Home Means Nevada

As you gathered from Karin's post, she's out of town for a week, so Matthew and I have been muddling through on our own. To break things up a little bit, I decided to take him up to Nevada for the weekend. I spent a day with my brother and his family in Vegas, and then drove the familiar road out to Beatty to spend a day or two with my parents. It was a short visit but well worth it. Going back to Beatty always brings a lot of memories to the surface, and this was the first time Matthew was old enough for me to start sharing a little bit of that with him. I'm also glad he got some quality time with his grandparents, to whom he became quickly re-attached.

On Saturday morning, we (sans my mom, who had to work for a few hours) went out to Rhyolite, the local ghost town, which about a hundred years ago was a lot bigger than Beatty. My dad has done a lot of work out there renovating a building appropriately called the "Red Barn," which is now serving as an art museum, so we went to check that out. The Red Barn sits on land which actually was in the town of Bullfrog, apparently, given that the old Bullfrog jail is right next door. My dad snapped this picture of Matthew "locked up":



Probably the most unique building in Rhyolite is a house made largely out of bottles. Matthew was a big Bottle House fan - he spent about 10 minutes just walking around the outside running his hand along the bottles. Here's another shot from my dad:

Karin here: I love this picture of Matthew and don't be surprised if you see it somewhere soon!

Here's another one I shot:

That afternoon after my mom got back from work, we went down to the Amargosa River (which is basically an underground river - just a little stream above ground most of the time).

Matthew was mostly interested in playing with sticks and rocks. He used this one to lead music for a while.

Karin here: People always tell me that Matthew looks like Jordan and I just didn't see it until I saw this picture and I really see Jordan in Matthew here.

At some point over the weekend, he started yelling in the middle of singing songs to try to scare my mom:

Karin here: I've played a game in the car with Matthew before where we sing songs and then in the middle either I sing louder or he does and then I act scared. I made it up one day when he wouldn't stop screaming (because he was upset) in the car home from work/daycare and we laughed all the way home doing these songs/scaring each other. We play lots of silly games together.

Unfortunately it was a pretty short weekend. I wasn't too excited to drive back today, but I did better than I thought I would on my own with him, courtesy of a portable DVD player, some Pixar movies, and Kung Fu Panda.

I'm so glad they had a great time in Beatty without me as it helped break up the week for both of them. Today Matthew was sad being dropped off at daycare and wanted to play with Jordan today poor kid.

Karin again: Our event just ended and we'll do some final packing tomorrow (Tuesday) and then I catch a flight home at 4 pm. I can't wait to see my boys again. I've really missed them this week. It's been a fun event, but I'm really glad it's pretty much over. It's hard being at an event where I can't participate as much as I would like because of my energy level. This is our last big event until February and it will be nice to have a few mellow months in the office. I've been traveling/out of the office way too much lately for my liking.