State Line Daytrip

Last December, my graddad lost sight in both of his eyes. Since then, we spend Fridays with him running errands and playing tourist. One of the things he enjoyed doing when he had sight was window shopping. This week, we decided to go to Primm and walk around the outlet mall. Primm is the state line between Nevada and California and is about 30 minutes away from Las Vegas.

It was a fun day, but a little bit tough at the same time. The last time we came to this mall my grandma was alive. We decided to go to the outlet one day after school. By the time we got there, we had five minutes before it closed! I remember my sister and I ran to the Charlotte Ruse store. My grandma was right along side of us in her electric wheelchair. The three of us kind of left granddad in the dust, but he eventually caught up to us...hey, we were on a time limit!
Walking past the Charlotte Ruse store today, I had to stop for a moment and take a deep breath. Ugh. Even though it has been almost five years since she past away, it never gets easier. Some days are normal; others will have a moment like this where you smell or see something and all of a sudden these memories and tears come flooding in. I half expected her to zip around the corner like she used to. I miss her. I try not to let granddad see when I am upset. I can't even imagine how hard days like this are for him. I have seen him cry twice in all of my life. Both times were when he was talking about gram. That was hard. My granddad is a no nonsense kind of guy, so to see him show emotion, for what was probably the first time ever, just crushed me. I had to go bathroom for a moment to get myself together.

On a lighter note, we also headed over to Buffalo Bills casino. We didn't get to ride the roller coaster because it was very windy today. They would only let you ride if the car was full, which she said could take hours. There is also a log ride in the casino, but it was broken. I was disappointed. Log rides are probably one of my favorite things.

When we pulled into the parking lot, we saw there was a racing competition going on, so we stopped and watched that for a little while. It was pretty cool actually.  Though, like I always say, I am a bit of a redneck at heart so I enjoy things like that. The event was sponsored by Red Bull, which happens to be one of Josh's favorite things. He was very excited to get to take a photo with the Red Bull car.

On our way out of town, we stopped to buy a lottery ticket. You should have seen the line! My goodness. It literally wrapped around the entire building. I decided that I was not going to spend an hour in line waiting for something that I have a one in a million chance at winning, so we purchased a scratch off ticket from the machine. And, guess what??? I won a million dollars!!! Just kidding, I didn't. I did, however, win another scratch off ticket for free...but, that would have required me to stand in line to get it, and you know I didn't wasn't going to do that.

In other news, Oliver is doing much better today, thank God. I was worried about leaving him alone. When we woke up this morning, he was trying to get his e-collar off. I came out into the kitchen to find that he had tried to eat with it on in the night and spilled food all over the floor. Poor baby. We decided that we weren't going to make him wear it anymore. Technically we are supposed to leave it on for a week, but since they didn't do any stitches and there is just this teeny-tiny little scab, I think he will be okay. Right now, he is wrestling with Nicky. I'm glad to see that he is back to his normal self!

Also, I just saw a shooting star. That was pretty dang cool.