Curtis' sister Alisa and her husband Mike Zoccoli have 3 boys ages 15,13,11. Alisa has a heart of gold. A few years ago they decided they wanted to foster/ or adopt. In September 2008 they were placed with 2 boys, Kenny and Isiah ages 4 and 5 at the time. They had come from an awful situation and adjusted and bonded well with the Zoccolis. There was another brother who was 18 months at the time and was placed with another family. Mike and Alisa eventually got custody of him also. On November 20th, National Adoption day, they adopted the three boys and now they are up to SIX BOYS -Tyler, Joey, Stephen, Kenny, Isiah, and James.
They had a big celebration for the adoption and all of Curtis' family came out. While Curtis' mom was here for the week she offered to stay with our boys for a few days while we went on a little trip to Las Vegas. We had a great time, and the kids had a great time with Grandma Shauna.
We stayed at Monte Carlo where we got a great room rate and we had never stayed there before. It was really nice and a great location on the strip. We went to see the Cirque de sole "Viva Elvis". The Cirque shows are usually excellent and this was one we hadn't seen. Curtis had seen an interview with Priscilla and Lisa Marie Presley saying that this was the one show that Elvis would love. It was exactly what he would want and approve. You can't get a better endorsement than that. We checked it out and it was really good. More of a Broadway-type show than an amazing hold-your-breath Cirque show (although there were some elements of that) it told the story of his life.
The thing that I liked that I think made it good, is there was no person acting as Elvis. They took news clips and audio so the only person as Elvis was Elvis himself, no bad impersonations. They also took the original Elvis songs with his voice and music but somehow re-did them with a more current beat and sound. It was a fun show.
We also saw " The Mentalist Live" with Gerry McCambridge. This is a show with the creator of the TV show "The Mentalist" the description was comedy, magic, and mind reading. Sounded interesting. When we get to the show there were probably about 50 people in the audience. As we walked in they handed us a blank white index card. Once we get in to get seated someone came out and asked us to write down our full name (first, middle, last). Then answer to a question that only we would know like the name of a favorite teacher, a significant date, like a birthday etc. And then a specific question that we had and wanted to be answered and he said to be specific like "Will my daughter get married this year" then we passed all our papers in, and one of his assistants collected them and put them in a see-through box in the front where everyone could see them. They never left the room.
Gerry comes out and explains who he is, and what he does. He takes some volunteers and does a trick where he guesses the exact number from a phone book that a volunteer picks. Then he goes to the cards in the box and he says he is going to guess what is on the card he pics. He pulls one out and holds it in his hands for a minute. He has everyone stand up and he says I am going to guess the person's initials on this card. If it isn't your initials sit down. He says "M .J." so those are my initials and I'm hoping there is another M. J. in the room so I'm not the one being embarrassed. Everyone else sits down except me. He wanted to hear the person's voice so we were supposed to say "Those are my initials" I don't know how he did it but he asked "is your first name Marilyn" I was shocked there are 100 M names he could have guessed. Then he went to the last name. He said something like "I think it's a common last name Jones, no it's Johnson, Marilyn Johnson ...Marilyn Lund Johnson" WHAT???? I have never seen or talked to this guy, nobody from the show talked to us before we went in, and the cards never left the room. It was crazy. He then went on to guess Mrs. Arnote, the name of the favorite teacher I had written down, and then went to work on a few other people. It was a fun show and a super fun trip. Then we came home and had Thanksgiving with Prime Rib bought from Fry's. My mom would cringe. I decided I wanted a Holiday too and didn't want to spend all day cooking and cleaning.
