VEGAS Baby!!!

2010 just flew by way too fast for me! In all the busyness of the holiday season, Chris and I planned a little "escape." It was unusually busy this year for several reasons--piano, charms, home projects, etc...so the day after Christmas, we loaded up our family and took off for Las Vegas, NV. It was sure nice to take a long road trip and focus on NOTHING else but our family. On the way out of town--way west Phoenix, Litchfield maybe?--we saw this street sign and I just had to take a picture!!! Who knew we had our own street?!


Now, I've never been to Vegas before so I've never traveled this road. From what I understand, the longest part of this trip before was crossing over the Hoover Dam. But nowadays, there's a road bypassing this part of the trip. It's kinda funny how they built the bypass road to save time but now everyone stops there to see the dam and take pictures. So of course we had to stop too! Who knew when we'd be back?!



The kids make FANTASTIC travel companions--they were mostly excited about staying in hotels:) We arrived in Vegas and quickly threw our stuff in our room and took off for the strip! What an interesting place Vegas was! We had forewarned the kids to NOT take anything that might be handed to them and I think we scared them a little bit. But they were fascinated by all the lights and people. Each casino is like a little city in and of itself and I was amazed at how much there was to do!!! We had only one day so we mapped out a route starting at one end of the strip and headed down.

Here's the kids at our hotel--funny kids:)


Out on the strip:


The highlight (in our opinion) of the strip was the fountain show at the Belaggio. Every 30 minutes these fountains spout off all choreographed with beautiful classical music. The kids LOVED it! We stood there FREEZING and getting wet from the fountains but nothing could have dragged us away! It was amazing how high the water could shoot up!




Some other fun things we did were: visit the 4 story M&M store--yes, apparently 1 story isn't enough for these tiny chocolate candies (and the store was PACKED--barely walking room). We visited a lion habitat in the MGM Grand hotel--Max was SUPER excited to visit this hotel because his initials are MGM (Maxwell Gordon Meeker) and he was just SURE that this was HIS hotel!!! We also saw MANY interesting people. Like people dressed up as statues and drag queens that you could pay money to have a picture with. I'm not sure that my boys will ever be the same. They saw a man dressed in drag and they were ABSOLUTELY MORTIFIED!!! They could not believe that any boy would ever choose to dress like that!!! (GOOD! I hope they ALWAYS feel that way:)

We tried but we couldn't fit everything in one night so we decided to stay a little while the next morning as well. So here is day 2 of our Vegas adventure!!! Carlie was NOT leaving until she got to go on a ride! So we went to the Stratosphere--the tallest ride in the world apparently. They take you 1,149 feet into the air and then they DROP you!!! So here's Carlie and I headed up!!!


It was scary but I think Tower of Terror at California Adventure is scarier:)

This is all of us at the top of the Stratosphere: (it's WAY up there:)



The last thing we did was see a circus performance at "Circus Circus." They have a circus every 30 minutes there. So all in all it was a great learning experience for us. We were able to show our kids first hand the dangers of excessive living. In Max's own words, "Mom! This is an UNAPPROPRIATE place!" He was outraged because he saw a flyer with a woman on it showing her belly button:) That's right Max!!! You just keep thinking that! The best part was just being together! And we left that day on our way to Salt Lake City--the very opposite of Las Vegas:)