Las Vegas or bust!

In the midst of all of this kitchen stuff, the boys and I took a break and went to Las Vegas with Rod for the week. It was actually a greatly appreciated little vacation and it made eating out a little bit more exciting...since that’s what we’ve been relegated to now that all we have for a kitchen is a beautiful new floor, a card table and a microwave...oh and beautifully painted “moose mousse” walls! Those conditions just aren’t too conducive to making anything lavish. In fact, we’ve been relegated to making whatever we can find that we can cook in the microwave or possibly out on the grill...or eating out! Eating out, of course, is the easiest option, but it’s also expensive and a person can only take so much of it.

With that in mind, as much as I was looking forward to going to Las Vegas at the first of the week, when it came time to come home on Friday, I was equally (if not more) excited to come home! I realized that I was going back to a house with no kitchen, but even if we had to get by on cereal and sandwiches for the next week, I was just glad not to have to eat out again for a long time! To add to the fact that we ate out for 3 days straight, I wasn’t doing any sort of exercise, besides “racewalking” everywhere I went, so I was feeling rather “blimpish” by the time we headed for home...and I couldn’t wait to go running as soon as we got back. Maybe not the 18 miles that we had planned for Saturday, but I was still looking forward to running!

As far as our trip to Las Vegas though, the boys and I had a great time. Rod had to work and go to a conference the whole time we were down there, so I’m not sure he could say that it was as fun for him...but I think he enjoyed having us along just to keep him company! On the other hand, more than once he was left stranded without a car because the boys and I were off playing somewhere and I’m not sure he liked that so much.

We left here on Tuesday morning at 7:00, which meant we got to Vegas by 3:00…in plenty of time for Rod to go straight to work. That’s not quite what I was expecting, but I should have known that that’s what would happen because that’s one of the reasons that Rod had gone down. We dropped Rod off at the Summerlin store and the boys and I climbed right back in the car after we dropped him off and headed to the park and to do a little shopping to find me some much needed sunglasses, which I had left home. We found out really quickly that the parks in Vegas are much cooler than anything we have near our house! We also found out that there are Kohl’s just about everywhere...and I’m a bargain shopper whenever I shop there!

In between playing, the boys had to do some homework

On Wednesday, the boys and I dropped Rod off at work, stopped and bought some sandwich stuff and then went back to the hotel and packed ourselves a lunch. We then set out to find a park that my friend Jodee had told us about in North Las Vegas. It took us nearly 30 minutes to get there from our hotel, but it was the coolest park ever. It was aptly named “Dinosaur Park” and it was incredible! It had a 3 tiered playground toy with the most amazing slides, a sandbox surrounded by dinosaur bones, a splash pad, a small waterfall nearby and a big dinosaur head right in the middle of the playground. It truly was one of the coolest parks I’ve seen. Just as we got to the park, of course, Rod called to see what we were doing and I just knew that he was going to want us to come back and get him to take him to his conference at the Sands in downtown Las Vegas…only it wasn’t going to be that easy because he was probably about 45 minutes from where we were at! Sure enough, he was already done with his work but fortunately for us, he had made plans for one of his guys to go to lunch with him and then he told us that he’d meet us back at the Henderson store that was near our hotel and much closer to where we were at. At least we didn’t have to leave quite yet and even better...we didn’t have to drive quite as far to get him!

After we met up with Rod and took him to his conference, the boys and I decided to just stay down on the “strip” and go see the water show and the conservatory display at the Bellagio. We parked at the Miracle Mile Mall and walked through there to get to the Bellagio and the boys were totally enthralled (just like I had been the first time I saw it) by the way the ceiling in the mall had been painted to look like the sky and it looked just like we were outside. Of course, we got to the water show about 30 minutes before it was going to go off, so we staked out our spot and waited. In the meantime, Rod called to see where we were at because he was ready for us to come pick him up. Needless to say, by the time we watched the water show, went to see the conservatory inside the Bellagio, stopped and got stuffed animals for the boys at Build a Bearville (which I had already promised them we’d do) and walked back to our car, Rod ended up waiting for us for nearly an hour. See what I mean about the fact that he probably wasn’t sure why he took us along with him?

Notice Connor's fingers in his ears...it's too loud for him!

On Thursday, the boys and I drove to Hoover Dam while Rod went to his conference at the Sands and fortunately, even though Miss GiPS told us that it would take us almost an hour to get there, it only took us about 30 minutes. We didn’t really spend a lot of time at the dam because the only thing we could do was to walk along the dam and take a few pictures and then head back to our car. The only sightseeing things available cost lots of money (even to go in the visitors center), so we weren’t interested in any of that anyway. We didn’t spend too much time out walking around either because it was incredibly windy and cold and it doesn’t take that long to walk from one end of the dam to the other.

On the way back to town, we did stop to see the “pirate house”, which our friend Jodee had also told us about and where her family spends a lot of their vacation time because her brother’s father in law owns it. I had heard a lot about it, but I was in awe when I actually saw it. It was amazing!

Rod didn’t call us until we were just about back to town, so lucky for him, he didn’t have to wait as long for us to come and get him. It was only about noon and he was done for the day, so we got to spend the remainder of the day with him. Besides doing a little shopping, which Hayden and I did ourselves while Connor and Rod sat in the car and waited, and a little swimming back at the hotel, the only other thing that Rod wanted to do was to find the Pawn Stars pawn shop. It took us a while to find it because it wasn’t in Miss GiPS directory, but after asking for directions at our hotel, we drove right to it. It wasn’t in the nicest part of town and it wasn’t nearly as nice in person as it looks on the TV show...in fact it was a dive, but we had fun just being able to see it since “Pawn Stars” is currently one of Rod’s favorite shows!

By the time Friday morning rolled around, we were all more than ready to be home...and we still had an 8+ hour drive ahead of us! As we left Las Vegas behind and got closer to St. George, we noticed that the temperature was slowly going from the 70’s that we had become accustomed to in Las Vegas down to the 50’s in St. George and by the time we reached Cedar City and stopped to get some lunch, we were right in the middle of a snowstorm! We looked a little funny in our shorts and capris that had been appropriate for the Las Vegas weather when everyone around us was in coats and boots. The cold is probably the one thing that we hadn’t missed while we had been gone and the one thing that we weren’t looking forward to coming home to...but we were going to get it anyway!