Regular readers of this blog (if there are any) may have noticed that it's been a really long time since I posted anything. Sorry about that, but it's Christmas you know, and I've been travelling. I'm writing from my parents' computer in Provo, Utah, listening to the rain spattering on the skylights and windows. (I bet DC has had a whiter Christmas than Utah.)

Last week the Astle family made the unprecedented move of attending a college football bowl game. Well, at least some of us did. The majority. My dad, mom, and one of my brothers and his wife joined Shelly and me at the Las Vegas Bowl (in, surprisingly, Las Vegas) to see the BYU Cougars get thumped by the Cal Bears.

This whole trip was a logistical nightmare from the beginning. See, my brother was trying to give his wife a romantic surprise getaway without their kids, so we weren't allowed to mention anything to her, and the two of them had to go down separately. Then we heard that my other brother who had bought a ticket was backing out because he'd been travelling too much lately and just wasn't up for it (or something like that). That made my parents want to back out, because what was the point of spending all that time going to Vegas just for a football game? Shelly and I finally convinced the parents to come, though we had to come down separately because Shelly has a lot of family in Vegas who we had to see if we were going to be in town.

So we drove down on Wednesday, and Ellie was as good as gold in the backseat, though she was a little tired by the time we got there. We visited various cousins throughout the rest of Wednesday and Thursday, and then asked my cousin to drop us off at the game and then watch Ellie during the game.

It turns out UNLV is one of those crazy colleges whose football stadium is nowhere near the campus. My cousin lives about 10 minutes away from campus, and she drove us there, thinking we could find the stadium, but we had no such luck. The map of Las Vegas that the BYU Athletic Department had provided to all ticket purchasers had a lot of detail around the Strip, and UNLV campus was marked, but we couldn't see the stadium itself marked on the map. We soon learned that the stadium was miles away in the other direction, completely off the map. Thanks a lot, BYU.

So we jumped into the rush hour/bowl game traffic (who schedules a major sporting event to start at 5:00pm on a workday?) and an hour later were still a mile or two away from the stadium, though we could see the lights. By this time, Ellie was hungry and crying. We had only anticipated a 15 to 20 minute round trip, and when we left, her next feeding was still an hour away, so we left all the bottles and supplies at my cousin's house. We were about to cross a highway that could lead us easily and somewhat quickly back to the house, but game time was approaching, and it was apparent that if we went back for a bottle, we would miss the first part of the game.

A dilemma hit us. This whole trip was costing us a couple hundred bucks, we're investing three days of our lives to it, what with travel time and all, and the baby is crying from hunger. Shelly asked me what I wanted to do, and I replied that if I said that I wanted to press on to the game, it would mean that I didn't love my daughter. Tensions rose, and everyone seemed to throw up their hands waiting for someone else to take a strong position. I saw it as a no-win situation.

Then, someone pointed out that traffic was moving slowly enough that we could probably walk just as fast. My cousin pulled over, let us out, and headed for home to feed the baby. Shelly and I had a mile and a half or two miles to go. We trudged along, humming the Cougar Fight Song all the while. We got there after Cal had scored their first touchdown, but at least Ellie got her food soon enough. It was a fine compromise.

Then we saw the BYU defense spread Crisco all over their hands and proceed to lose the game for us. When will they learn to tackle? Sigh.

Coming home from Vegas, Shelly had another cousin who was heading toward Vegas for Christmas on I-15 who called us from a pay phone (he didn't have a cell phone) to suggest we stop somewhere to meet up and say hi and meet each others' new babies. The town ot Toquerville, Utah was decided upon, and we agreed that we would meet at the first gas station on the right. The first gas station on the right turned out to be like 6 miles from the freeway, on the other side of Toquerville, in La Verkin (famous for being a UN-free zone). While we stopped, I fed Ellie a bottle and proceeded to leave the cap to the bottle on top of the car, where it fell off and was smashed to a million pieces by another car. Sigh...

All this, and for the first time in my life, I went to Vegas and didn't even go to the Strip.