Weera Thai in Las Vegas (Sunday, April 9th, 2017)

One of the downfalls to living in a small town is that sometimes you have to travel to the big city to get things done. 

About two weeks ago, Steve had to upgrade his phone because the touch screen on his old phone went out, and it's REALLY hard to do anything on a cell phone without a touch screen.  So we went to Las Vegas to the Apple Store and got him a new phone.  He was really sad to see the old phone go as it had been a total trooper for the last three and a half years!!!

Today, in the middle of texting, his new phone turned off and wouldn't turn back on.  He did a hard restart on it, and still nothing, so off we went again to Las Vegas to see what was going on with his new phone.  

To make a long story short, with the I-phone 8, you no longer do a hard restart by pressing the power button and the home button at the same time, so the way Steve was trying to restart his phone no longer works.  

We learned on an I-phone 8, you now press the volume up button, then the volume down button, then hold the power button for about 20 plus seconds.  This should reset your phone and restart it.  It sure would have been nice to know this before driving clear to Las Vegas (we had stopped at our local cellular phone store and they couldn't help us), but maybe that's just too much to ask.  

As we were finishing up our marathon at the Apple Store, we texted some friends of ours (Sam and Sharon) who had recommended a Thai restaurant in Las Vegas (because they know we LOVE Thai).  We thought a nice Thai meal might be a nice end to a crazy day. 



The restaurant they had eaten at a few weeks earlier was called Weera Thai.  It is in a small strip mall on Sahara Avenue.  So we drove over to give it a try.

We arrived at about 6:50, and the restaurant was packed with six more people already in line.  We decided to sit at the bar and not take up a table for the two of us.



Weera Thai specializes in Issan food, which is from the northern region of Thailand.  The menu was extensive and had many things that Steve and I had never heard of.  So we chose a couple of entrees that we weren't familiar with to give them a try.

Steve chose from the Street Food section of the menu and ordered Kao Soy, a noodle dish.

I chose an entree called Kaeng Ho, which was a stir fry with shrimp, clear noodles and a curry sauce.

Steve's noodle dish came out first, and it was AMAZING!  It came with a small dish of pickles that you stir into the noodles just before you eat them.  We ordered the noodle dish with a heat of 2 out of 5, not knowing how spicy this restaurant serves up their food.  We ended up adding a little more spice, so next time we would order a 3 out of 5 on the heat scale.

Mine came with a side of rice and had lots of vegies and shrimp in it.

We finished Steve's noodle dish without any problem at all.  

We ended up having to take about half of mine home in a doggy bag because we were trying to save room for desert.  The waiter at the bar told us that they serve durian with sticky rice, and we really wanted to try it.

Durian is a fruit that is native to Thailand.  It is really sweet, but when cut open, it kind of smells like stinky feet.  So people either hate it (because of the smell), or love it (because of the sweet flavor).  

Steve and I really wanted to try durian when we were in Thailand, but it wasn't in season, so we never got to try it.

So we ordered the durian with sticky rice.  They have to use frozen durian because it doesn't grow in the U.S. and it can't be shipped here in it's fresh form.  Luckily, the previously frozen durian looses most of it's smell.  So we got to enjoy our durian with sticky rice without the annoying odor.

We loved the sweet flavor of the durian, and their sticky rice was so good.  

Weera Thai was definitely the best Thai food we have ever eaten outside of Thailand.  Both of our meals had the perfect combination of flavors!  We will definitely go back next time we are in Las Vegas, and will definitely order the Kao Soy again.  It was SO good!

At least we had a nice end to an otherwise crazy trip to Las Vegas.  We ended up getting home at about 11:00 pm.  Not ideal, but at least Steve's phone is working again, and we have full, happy tummies and some really yummy left overs to enjoy later.

A huge thank you to Sam and Sharyn for sharing this great restaurant with us.  We'll have to go together some time and enjoy some more great food!

Our Baby is Home! (Monday, March 11th - Friday, March 16th, 2018)

A sneak peak of Las Vegas.....



Our youngest daughter is home for spring break, and everyone knows what that means....spoil time!  We picked her up in Las Vegas on Sunday night at about midnight, stopped at In-N-Out for our traditional welcome meal and had a great drive home catching up on life.

She told us that she wants to play a lot of golf while she is home, so we scheduled a tee time every day while she is here.  We may have to cancel some of them, but hopefully we'll play a lot.  

Monday started out great by sleeping in after a late night, enjoying coffee on the back porch for hours, then off to the golf course as requested.

She makes me look like such a pee wee, but I'm OK with that!

 We were all tired after our 18 holes so we rested a short while and then decided it would be really fun to take a RZR ride.

We enjoyed a beautiful sunset from the hills above town.

 

 

Then back in the RZR for the ride home.

When we got back to the house, the weather was still gorgeous, so we all enjoyed dinner on the back porch.   When we eat crab, we always eat snow crab because we like it so well, but tonight we did a snow vs king crab comparison, and I think the snow crab still won.

Tuesday was another golf day, and another perfect day to be outside.  Our daughter's game is coming along well!

We love the wildlife on the golf course.

For dinner she chose Angelina's, one of her favorites, and ordered calamari and gnocchi with pink sauce, two of her favorites.

 

Man is it fun to have her home!

Wednesday morning I went in her room to wake her up, and she looked so comfortable that I had to just crawled in with her, but she was a cover hog, so I had to just get back up.



She needed a little more In-N-Out for lunch, so we stopped there again.  Don't let the bun fool you...she's our gluten free girl, so her's is the lettuce wrap.  She still loves In-N-Out, even without the bun.

Then back to golf again.  She is a trooper.  Golf is a hard game, and we thought she would get frustrated, but not even a little bit.  In fact, we discovered that she is the athletic one in the family and has picked the game right up.  She's making us look bad!

A great looking practice swing.

 

A little more spoiling...Doritos! 

Well that was a super successful day of golf.  I think she beat me, but luckily we weren't keeping score.  Now home to help her with taxes!

Thursday morning the weather wasn't great in Havasu.  We woke up to rain (which is great for the desert, but not for our daughters spring break), so we decided to change our plans and head down to Mexico (It is about a 3 hour drive) for a shopping day.

Purse shopping, but this wasn't the one....nor was any of the other 50 she looked at 😉.

The line was long heading back across the border, but it ended up only taking about 45 minutes to get through.  

After a fun morning in Mexico, we decided to stop at the Imperial Sand Dunes on our way home.  It's not far out of the way, and a beautiful stop.

When we got back in the car after visiting the dunes, it was late, so we told our daughter to see if she would find any where to eat in the small town of Blythe, CA on our way home.  She came up with a restaurant called Baja Fresh that sounded great, so we headed that way.  When we pulled in, we discovered that the fast food restaurant was actually in a gas station, which we weren't thrilled about, but went in and looked at the menu anyway.  The menu looked great, so we ordered.

Chips and a salsa bar come with every order.

And the meals were actually amazing!  Very fresh and flavorful!

We'll definitely do that again!

When we got home, we enjoyed a little chocolate wine (that Steve's mom had left for our daughter) on the back porch before we called it a night.  This was our last full day with our amazing daughter, and we weren't ready for it to end yet!

Our time with her here has been so good for all of us!  It is so hard living here, with her living in Colorado.  We cherish every moment that we get with her!

Today we dropped our daughter off in Las Vegas for her flight home.  It could have been a very sad day for all of us, but we didn't want that, so we decided to make it a fun day instead.

Now off to the airport so she can return to school, work, friends and the amazing life that she has created for herself!  We can't wait until we can do this again!  We miss her already!