The Smith Saga – Vegas Detour

The Smith Saga took a detour last weekend. Shaun and I took the Girl and her fiancé to Las Vegas to celebrate her 21st birthday. Shaun and I have a history in Vegas – we were visiting some of his family in Vegas on my 20th birthday when he proposed to me and we celebrated our 10 year and our 20 year anniversaries in Vegas. I got my first tattoo in Vegas when we celebrated our 10 year anniversary.

It has changed a LOT over the years. When he proposed back in the 90s, they were trying to draw in more families. They had the pirate ship battle in front of Treasure Island (so sad this is gone!) and Siegfried & Roy were there with their famous white tigers! Even though we were 20 and could not gamble or drink, there were plenty of things to do. Now it seems to be more geared towards the young night club scene. I know it makes me sound old but I just don’t enjoy it as much anymore. Even Fremont Street has become more commercialized and like a night club. We were there 7 years ago for our 20th anniversary and I loved Fremont Street. All the characters and people to watch. There are still TONS of people there (too many now in my opinion) but it just does not have the same feel to it anymore. I guess it is just not my scene and I’m showing my age.

The Smith Saga – Catch Up

We knew 2022 was going to be a year of big things for our family. All three kids were having significant birthdays. The Girl was turning 21, our oldest son was going to be turning 18 and the youngest 16. However, we had no idea just how eventful it would be. Let’s do a little recap of April, May and June to date, shall we? This should get us all caught up to the present.

The beginning of April Shaun’s grandfather passed away. He was 91 and a big part of my husband’s life. Shaun would usually go up to see him every other weekend. He would help him out with projects, cook a yummy meal (Shaun is a great cook!), run around town with him and just sit and talk. Grandpa had some great stories. And they both had a love of cars. I think that is one reason our oldest son got along with him so well. Grandpa had photo albums full of all the different cars he had owned and restored over the years.

Tribute our oldest son wrote for Grandpa

The Smith Saga – Beginnings Continued

I told a friend of mine from high school I would write the follow up to my Beginnings post by this weekend. Here it is now Sunday evening and I have not yet posted. I think she may have connections to Rip from Yellowstone, so I figured I better get to writing as I don’t want to visit the train station this week.

As I mentioned in the last post, The Smith Saga – Beginning of a New Adventure, we came home in mid April with an accepted offer. However, we did not know what the timing of our move would be yet. Our youngest (referred to as The Instigator in previous posts) had two years left of high school, our daughter (The Girl) was considering coming home to finish her last year of college online so she could work and coach here locally, and our middle child and eldest son (the Drama Queen) was graduating from high school and had not yet decided what he would do next. At this point, as much as we wanted to get out of the state, we figured it would be at least two years.

The Smith Saga – Beginning of a New Adventure

Funny how you can strive for your dreams your entire life and then in just a moment (or a span of 4 days) everything just falls into place. Things work out in ways that exceed anything you’ve been able to imagine (and I have a WILD imagination at times!)

I’ve not posted in the last couple years. And what a crazy ride those 2 years have been! Not just for my family, but for the entire country, the world! Maybe at some point I will share what 2021/2022 looked like for the Smith family. Probably not much different than many other families. What I will share now is it was two years filled with eye opening and jaw dropping revelations at times. Our entire world and world view has been turned upside down. What we thought we knew about many things has been blown wide open.

A lot of opportunities and change for good has come from all of this craziness. I’ve decided now might be a good time to get back to writing. Even if nobody else wants to read my ramblings, at least I’ve documented it for myself.