Today, on the 19th of December, it has officially been 6 months on the road for the Spranger’s. 6 months. 187 days. 4,320 hours. Yes you’re correct…I had to use a calculator to come up with that figure. But I was curious…and I suck at math. 187 days.

We had a fun, busy, and jam-packed weekend. Saturday we ventured to Las Vegas for the day. We were headed to the Magical Forest, a winter festival for kids, which doesn’t open until 4:30 p.m..

Arriving in Vegas at 10 a.m., we had a little time to kill. I had the brilliant idea to stop by an urgent care. BOOM! Nailing it!

Cecilia has been limping for the past 2 days…we just wanted to get an x-ray just to be safe. Abby mentioned her foot had been hurting, and Phoebe has a rash on her foot. All the girls have feet issues this month. I will gladly take feet issues over high temperatures, chills, whining, and vomiting any day. The Urgent Care helped us kill 3 hours 10 a.m. – 1 p.m. Each of the girl’s will be able to keep their right foot, everyone will live, and continue to see another day. Let’s hear it for Urgent Care…hip hip Urgent Care!!

We ventured out for some lunch 1 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. “Hey lets go downtown Vegas and see the Bellagio fountain show and walk around” Greg suggested. “Great!!” I thought. We parked the car, took a gazillion pictures inside the remarkable Christmas display in the Bellagio Hotel and headed out to walk the strip where there were lots of cute cartoon figures just hanging around. The girls of course went crazy, “Mommy will you take our picture with Minnie Mouse?…Mickey Mouse?…Spider Man?…etc.” “Absolutely!” I squealed. I was planning on taking picture after picture of each of the girls and their favorite characters.

As we were wrapping up with Minnie, I gathered the girls, said thank you to Minnie and she held out her hand. Being the naive believer in the kindness and generosity of mankind, I assumed she wanted to shake my hand. I held out my hand and fit it perfectly into Minnie’s warm black glove. She quickly slapped it away and in broken english demanded, “You tip to me?” Oh shit. Of course. That’s why Greg took off with Cecilia in the stroller giggling and looking back at me shaking his head like a little school girl. “What is he doing”, I kept thinking to myself? He was watching me get hustled. Thank you very much.

Thank you sweetie! I love you.

I made the girls run after him to see if they could grab a couple of bucks, because I haven’t carried cash since 1998. I saw him shake his head and push the stroller further away from me…of course he was still looking back at me with this enormous grin on his face. I politely told Minnie, “I no cash…sorry” and I heard her sigh as I quickly bolted. Phoebe was headed to the next character when I stopped her and steered her over to Greg who was bent in half with laughter at my naivety.

“Hey sweetie…why didn’t you tell me I was getting hustled? Why did you run? I felt like such a moron!” I scolded. Again, he just laughed and proclaimed, “I thought you knew”. In that moment Greg’s face lit up and once again like a small child seeing all his gifts under the tree at Christmas time. I turned to see a truck sporting a giant billboard of naked girls with large busts stopped in traffic behind me. Of course. We were in Vegas.

We watched the water show which was totally awesome, only 15 minutes long, but still completely worth the effort. This killed a total of 2 hours. By this time it was 5:00 and the girls were whining about being hungry. We weighed the pros and cons of eating at the strip before making the 15 minute journey to the Magic Forest OR grabbing fast food on our way to the forest. Abby, being our girly girl, chose to eat in a fancy restaurant. We drifted back to the Bellagio and found a quaint little eatery. We dined, conversed, relaxed, and people watched for 2 whole hours. It was a wonderful dinner.

By the time we paid the bill it was 7:30 and the temperature had dropped well below 60 degrees…even my ridiculous Ugg boots, which Greg loathes, were no match for the frigid temperatures we found ourselves in. The girls were moderately prepared for the temperatures but after a wonderful relaxing meal, Greg and I began plotting how we could get out of walking through the Magical Forest. We negotiated and bribed with ice cream and promises to come back really soon. lucky for us, they took the bait.

By the time we got home, it was close to 11 p.m.. A day chock-full of Dr’s visits which turned out just fine…everyone is healthy and Cecilia is most likely limping because someone stepped on her foot, the rash on Phoebe’s foot is eczema, and Abby might need inserts, ended with wonderful memories and some rather embarrassing moments, by yours truly.

4, 320 hours on the RV and I have learned so much. Facts of life which include but are not limited to:

1. Do not trust cartoon Characters wandering around city streets…they are there to take your money just like everyone else…they want to rob you of those dinosaur papers people used to carry around to purchase stuff in public places.

2. In terms of finding ways to convince my husband to give me what I want, I might want to use my own magical powers: my BOOBS. Sadly, that took me 39 3/4 years to learn.

3. Bribing kids with ice cream ALWAYS works!

And that concludes my post on this fine Monday morning 6 days before Christmas.

Happy Monday friends!