Day 5: Monument Valley

After spending our second night at the Grand Canyon, it was time to move on.  Yeah, I guess we were about done with the Grand Canyon.  I'd love to hike to the bottom, but not this trip, and not these kids.  We were up earlish, had breakfast (big, yum) and then headed out.  It was quite a drive to our next stop in Moab, Utah and I was anxious to get going.  Oh Mark...



He made us stop at ANOTHER overlook heading out.  And it was a different angle and a different view, and yes, it was still cool, but gee wiz, lets go.



Ugh, and another visitor center.  Are we never getting out of here?  One thing that was on the itinerary was a stop at Monument Valley.  We planned to pay and go in and enjoy the area a little bit.  I was interested in this during planning, but like I said, I kind of wanted to get to Moab.  But it was pretty cool.



And bright.  We immediately went into the gift shop and bought the kids sunglasses.  The desert sun is no joke!



Something else happened right after this picture was taken.  It actually started at the Grand Canyon where the wind picked up and it got a bit colder.  But it hit riiiight about now and the wind started blowing all that sand and dust.  Really, everyone ran for shelter.  We ran for our car.

Part of Monument Valley is that you can drive down in the valley.  And that was our plan, so we headed down in our little SUV.  We got to one of the monuments.



Oh kids...



But with the wind and me being anxious, we didn't go very far.  It was a neat area and I'm glad we stopped though!

Day 4: Grand Canyon!

We stayed in the Bright Angel Lodge which was CHEAP and right on the edge of the canyon.



We actually had to get two rooms because they only allow up to three people in a room.  I did some searching to see if we could sneak in an extra kid but I came to the conclusion that it would be a tight fit.  We got two rooms.  Got up, dressed, and walked to the lodge and had breakfast.  I do want to say that I got in the habit of having a big breakfast everyone morning. YUM!  Then we headed out.

The national park doesn't want hordes of people driving all over the park so they actually have a semi-decent bus system to get you around.  It worked ok.  We took it to the visitor center and then to another overlook on the rim.  We heavily bribed Andy for a good picture with the promise of a souvenir!



James really had a ball.  He said "in shout to the lord when they say the mountains bow down to the sea at your name, I think they were talking about the Grand Canyon"  Its a little cheesy but still cute.



That got James a souvenir.  He picked a hiking hat:



From there we took the "Trail of Time" which was perfect for our family.



We started Andy on a heavy dose of snacks to improve his mood:



We went back to the rooms for lunch (sandwiches!)  and took the shuttles to Hermits Rest, getting out periodically on the way.  I do have the say, that this sounded lame to me at the time, and writing it now, still sounds lame, but but going through it, every angle of the canyons was cool and amazing.  Apparently I didn't take any pictures, but James got the selfie of us at Hermits Rest:



After this Andy was kind of done.  He needs to recharge so I stayed back at the room with him:



James went and got a junior ranger badge!



Mark tried to get away for a bit and hit the Bright Angel Trail, but James was so into it he really wanted to go to.  They didn't make it very far before it got hot and well, had to come back.  I think about this point someone noticed James's Clemson Z Run shirt and said, "hey, I went to Clemson"  They were another family of 4 from Charlotte, but had an 18 month old.  I don't think they slept as well and had to worried about the baby toddling over the side.  Andy is grumpy, but he isn't that bad!

Day 3: Hoover Dam

Everyone slept great our second night in Las Vegas.  Whew!  As an aside, going to Vegas with kids, was fine, maybe a little awkward, but at no time did I think I would actually gamble.  Turns out, Mark intended to gamble.  He stayed in the casinos and the rest of us East Coasters went to bed.

As another aside, I just so happened to travel to the West Coast a couple of times in the past year.  The first night you are there you are so tired and jet lagged, you go to bed at 8:30.  Annnnnndddd, sleep until 6:30 local time.  Seriously, I feel like a million bucks after that.  That's 10 hours of sleep.  Its awesome!  Now, coming back to the East Coast is significantly less awesome, but you get what I'm saying.  Day 3 I woke up and felt great!

We had a pretty big breakfast...packed up and headed out of town.  In hindsight, Mark was trying to tell me we should leave earlier, but I didn't get it. On to the rest of our trip!



This is when the real trip began!  We got to the Hoover Dam about 11, which was too late to do any sort of tour.  The kids have to be a certain age to do one tour and we would have had to wait hours.  I hear it is cool, but it just didn't work out for us.  But the Hoover Dam was so cool!  I don't know if it was the scenery or the size of it, but I loved it!



Really, by this time, Andy started breaking down.



He didn't want to be there, he didn't care, he just wanted to go home.  Oh well.



There was a small museum that told about how and why they built the dam.  Turns out politics was just a terrible as it is now!  Woohoo!!  We took a group shot.



