Vegas, Baby!!

We have been trying to get out to Vegas to see Uncle Joe for a few months now. Turned out that the only weekend we were completely open was General Conference weekend. And my babysitters, ahem, my parents were going to Cedar City. Thanks to Dana's quick thinking, I decided to send the boys and the van with mom and dad, and Ben and I hit sin city alone!

Actually, we hung out with Ben's mom and sister. Which was a lot of fun! We got into Vegas Thursday night around midnight. We checked in, showered, and got to bed around TWO! Friday I
woke Ben up at 8am with some infomercial about amazing slimming jeans!! They were cool :P We hit the gym... mostly because we were paying for it. I like to utilize as many amenities as possible :) Oh, we were staying at the Monte Carlo. Which is in a pretty good spot on the strip, except for ALL the construction.

Julie and Clarissa joined the land of the living about noon. We had a light lunch and then walked the strip a little. The construction was horrible, we had to walk 3 city blocks to get to the next hotel. I don't understand the always having to build bigger and better. Vegas is all about
excess, and I am more about being happy with
what you have, so Vegas and I kind of clashed this time.

We got back to the hotel around 5, so Ben and I threw on our swim suits and headed down to the "Lazy River", which I had been looking forward to. Turns out, A. The pool closes at 6!! and B. you have to buy inner tubes to use in the LR. Worst of all, was the inconsiderate DRUNKS hanging out in and around the LR. For the most part, you just had to float around them. Irritatin, but not a huge deal. There was this huge group of
them that took up the whole back side of the LR and decided to play football. Best part... the life guards AND security people just stood there watching as they blocked the whole LR, landed on top of me and hit some poor innocent bystander with the ball. Finally those jerks left and Ben and I got back to floating with the few people left who could follow rules... 3 kids under the age of 11!!! It was better just to float without tubes. You know I didn't buy a tube!! And after 50 mins or so, we were actually pretty tired and happy to leave.

That night Julie was tired from walking, wait, we ALL were tired from walking, so Ben had picked 2 restaurants close by and in our price range. We walked next door to NY NY... but no one was really excited about those options. Maybe NY NY was the second place we went... anyway, we went 3 different places, and ended up at the MGM. There we had to walk THROUGH the casino to get to the 8 restaurants... 6 of which were HIGH END. Finally, 2 hours after we started this expedition, we were eating sandwiches and sliders in a cafe :P

That night we all hit the hay pretty "early", by Vegas standards anyway. And although I couldn't sleep past 8 the next morning, we skipped the gym and decided to get our resort fees worth in bottled water delivered to our room :)

Saturday, as 50 people were checking in, we were checking out. Yay! I HATE crowds, especially Vegas crowds!

We met Joe and Sue at Metro Pizza for lunch. As is our tradition, we were late, they were early. Julie and Clarissa were waiting for us in the parking garage, and then once they got directions, they decided to go on their own. We had been there before, so we got there right away. Julie and Clarissa ended up at the wrong Metro Pizza!! We got them the RIGHT address, and told them to plug it in to GPS, and soon after they were pulling in out front. Of course we heckled them for a while.

Lunch was nice. The company was great. It was nice to get to hang out with Julie and Clarissa and to get to know Joe and Sue better.

Then it was back on the road for us. Dana and Josh had spent the week touring UT, and were on their way home. I talked them into bringing us the baby in Vegas so that we wouldn't have to drive to Mesquite to meet mom in the middle. As we were waiting at the "drop" point, I got anxious and got out of the car to look down the street for them. I ran around the parking lot to meet them, and Dana grabbed the baby out and handed him to me. He was excited to see me, not too mad about me leaving him. But then, when daddy got out of the car... that was ALL he wanted!! He is such a daddy's boy. Even on Sunday, all he wanted was daddy :)

It was nice to get out of town for a few days and not have to worry about the kids. But it is nice to be home all together again!