Hello my lovely readers! I hope that everything has been going well with you and yours.  I have to say it’s been a very productive week! It’s been far too long since I’ve written, so let me go ahead and start with where I left off!  Ryan and I got to go on a pretty-much-free-vacation this past weekend, and that was a blast!  We went with my Dad and Neetsie to Gulfport and stayed at the Island View Hotel and Casino.  We drove down there on Friday of last week and got there at about noon.  We went there with full intentions of everything we were going to do-we brought stuff to go to the beach, we had tickets (free tickets) to go see the show ‘Y’ at the Beau Rivage, and all of that jazz.  Well we get down there, and luckily we were able to go ahead and check in and get into our room.  It’s on the fifth floor, second from top, so that was already awesome-we like being up high.  The hotel was SO nice, I mean, we were really impressed.  For some odd reason, Ryan and I always try to make reservations at these really nice hotels-I mean, we’ll go out of our way to try to get a nice hotel, then we end up getting one that’s crappy.  It’s not crappy actually but it doesn’t have the amenities that we want for the price we are paying.  And it doesn’t look HALF as snazzy on the inside as this place.  Take the Comfort Suites for example.  We paid $109 a night at that place when we were living out of our house to have it repaired, and the nicest thing there was the whirlpool tub (which I must say was WAY nice).  The room itself was really old, there was no room service, no in room movies, etc.  Now the Island View had no whirlpool tub, but the tub was fairly large, and it looked better in there honestly.  :)  And then they also had the In Room Movies AND room service, and Ryan and I LOOOOVE ordering those things.  So I think I’d sacrifice a whirlpool tub for the ordering options any day.  So we were snug as two bugs in a rug.  I digress.  Oh, and they also had free WiFi Internet at this place, and since we had taken Ryan’s laptop, that was cool-we didn’t use it very often but it was nice to have it there just in case.  So we got there and hung out in the room for about half an hour.  We got settled in and unpacked our suitcases a little bit, and I laid down on this big wonderful bed that they had-it was a King but it was so wonderful and cushy and comfortable.  I could’ve stayed there the whole weekend, really.  Well, I need to backtrack and say that we were able to get the two rooms because of my Dad and stepmom.  They have Player’s cards at this casino, and when you gamble on the card they send you free nights and stuff.  Well they both have one, so they were able to use one of their “two-free-night” discounts and they were sweet enough to let us use the other one.  So we were both able to stay there free of charge for two nights! So that was awesome enough!!  Anyway, back to the day we got there.  We settled in, then we went ahead down to the casino.  Ryan and I had brought some money that we could gamble, and since we had really never gambled before, they “showed us the ropes.”  How sweet, a father teaching his daughter to gamble….haha.  Really though, they were penny slots.  I didn’t understand the 20 lines at 1 or 2 or 3 or 5 or 10 bets or whatever, so they had to explain that to us.  So we played that afternoon for about an hour and a half, then Ryan and I went to the gift shop and bought a stand in ring for me, since my engagement ring was damaged while I was packing up the library this year.  I had to send it off to get it repaired so he bought me a costume jewelry ring to serve in place of the real thing until I get it back-haha ;)  Anyway, we went back up to the room and just chilled and hung out for about an hour or so, then we started the trek to the Beau Rivage to have dinner at their buffet.  My dad and Neetsie told me that they’d pay for us to have dinner on Friday night because it was SO awesome.  And Ryan and I had been there for the lunch buffet before, so we knew it was good.  It was only supposed to be about a half hour drive, at the most.  Well, it was about an hour or even more until we got there.  The traffic was horrendous because it was one lane.  It was miserable, and my dad and Neetsie were freaking out.  And of course Ryan hates traffic too so he was getting more and more tired of it by the minute.  One of the things I liked about the drive is looking at the old trees. If you are reading this and don’t know, Gulfport and Biloxi and many of the small towns along the coast were heavily damaged by Hurricane Katrina.  They have not even recovered as well as New Orleans, in my opinion.  Many restaurants and homeowners just chose not to even come back, so many areas are desolate and still destroyed.  There is concrete torn up everywhere, but there are also many recovery efforts going on there.  We saw bulldozers on beaches doing work to repair the beach and get it back into the shape it was, or even better.  We also noticed that there were many trees along the highway between Gulfport and Biloxi that had trees carved into animals, mostly water animals such as seahorses, porpoises, and water birds like egrets and pelicans.  They were absolutely beautiful.  My dad told me that they carved those things out of trees that were going to be torn up because they were destroyed, but they kept the base of the tree to make these carvings.  We took some good pictures–I’ll try to put some up here when I’m done.  They are really pretty.  Anyway, we got to Beau Rivage and had dinner, and I have to say that it wasn’t what any of us expected.  It wasn’t that good, to be honest.  For the price they paid for us to have dinner, it was just not good.  After we finished eating (or should I say gorging-on all that not good food-LOL) my stepmom wanted to go use her $80 that she had on her player’s card to play with.  Well of course the rest of us were exhausted and ready to go.  It had been a long day.   So we literally played follow the leader through the Beau Rivage casino-we were trailed out behind her…first Ryan, then me, then my dad.  She went to the faaaaaaaaar corner, because those were the “machines that she could see her balance on.”  Sure enough, couldn’t see her balance there.  So my dad and Ryan and I went out on the back balcony, took pictures, and then he sat down and played a machine in the meantime and I helped him with the bonus rounds.  Then finally she was ready to go.  So we go outside and wait for our car, which we had valet parked.  We took pictures by the fountain out front.  The car finally came, and can I tell you how much faster the trip back was compared to the trip TO the Beau Rivage? It was ridiculous!!!  So we got back there and we went to the casino and gambled until about 10:30, then Ryan and I went on up and went to bed.  The nice thing about using their machines is that you do get free drinks if you are gambling.  That alone saves you a bunch of money, because all of the drinks you get definitely would add up if you were in a club or something.  Now of course they do water down the hard liquor mixed drinks, but they can’t do that to the wine, or the beer.   So that night we stuck to wine and beer.  We went up to the room to go to bed, but ended up ordering a movie-Stephen King’s The Mist.  If you haven’t seen it, by all means, watch it.  It is scary, but SUCH a good movie.  We definitely wanted to watch it again when it was over.  It just made you think about things, and I love movies like that.  A lot of his movies are like that.

