More Fun in Las Vegas

We drove to Las Vegas on Monday morning after getting off the cruise ship on Sunday morning. First we had to pack up and take my husband to the airport to send him back to Atlanta. He left Sunday afternoon and we had a quiet night. We got up early and loaded up the car for Las Vegas and 5 days of sewing.

I had an extra suitcase that didn't go on the cruise that was filled with my projects for Christmas in July at Tiny Stitches. I had two projects that needed to be completed and since Christmas in July was scheduled for 4 days after I was scheduled to go home, I planned to work on them in Las Vegas. Of course, when we got there and started to unload the sewing machines, design boards and sewing supplies, I discovered that we had left the extra suitcase at Robin's house. Not good. I had no sewing supplies or fabric - what was a person to do - we went to the quilt shop and to JoAnn's. Of course, I also used Robin's supplies and fabrics as well.

Here we are - in all our glory. Not very flattering photos but unfortunately that is what we looked and felt like after a day or two there. I am the one standing and my dear sister is seated at the sewing machine.

As long as I am posting unflattering photos, here is another one of us at our sewing machines. Fortunately, Robin has an older Pfaff besides her good one and I always use it. Can't remember what model it is, but a very nice older machine.

We worked on lots of different projects other than the log cabin that I posted yesterday. I will show a couple more in the next few days.

We packed up and left Friday morning to drive back to Seal Beach. It was very hot, as usual but we wanted to get back to Southern California in time to visit one more time with my son and his family before they flew back to Sweden Friday night.

We were about 10 miles from Baker (approximately in the middle of nowhere) when we had a tire blowout! Robin is an excellent driver and managed to pull off the road with no problem. The same thing had happened to her a few months ago on the way to San Francisco with the other back tire - apparently the tires were defective but who was to know. Anyway, she called AAA to have them come and help us. She talked to a dispatcher who wanted to know where we were - which we had a pretty good idea that we were approximately 10 miles south of Baker. She kept asking us for landmarks so I took a photo of the type of area we were in. I accidentally deleted the photo and blogger will only let me put it back in at the top of this post so that is what that photo is. There are no landmarks in the desert - just more desert.

The temperature was over 100 but fortunately, we were able to run the air conditioning while waiting for the nice man to come rescue us. It took about 45 minutes. A highway patrol officer stopped to make sure we were OK and said he would wait with us but we were fine. He promised to check on us as he did his patrol. We also had one good Samaritan stop and offer to help but we thanked him and sent him on his way.

The tow truck arrived and our tire got changed. We had one of those little spare tires, but were lucky enough that we were only two miles from a place that sold tires. We got back on the road and drove those two miles with the emergency blinkers going and not going over 45 mph. Of course the average speed in that area is over 70 but we made it safely. Fortunately, the tire place had a tire that fit the minivan and Robin bought it at an outragous price and they were able to put it on right away so we were only about 2 hours late at this point.

We did make it in time to visit with Joe, Karin and the kids for a couple of hourse before they had to head to the airport for their long journey back to Stockholm. By the time we got home, we collapsed and had wine for dinner - didn't even eat real food.

Of course, the Christmas in July projects still needed to be done but that was for Saturday - I will talk about that in the next post.