Andy wasn't into it.  For lunch we drove back up the road a little bit more to an overlook of Lake Mead.  I was in awe of this, which is funny considering where we were going!!  But again, loved it.  We ate lunch in our rental car



And then took another group shot



It was really bright.  Really bright.  It was about an hour from Vegas to the Hoover Dam, then about 3.5 hours to the Grand Canyon.  I'm not STEM coordinator, but James immediately started building a Hoover Dam in mine craft.  #winning



We got to the Grand Canyon about 4pm local time I think.  We stayed in the Bright Angel Lodge and had to get two rooms.  We were right by the top though.  Another group picture and again, Andy wasn't into it...



James is my 1950s boy and loved it!



Here is a not too awful picture of Andy (finally)

Day 2: Vegas

So, we had a bad digestive night.  All of us were jet lagging and pretty tired on day 2.  We didn't have any grand plans in Vegas, but they all got pulled back juuuuuust a bit.  We got up and had breakfast at the Starbucks in the hotel and then I had this tremendous urge to go OUTSIDE.  Everything was inside and artificial lights, and I wanted out.  We just stepped outside our hotel and:



I don't know if you can see it, but James is standing in front of our bag of gross laundry.  A trip to the laundry mat occurred later in the day.  Not pictured.



We stayed at the Planet Hollywood Hotel.  It was in a pretty good location.  It was attached to a mall and we spend the morning walking around inside.  Yes, we had to go back inside.  Here was the magic shop.  It was a favorite.



When we told the kids we were going to a place called Las Vegas, we explained that Las Vegas was where a lot of grown ups went to go crazy.  Andy asked, " you mean eat ice cream at the wrong time?"  When in Vegas...





My poor kids though.  It was a bad digestive night and I'm afraid they weren't into being so crazy.  After walking around, we headed to do some errands (including laundry).  We came back and I took the kids to the pool.  Has anyone been to a pool in Vegas?  It was very MTV.  I felt very uncomfortable, but the kids didn't seem to notice:





Yes, they were feeling better.  The one thing we had planned was a magic show.  The number one rated thing to do is the Armando Vera up close magic show.  Signing up for it was weird.  You had to sign up for the Nate Burton show and then got it for free.  We weren't really sure if the kids could handle it, but decided to try it out.  It was AMAZING!  So glad we went.  For this show, it was about 30 people and the magic was all slight of hand tricks.  The kids really wanted to get picked to help out but they didn't.  After it was over, onto the Nate Burton show.  This was more of a Vegas show.  And again it was pretty cool, more over the top stuff.  About this time Andy got kind of tired and crawled on my lap.  He wanted to leave even though I bought him a $9 ginger ale I kid you not.  The cup flashed different colors so I guess that is something.  They mention they are going to pick a kid from the audience.  James went CRAZY.  I whisper to him to calm down and hold his hand up thinking it would make him more appealing.  They pick Andy.  Andy who was sitting on my lap goes in front of this audience of like 500 people.  On to the stage.   Here is the trick.  They were going to read his mind.  They put a blank chalkboard hanging from some rope and cover it with a sheet.  Andy is on stage.  Says his name.  They ask him to pick between 2 show girls to go on a date with: a blond and a brunette.  He picked the blond.  There you go, Andy has a type.  He picked the blonde.  No hesitation.  Have you seen his 2nd teacher?  Yeah, he has a type.  They ask where he would take her to dinner.  Again, no hesitation.  Pizza Huuuuuuut.  Said just like that.  At this point, Andy realized that there were a lot of people watching him and he started to loose it just bit.  They asked what move he would take her to see.  I think he didn't want to take her to see a movie.  He would rather play Wii Lego Star Wars.  At the very end they asked if she asked him to get married, what would he say? well, he would say "yes".  They dropped the sheet and it had all the answers he said.



The show was almost over at this point and then both the kids kind of lost it.  James because he didn't get picked, and Andy because he did.  We did kind of take a vow never to speak of this again, but I had to record it.  It was too funny.  And I can't believe they picked Andy.  I mean, he was sitting on my lap!

After the show we walked the strip a bit and got dinner, then back to bed.  Gosh, for taking it easy, we sure did a lot!

Day 1: Flight to Vegas

The flight itinerary was something else that kept changing.  It ended up being best to get up early and drive to Charlotte for our flight.  Andy was NOT excited.  He kept saying "check me out!" but James and the rest of us were ready to go!



I really can't say enough about the family friendly Charlotte airport.  Even though it was spring break and huge wait times reported, we got placed in a special family check in line and they had these handy water bottle fountains.  Although we don't fly a lot, they have flown before, it was still a special thing.  Another big win for the trip, were these headphones.  We had some, but the kids were still struggling to use them.  These we found at WalMart for like 8 bucks.  We called them Bops by Dr Dude!



