Virginia Welcomes You

Well we've made it allll the way down to Virginia Beach. Let me fill you in on the adventure so far:

Saturday we got up early and we finished up our last minute things and were out the door at the crack of 11:30! We went to deposit Jake's cheque and get gas and were on the highway by 11:45am. For some reason it took us 2 hours to get to Parry Sound. I must have been doing the speed limit or something, cuz there wasn't any traffic. We ate lunch at Wendy's and after our 45 minute stop was done,we were on our way again by 2:30pm. Just after Barrie we took a small break to change drivers, and Jake drove for an hour and a half. Unfortunatly we only got 39 kms in that time. There was a major accident on the highway in King Township and we were in stop and go traffic for EVER. Fortunately when we left the highway on the only partially marked detour in Aurora I recognized Jane Street and told Jake to take that south until we could go back to the highway. (Sidenote: When I was in highschool my friends Jeremy, Will, Kendra and some other people all went to Kendra's cottage in my parent's red Horizon. There were 6 of us in a car with 4 seat belts, and we took Jane street all the way up to Aurora or somewhere. There was a cop following us most of the way, and I was sweating bullets because I didn't know that what we were doing was okay. I thought for sure we were breaking the law, but I learned years later that as long as all the seatbelts were being used, it didn't matter how many MORE people were in the car. That law recently changed, I noticed.) ANYWAY we made it to Niagara Falls by 7:30pm or so. We stayed at Travelodge and paid $150 for a room on the ground floor, 2 blocks away from the falls. We took the kids for a walk down to see them, but as we left the busy shopping area of Clifton Hill, the air became extremely cold. We turned around and got dressed in sweaters and socks and pants, and tried again. It was getting dim, and we didn't stay long. We went back to the hotel, Jake went across the street and brought "home" Wendy's, and then I gave the kids a bath while Jake stepped out to the casino. He came back a little while later with nothing but a $2.50 chip. He couldn't find the texas hold'em table, and had played a couple rounds of BlackJack (with an ungodly $15 and $25 minimum bet!!!) We had budgeted $40 each for the casino. So it was my turn. I took my driver's licence and my $40 and the $2.50 chip and walked down. I showed my ID and entered the noisy packed hot confusing casino. I ended up finding ONE hold'em table, but it was so crowded I couldn't observe for very long. It wasn't real hold'em anyway, it was a version called "Texas Hold'em Bonus" and it's each player against the dealer only, not each other. Which means you have to totally go on chance, you can't bluff or get reads on people's hands or anything. PLUS it was also $15 minimim bet. I found a roulette-ish table where there was a wheel and a table and you placed your minimum $1 bet on either the $1 square, $2, $5, $10, $20, $40 or Jackpot squares. The $1 square paid 1-1, $2 square paid 2-1, $5 5-1 etc. I placed a dollar on $2 and one on $5. I won with the 2. I did it again and won on the 2. I did it again and won on the $5. I started putting out $2 on the 2,5, and $1 on the 10 and 20. I won once on the 10. I made money up to $55, but then I started breaking even and losing. When I got back down to my original $40 I quit, cashed out, and left. I noticed on the way out there were Texas Hold'em sit and go games but the sign said the wait was 2.5 hours. Too bad. Anyway it was fun.

The next morning we had breakfast after we found the friggin restaurant! We had coupons for a specific one from the hotel, and the signs pointing us to it were not clear. We crossed the border at about 11am and had an easy ride down to PA. Sage slept the whole way, both days. He was sick, poor guy, but at least he wasn't too crabby. We made it to Rhiannon's house by 6:30pm. We had a great few days with them, playing with her two boys and baby girl. We were originally going to stay at Jake's friend Chuck's house, but Rhi and Dave had cleaned out their family room (they only moved into that house 7 weeks ago and there were lots of boxes still in the family room downstairs) just so we would stay at their house. That was really thoughtful. I was glad Jake agreed because while I'm sure Chuck is a nice guy, I only met him once for a few minutes and I was not really looking forward to staying with him and his new wife all week last week and next.

Wednesday night Jake's poor hippy uncle Lenny came to Rhi's for supper and we decided to ask him if he wanted to go to Virginia Beach with us, since he hadn't been down here for 3 years (no car) and never gets to talk to his sister Linda (no phone). Of course he wanted to, so yesterday morning at 11am we picked him up and made our way down here. Herd of turtles indeed. By the time we left Johnstown, it was 11:30am and we arrived at Linda and Scott's at 9:30pm. With two boys and an uncle who chain smokes, every stop was sooooo long. But we made it, and Nanna and Pappy and Great Gramma were happy to see us.

It's hot down here, by the way.

We're hoping to go fly a kite at the beach tonight I think. We walked around the mall today and also hunted down pet stores to look at puppies. There was a really cute one that looked like a sheppard mix, but the clerk said we could only find out the price if we played with the puppy. I said "I could play with a puppy" and Hayden, Linda, and I went into this little change room type place and de-germed our hands and played with the little guy. The clerk started reading out his lineage and his pedegrees and his shots and his neuter certificate and his guarantees and everything and then said "He's on sale this weekend, $100 off, so $1800." ?!? What the hell? He looked like a german sheppard mix. She said he would only double in size, so be about 30 lbs at fully grown, so I guess that's what you have to pay for a tiny german sheppard. I asked if there were any puppies that weren't $1700. She said the goldendoodle was $700, including the $100 sale price. Yah. That's a lot.

Anyway we're going to Manassas to see Cybil on either Monday or Tuesday, then back to Johnstown to see more of Jake's family. Taa taa for now!