No Place Like Vegas for the Holidays

My older sister Evangelina currently lives in Las Vegas, and she is graciously letting the family crash her beautiful home for Christmas. I picture lots of eating her scrumptious cooking and hours of fighting over and playing with the cutest creature on the planet, her baby daughter Isabella (It'll be her first Christmas!).

To get from Arizona to Vegas, Mom, Stan and I are driving eight hours, starting tomorrow at the painfully early hour of 5:00 a.m. Which hopefully means we'll be missing the morning traffic when driving through Pheonix (about an hour and a half away from Tucson). However, since there is a teeny-tiny, ever so slight chance we might possibly hit traffic when passing through, I have taken the responsibility upon myself to commandeer the car through said big city. My wonderful mother, while I love her dearly with every fiber of my being, scares the living daylights out of me when she drives under stress.

Big City + Morning Work Traffic + My Mother = Possible Heart Attack

This is something I would like to avoid.

So I will be doing the driving.

I'm actually pretty excited about it (except the rising-before-the-crack-of-dawn part, of course). Since I don't have a car in Oklahoma, I'm always jumping at the chance to drive people around. It's a simple joy, I guess. But when something is a special occasion, it's gonna be fun. And driving, for me, is definitely a special occasion.

I realize this makes me strange.

Also, the landscape between Las Vegas and Tucson is really different from anything I'm used to. I grew up with mountains, trees, shrubs and tall brittle grass.

Out here it's the desert, with a million different kinds of cactus poking awkwardly out of rocky dirt. Lots of cactus. Lots of dirt.

And an occasional roadrunner. I know what you're thinking, and yes, they actually exist outside the Looney Tunes.

I just discovered this too. Changed my entire outlook on life.

So anywho... tomorrow we're headed to Las Vegas to begin the rest of the Christmas festivities. I'm excited about Christmas in Vegas, but I'm a bit sad to be leaving Tucson and my sister Rebecca. My stay here was way too short -- four days just isn't enough to catch up with family that you haven't seen in four months. But hopefully, if things go according to plan, I'll get to spend some time here after I graduate (before I start a real job, perhaps?).

Wait. Who am I kidding? THERE IS NO PLAN! Gah! *nervously gash teeth*

(Oops. Seeing as this blog is already full of a gazillion tangents, I'll leave that one for another time).

See y'all in Vegas!