30am or so, but we slept in until 10, so that was okay. So we all got up and ready and headed back to the airport. 

Here was the view out our hotel window:

We had no problems with our flight to Calgary. We checked in quickly, with an extremely nice agent, went through security quickly, and then the flight left really close to it's scheduled 2:00pm. And I can't even tell you how good it is to be home. I don't even mind the cold, although it is not even near how cold it was while we were gone.

I am so happy to be sleeping in my own bed and cuddling my little dog. So I will enjoy it for a few days and then we are off to Vegas!