Viva Las Vegas!

Michael and I have been planning a Vegas trip since we moved here almost 4 years ago. The plane tickets are pretty inexpensive, as are the hotel rooms. We left last Wednesday at 7:00pm and got home Saturday around noon. It was awesome! There is so much to do there and always lots going on.
And Olivia? No worries, between the mall:



Chuck E. Cheese:



The Wildlife Experience:



Gymnastics:



and a variety of other kid-friendly activities, I don't think she even noticed we were gone, ha! Thanks so much Mom and Lilo for taking such good care of our girl!

We stayed at the Flamingo:





Our room is somewhere in this tower:



Not the nicest place in Vegas (which we couldn't afford, anyway!), but the location is great! It is right across from Caesar's Palace and Bellagio. Wednesday night, we wandered around close to our hotel and watched the fountains at The Bellagio:





We're cracking up in that picture, because a friend of the man that took our picture kept pretending that he was going to get in it with us. He actually managed to get in one!


Thursday, we headed to the Northern part of the strip, basically stopping and checking out the other hotels/casinos. They are unbelievable.
Gondolas in the Venetian:



This is the walkway from our hotel to Bally's (with the Eiffel Tower in the background). Vegas has many walkways over roads to cut down on pedestrian traffic.



That night we went to a Hypnotist/Comedy show that was really good.

Friday, we headed to the south end of the strip.

New York New York:



The lion habitat in the MGM Grand. The trainers were playing with the lions while we were there:



The view up the strip:



Vegas equals lots of walking! Everything looks close together, but it's not. The resorts are huge, so just walking from one to another can take 15-20 minutes. There is a bus that goes up and down the strip and downtown. It's $7 for 24 hours, so after we had been in most of the casinos on the south end, we hopped on the bus to check out downtown. We had heard that the slot machines downtown were "looser" and since we hadn't had any luck so far, we decided to check it out. Downtown Vegas has been revamped recently with the Fremont Street experience. The entire street is covered with a canopy. It looks like this during the day:



And this at night:



Very neat. Every hour or so, the casinos turn out all their lights for a light show on the canopy:



We were downtown for quite some time. We started off playing a few slot machines, but had no luck. We had just thrown in the hat on gambling, when we spotted a $5 craps table. Michael had played craps before, but I hadn't. We watched for a little bit, then decided to try it. We put in $30. 6 hours later, we had won back everything we lost on the trip! There was a couple beside us that had been helping us and they kept telling us to not think it's always like this, it's easy to lose money, too! We just picked a hot table and everyone was winning. We kept putting money back a little at a time in a "don't touch this" pile. It kept growing. We skipped dinner and another show, but it's so much fun when you're winning! Definitely made us feel better about the vacation, ha! We rode the bus back to our hotel and crashed. Our flight left at 7:30am, so we had to get up pretty early!

Our room:



The mirror in the bathroom had a TV built into it:



The view from our room:



I wish we had one more day to explore, there's so much to see! Just gives us another reason for a return trip, I guess!
Here's a short video of the fountains at The Bellagio. Very cool:

The Pledge

2 posts in a week! I'm on a roll!

Lindsay and I decided last week to start saying the Pledge of Allegiance with the daycare kids. We have a preschool program that we do every morning with the calendar and weather, so it seemed like something that would fit in with the rest of our activities. We started saying it once a day last Wednesday. Last night after her bath, I asked Olivia if she remembered any of the words, hoping maybe she had picked up the first line or so. Here's what I got:



I was floored. She memorized the entire thing after saying it 5 times. I haven't gone over it with her at all! She has a little trouble with "indivisible," but I don't know many 2 year olds that wouldn't! More proof that young kids are sponges. :)

Mother's Day and other festivities

Avry came to play one day last week. These 2 are peas in a pod:



Avry was determined to wear Olivia's bee costume from Halloween. That costume is 18-24 months and Avry is a solid 3t, but we finally managed to squeeze her in it! They have so much fun together and I had some flashbacks of them eating together:





We had a gorgeous Mother's Day weekend and decided to take advantage of a Cinco de Mayo festival downtown. We don't travel downtown too often, so we decided to take the Light Rail on this trip. There's a pick up point just a few miles from our house, so we left the car and rode the "train" downtown. Olivia was thrilled (it was her first time riding, although she's seen it several times).



On the train:



Sure beats trying to find a parking place and then paying $20+ for it! The festival was at Civic Center park, which is literally right downtown:



As soon as we got there, Olivia spotted the ponies. $5 for a 2 minute pony ride- her first time!

Waiting in line:



Her pony:



We also hit the petting zoo that was right beside the ponies. There were lots of baby goats, a bunny, a turtle, an albino blind pony, and some llamas. Mainly goats that came after your cup of carrots like it was their last meal. We didn't last too long!

We had a little picnic in the shade:



And a funnel cake:



We even saw Navy Seals parachuting into the park:



We had a good time, until she started getting tired. We headed down 16th street mall (16th street mall is an outdoor mall right in the middle of downtown. What should be 16th street is blocked off to cars. Pretty neat):



I've wanted to take some pictures of her downtown for awhile, so I snuck a few in. This was the only one that turned out decent. Maybe next time!


We caught the train and headed home.

We also made a park trip this weekend, including the dogs. We recently discovered a dog park with a playground right beside it (we've only lived here almost 4 years and just found this park 1.5 miles from our house!). Poor dogs, they haven't been to the park in awhile. They ran full throttle for 10 minutes, then collapsed in the shade. This was my view walking into the park:



Olivia insisted on wearing 2 tutu's to the park. What fashion sense!



This park also has a sandbox, which was a huge hit:



The dogs were so exhausted from the park, they could barely make it to the car. They were moving so slow, we let Olivia hold Rambler's leash. She thought she was hot stuff:



Hope all the Mommies out there had a great day!

Itsy, Bitsy Spider and a 5K

Olivia is very interested in our cameras. We ended up giving her our old digital camera (it still works) and she likes to play with it, but she especially likes our video camera. She insisted that I video her singing, so she could watch herself. You'll probably have to turn up the volume- she needs to work on projecting!



I finally reached a goal that I set several months ago. One of our daycare parents (Anissa) is an RN and a former personal trainer. She knows quite a bit about fitness/health and has been helping Lindsay (that owns the daycare) and I get healthier and exercise regularly. We meet her twice a week for a cardio session and then lift weights 2-3 times a week, plus Michael and I try to go on a 20ish mile bike ride (pulling Olivia) as often as we can. Colorado is ranked as one of the fittest states and I guess it's rubbing off on us (Michael has lost 20 pounds just from riding his bike)! It has worked much better than the crash diets I normally follow. When we started in October, I couldn't run half a mile. This weekend, we ran a 5k- as in ran the entire time (that's 3.2 miles). I have never been so proud to come in 77th place, ha! (There were 251 runners and I was 40th out of 182 women). I finished in 34 minutes- I was shooting for under 40, so I am quite proud! Especially after a rather hilly course (that we were not prepared for!). In fact, we were so excited, that we signed up for another 5k on May 14th. That race is supposed to be a flat course, ha!

Here we are before the race:



Yes, it was COLD. Anissa is beside me in the green jacket, Lindsay is on my other side. Lindsay's sister and Mom also ran with us- they're beside Lindsay.

Michael and I are registered for a 34 mile bike race on June 5th. Busy summer!