the lights of vegas...

So I got back on Sunday. It was one of the best, yet craziest trips I've been on. I'll try to give a good account of all that happened...believe me, there was a lot...
Before we ever even left, Tuesday a bunch of us went over to the Erwins to hang out all night since we had to be at the airport at four in the morning. We all got there around ten thirty or so and just hung around a bit, then began a game or Risk but got bored with it after a bit, so we turned on Man on Fire and watched that until time to leave. Mr. Jeff took us to the airport, where we began checking in and all. Everyone got thru just fine and we waited a couple minutes before we boarded the plane. We were all on and ready to go, when they told us that there was a stall in the engine and they'd have to completely shut the plane down. So they did. All the lights went off and we all waited paciently for them to turn it back on. They didn't. instead the little flight attendent lady told us that we were going to have to deboard the aircraft while their technicians took a look at it and that it should only take about an hour or so. So we did. After about thirty minutes of waiting they made another announcement saying they were going to have to fly an entire maintenance crew in from Dallas (our layover destination) to fix it and that there was really no telling when the plane would be ready. So they gave us the option of rebooking our flights. So we did. The soonest, however, that we could get our entire group on a plane was two clock that afternoon. We would then fly, not to Dallas, but to St.Louis where we'd have a four hour layover then continue on to Las Vegas. So we waited and waited and waited. The Little Rock airport, for those of you that don't know, it basically just a hallway with about twenty or so gates, a Burger Kings, a Cinnabon, a Starbucks, and this weird little museum thing. So as you may be able to guess, we were quite bored. We sat around, tried to sleep, played some BANG!, and sat around some more. Finally we boarded, not really expecting to get anywhere. We waited expectantly and did infact take off with out any problems. It was about a four hour flight, not very exciting. The plane was only about half full, so we all had plenty of room, which was nice. We landed in St.Louis and waited there another four hours doing nothing. We took off around eight, were in the air for apporximately fourtyfive minutes and landed in Las Vegas. One nice thing about being sixteen hours late is that we got to see Vegas from the air at night. It really was a cool sight. The vans that were supposed to be waiting for us to just pick up at the rental place were no longer there so it took us about an hour and a half to get the vans sorted out and then a while longer to actually get in them and leave the airport. next we had to get to Loma Vista, the condo complex where we were staying. Since it was past midnight, there was no one there, therefore it took us a while to get into the condos and situated and all. Having not eaten all day, we all found ourselves quite famished by tis time and headed out in search of anything edible. We found a Denny's, which turned out to be very satisfactory. We were all insanely exhausted so sitting there waiting for our food was one of the funniest experiences of the entire trip. After some yummy dinner/breakfast we returned to our appartments and all slept very soundly.
Okay, well I started this post over two weeks ago, then got distracted and forgot to finish it. Basically Vegas was awesome! We finally got there as you read and the next four days we just spent handing out 15000 flyers, helping at a movie night in the park, promoting this church, and giving little kids ice cream. It was an incredible week. We then flew back on Sunday, again with two fairly long delays and airport switches, and finally got home Sunday evening.
The next week was pretty uneventful, however the week after that our family set off on a 12-day roadtrip (I uess you cold call it that.) to Iowa, Washington DC, South Carolina, and Georgia. My uncle lives in Iowa and pastors a church there taht my dad spoke at on Sunday. We went to DC to look at all the historical stuff and to visit our friends Suzane and Steve Peck and their kids (except Steve wasn't there because he's in the military and was deployed a couple months ago). We spent about five days there then drove down to South Carolina for my dear friend Leah's wedding in which I was a bridesmaid (my first time ever...) and my dad spoke (definitely not first time ever...). After a wonderful wedding we drove down to Americus, GA. This is the town we lived in for a year before we moved to Slovakia fourteen years ago. My dad spoke on Sunday and then we just spent the next day seeing people and relaxing a bit. Tuesday we drove home. if I counted right it was around sixty hours of driving combined. That's a lot, in case you didn't get that already...especially with nine people in the car...half of whom are under the age of ten. So, you can probably imagine that I was quite ready to get home by the time we pulled into te driveway!
Well, nothing's going on right now other than the fact that on Monday we will be leaving for Slovakia. Yep, I know...time's been going by so quickly. I will be there from April 30th to May 15th. I'll be leaving earlier mainly for the reason that I couldn't get off work for an entire month. The rest of the family will be staying until the end of May.
I'll write again soon and get you up to date!