So that was Day 1.  Oh, let me also say that in the long drive that we had to take just to eat dinner at the Beau Rivage, Ryan and I decided not to go to the show on Saturday night because we didn’t know what traffic would be like getting there, or what time we’d have to leave to go, or any of that, so we just didn’t worry about that.  We are more chill people.  So we woke up on Saturday and ordered room service around 10:30.  It was delicious!!  We got ready and went downstairs and yep, started gambling-haha!  We stayed down there and gambled until about 3:30, then we went back up to the room to rest before dinner.  Ryan got on the computer for a while while I watched tv, then we both took a nap until 5:45.  My dad and Neetsie took us to eat at the C and G Grill, which is in the hotel.  It is a fine restaurant.  They had lobster on the menu for $50!!! That was expensive.  They had vouchers for this restaurant so they were sweet enough to pay for us to eat there too!!  Ryan was smart, and he ordered the steak.  I ordered the crabmeat and shrimp pasta, which I thought was right up my alley but it desperately needed seasoning.  My dad ordered some kind of fish that was just no good.  He sent it back! My dad never does that, so if he was sending it back it must have been terrible-there were tons of bones in it, I know that.  He got the steak instead.  I wanted to say “Yeah, mine’s not good either, I’m going to need a steak also.”  But there just wasn’t anything wrong with me other than me making a crappy decision.  So I ate it, and lusted over their steaks as they ate them.  Haha!  We did get Crab Cakes as an appetizer, which I loooove.  And they had a great salad bar, so we got to eat that also.  We ordered Mississippi Mud for dessert, and the waiter said “Just so you know the flower on top is edible.”  So Ryan though it was a pastry flower, and I took a bite.  Not a pastry flower, for the record.  It snapped when I ate it, and tasted like a blade of grass.  Don’t ask me how I KNOW what a blade of grass tastes like because I’m not quite sure, but I’m pretty sure the two are comparable.  So after dinner, again, we went and gambled.  That night we stayed up late because we had napped.  We stayed downstairs gambling and drinking bourbon and coke until 11:30.  We were headed back up but this one machine was calling my name (hehe) so I sat down and played it for another hour.  Let me mention that my stepmother won $650 on a machine that night, and we won…..NADA.  I can’t help the petty jealousy I had when she showed me that ticket.  Given they’d come and lost tons of money before, Ryan and I could’ve used a win like that.  But we were not able to gamble as much as they were, either, so maybe that’s the reason why we didn’t win as much.  Anyway, we went back to the room at 12:30 and ordered another movie-Fool’s Gold.  It was cute.  We also ordered room service again….we ordered crab cakes and burgers/fries.  That was one of the best burgers I’d ever had.  Unfortunately for me, I’d had so much crab that day that I almost developed claws and started walking sideways.  When the movie was over Ryan and I were not feeling good at all.  I was lucky enough to get to bed earlier than him, but when I say early I mean about 3:30.  And we had to be up the following morning to go to the breakfast buffet.  Not a good combination.

So we woke up the next morning and both felt like CRAP.  I don’t think it was the drinks because they were pretty much coke and no bourbon, I think it was us eating so late and then laying down.  Nevertheless, we wanted to just go home.  So I called my dad and told them we were going to skip out on breakfast and go back to Baton Rouge early.  They didn’t want us to leave, and part of me kept wanting to stay also.  So Ryan and I got our stuff together and thankfully we started to feel better and better.  My stepmom came by to get our checkout slip and told us that since they did so well that weekend, they were going to pay for our in-room charges, which was like $100!!! So that was awesome!!  We decided that we wanted to stay for the day, so we went downstairs and loaded up the car, then we went to the casino, where they were playing.  There were people drinking at like 10:00 am.  NASTY.  My dad was drinking coffee, which is a lot more up my alley than beer that early-that makes me sick just thinking about it.  So we played for a little while, and of course my stepmom won like $300 on this machine.  Grrrrrr ;)  Then we decided to go to the buffet for lunch.  Ryan and I looked on OUR player’s cards and we both had the following comps: 1 free breakfast buffet, 1 free lunch buffet, and 1 Sunday lunch!!! That’s awesome!  So we knew that we’d be able to go back sometime and use those things.  So we paid for our Sunday lunch, and we ate.  Then we went back and gambled for like another hour, then we all came home.

So we had that lovely weekend, and we really paid for just our meals on Sunday, then we payed for our gambling money, although my dad kept slipping me twenties the whole time. :)  But it was SO much fun, and we enjoyed being with my dad and Neetsie.  When we got home, a few days later (actually yesterday) we had mail from the Island View hotel and we both had the comped rooms for TWO WEEKENDS!  So we are going to go back sometime this month and in July!! We are so excited!!

Now, I’ve got to go get ready for the day and also this blog is really long, so I’m going to write more later about my week.  The trip blog took longer than I had imagined.  Thanks for reading, guys, and I’ll be back later to write more!!! <3 you!!!