Viva Las Vegas!

Bro #2 finally owned up to have not really married his current wife. We already knew this thanks to a certain loose-lipped niece, but it's funny he's finally owned up to it. Anyway, they're getting married at the Bellagio in May. Rumour has it that Mum, Bro #1, Eli and myself will drive down to Vegas for the wedding. Yay, road trip! It should be really nice in May - no snow and not too hot yet.

Mum still doesn't understand getting married in Vegas, but is glad it's going to be at the Bellagio. She's been inside and thought it was very well done. She really liked the Chihuly ceiling which I'm looking forward to seeing. Getting married in Vegas isn't my cup of tea either but I can see why some people want to do it. Maybe it's an age thing.

I don't know yet if it's going to be formal, semi-formal or nice casual. In any case I get to go shopping. I haven't shopped for nice clothes in a long, long time. It should be interesting.

I haven't been to Vegas since I was 18 or so (twenty years if anyone is counting). A large group of my co-workers rented a bus and made an overnight trip out of it. Yes, I gambled, and yes, I was nervous and no, I didn't get caught. Bro #3 was fresh out of the Navy and went with me. After we got bored with the casinos we went to a movie theater and saw Nightmare on Elm Street (the first one). It was a fun, odd trip.

Back to Bro #2 - he's an interesting guy. One of our cousins has the rest of us cousins (there are a total of ten cousins on my mum's side of the family - my four brothers, myself, two other gals and three more guys) half convinced that Bro #2 is or was a CIA agent. His *cough* cover story is that he was in the Army doing communications stuff. He's led an interesting life to say the least.

Wife #1 was German with a son and daughter (step-kids to my bro) and the family never met them (he met, married and divorced her when he was stationed in Texas).

Wife #2 was Korean whom he met when stationed in Korea. We met her a few times, but we never met her family. They lived in New York for most of their relationship. Apparently it turned out she married him so she could live in the U.S. and bring her parents here as well. She was a lounge singer (Korean lounges, apparently) and got caught up in drugs and who knows what else.

Between #2 and #3 he had a long-term relationship with a girl in Belize (he worked there for a couple years). She sent a letter to Mum at one point stating that the baby she had was my brother's son. Bro said it wasn't, that she had an affair with another American living there. The picture she sent was inconclusive.

The lady he's going to marry is wife #3. We've met her twice and she's a good match for Bro. She's from Russia (Odessa, to be exact), she's Jewish*, divorced and has two daughters. One daughter is almost done with college and the other is almost done with high school.

Mum is going to visit them for a week in April. They live on Long Island and they both work in NYC. I'm rather jealous of the visit but I don't have the money to join them.

*Thanks to my brothers I have two Jewish sisters-in-law and one born-again SIL. On Eli's side there is one Catholic SIL, one Anglican SIL, one ex-Jehovah's Witness SIL and one First Nations (Native American) SIL. We're nothing if not eclectic! I've only listed this out because I got to thinking about it and thought the mix was interesting. Me? I think they consider me the odd-one out: I'm pierced, tattooed, married to an older guy and living in a foreign country.