Both the way there and the way back, we had 2 hour layovers in Houston.  Really, everything worked great.  We tried telling the kids that this is NOT how flights usually are, but we will take it while we could.  Lunch in Houston was a Papaduex's, which I'll admit, I was super excited about.  I ended up being disappointed because they didn't have my favorite Mixed Seafood Grill on their VERY expensive menu.



We got to Vegas without much trouble, but then we had to wait to get to the car rental place, and then wait to get the car, and then traffic to get to the hotel, and then we couldn't find a place to park, and then we had to walk through a mall to get to the hotel...well, you get the picture.  About 6pm local time the kids we hungry and exhausted.  We ended up getting fast food meatballs for like $40 which then the kids didn't eat.  Turns out that was a blessing in disguise as James spent the night throwing up and Andy, well, let's just say Andy didn't feel well either.  Day 2 was going to involve a lot of coffee....

Day 0: Planning our Grand Circle Adventure

Like most major trips, our the planning of our Grand Circle Adventure started a year in advance.  Someone I worked with was traveling to the Grand Canyon for Spring Break.  It really got me thinking about how much I wanted to do that.  Living in a small town, I feel obligated to show my kids more of the world and this was a way to do that.  Honestly, here was my thought process.  "Hey, isn't flying in Las Vegas pretty cheap?  We could go to Vegas and then to the Grand Canyon for a couple of days.  I bet that won't be expensive!"  That isn't really what happened, but we still had a great trip.  My strategy and itinerary for this trip changed several times during the planning stage.  Someone else I worked with warned against spending too much time at the Grand Canyon.  She suggested doing the "Grand Circle" which is a term I had never heard of before.  There are several ways  to do it, but it basically allows you to hit several of the national parks in Arizona and Utah.  The trip was expanded again, and that is what we ended up doing.  But first, on day 0, we were checking into our Southwest flight EXACTLY 24 hours in advance.

Day1:  Flight to Las Vegas
Day 2:  Las Vegas
Day3:  Hoover Dam
Day 4: Grand Canyon
Day 5: Monument Valley
Day 6:  Arches and Canyonlands
Day 7: Zion
Day 8:  Fly home

My dad made me make rouladen.

Yes, I love my mom's rouladen. I really do. But I don't know why I never felt the need to make it myself. I made my dad's chili, sure, and his BBQ but for some reason I never wanted to try my moms stuff. I'm hoping it is because subconsciously I will know she will always be here but I also know she uses a lot of recipes. She doesn't use a recipe for rouladen so I guess it is a good thing that I was forced to take a Saturday and make it with her. To make sure it stuck, I took pictures in order to post it on the blog.

Step #1. Buy meat. Go to the butcher counter and ask for some sort of round roast slices 1/8-1/4 thick. Sometimes they will know what rouladen is if you to tell them that is what you are making. The butcher who sliced the meat this time apparently got confused so my mom was really nervous how it was going to turn out. 

Step 2.  Peel 2-3 onions and slice into 1/2 inch vertical slices. The amount varies. 

Step 3. Slice and entire pack of bacon into 3/4 inch pieces. Use the end parts to render the fat later. 

Step 4. Open meat from the butcher. Pound it to an even thickness, or , as we did today beat the living crap out of it until my mom decides it might be usable. 

It's a great stress reliever. 

Step 5. Slice into rectangles. I'd say 2" by 4". Enough to stuff and roll. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place a few chunks of bacon and some onion onto each piece of meat. 

Step 6. Get 2 toothpicks per section. Roll up carefully and secure with toothpicks. 

My mom totally kicked my ass at this point. Don't be like me. 

Step 7.  Sift flour over rolled pieces and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Dredge remainder of pieces in the excess flour. 

Step 8.  Fry excess bacon pieces in a hot skillet to render the fat. Add more vegetable oil if necessary. Brown the rouladen in the oil until brown in all sides. 

Step 9. Removed browned rouladen to large oven proof and continue with the remaining rouladen until it is all brown. 

Step 10. Fry remaining bacon and/or onion and add to pan. Add water to pan and scrape and tasty brown bits. Put water in the oven proof pot with rouladen. 

Step 10. Add water to bring level to halfway up the rouladen. Bake at a 325 degree over for 2-3 hours. 

After 2-3 hours the meat should be tender. You can use the gravy to make mushy rice but with everything else, you just dish it up and eat it. 

We also served it with carrots. If you are lucky enough to have leftovers, good for you.  My mom was disappointed in the outcome and says she is never buying meat from ingles again.  She also says it was her worse effort ever. 😩. It really was fine. 

MUSHY RICE

start with 2 parts water and rouladen juice and 1 part rice. Cook as normal. Once the water gets absorbed add more juice or water. Repeat a few more times until the rice is overlooked and the desired consistency is reached.