Apparently if you can manage to stay sober for more than an hour after arriving in Las Vegas there are all kinds of things to do besides drink and gamble. Who knew? I thought the only places that existed in Vegas were Margaritaville, casinos and hotels. This time neither of us consumed a single drink and we still had a great time. Here's how it went down...
Day 1:
Our flight was delayed just a little bit and the kids were getting restless but once we boarded the flight went well. Both kids like to fly so our only issue is M's ears but this time wasn't as bad as it has been in the past. Maybe that means she's outgrowing it. Once we landed we got all of our luggage and headed for the hotel shuttle area and waited. And waited. And waited. We weren't the only ones standing there so we assumed we were in the right area. Wrong. Finally 30 minutes after the shuttle was supposed to arrive Matt and another guy called the hotel and somehow we had missed the shuttle. Possibly because it was unmarked! I'm sure that had something to do with it! Anyways, after sharing a cab (and the $50 cab fare) we finally made it to our hotel. The hotel was really nice. It had a full movie theater, bowling alley and best of all...childcare!! We ate dinner at the food court, got some ice cream and rounded the kids up for bed. Bed time did not go smoothly. We'll leave it at that.
Day 2: There's a little shopping area right across the street from the hotel so after breakfast we headed over there to walk around for a while. Probably not the best idea when we had a full day of walking ahead of us but it was fine. We dropped the kids off at KidsQuest for a while and did some gambling bright and early. I even won $50! We ate lunch and headed for the shuttle so we could take the kids down to the strip for the day. The kids slept on the way (probably because they got up at the crack of dawn...) so luckily they were well rested for the day. We went to the Secret Garden at the Mirage, M&M World, Bellagio Fountains, Mirage volcano, Fashion Show Mall and did more walking than the kids bargained for. We stopped at Margaritaville for dinner where the kids got balloon hats and ate a wonderful dinner and then walked back down the the mall and did some shopping before they closed. After a very long day we headed back to where the shuttle was supposed to pick us up and there were over 30 people in line. We were in the middle of the line so we weren't sure how this would go down. Someone called to let them know there were a lot of people waiting and they said the bus would hold 14 people. Fantastic. So again we loaded in a cab with some others and paid a $40 cab fare to get back to the hotel. This was at 10 PM Vegas time so midnight our time and the kids were out before we got a block down the road. Once we arrived at the hotel Matt stayed to pay the cab fare and some wonderful ladies and a nice gentleman helped me carry shopping bags while walking with a very tired 5 year old and a sound asleep 3 year old who weighs 45 lbs fully dressed back to our room. Bedtime went much more smoothly. :)
Day 3:
We got smarter on day 3! We decided the shuttle service is crap and rented a car! We were able to get the car right at the hotel and I drove the 2 miles down to Target and bought 2 booster seats. When I got back Matt and the kids had been bowling so they wrapped it up and we loaded up in the car. We drove down to Town Square and let the kids play at the big playground area, did some shopping and went to Yogurtland! Yum! They were still good to go so we headed back to the strip since M wanted to see the Bellagio fountains again. We parked at the Luxor and walked through the Luxor, Excalibur, City Center and Bellagio. We saw the conservatory at Bellagio and the fountains one last time. Let's just say the walk back to the car was much longer than the walk to the Bellagio. The kids were tired and M did enough whining about her feet and hips hurting to last her for the rest of her life. The kids fell asleep in the car and we drove to Chili's for dinner. Then we dropped the kids off at KidsQuest for a few hours so we could see a movie. By the time we picked them up they were good and tired. That was the goal!
Day 4:
We loaded up in the car bright and early and headed to Denny's for breakfast. Who doesn't love Denny's? The kids were pretty pleased that they didn't have to eat yet another breakfast from the smoothie place at the hotel. After breakfast we went to the Hoover Dam. This wasn't something we had planned to do at all but since we had a car we decided to go for it. The kids were so done walking so it was a perfect thing to do. There wasn't a huge amount of walking and I think we all really enjoyed it. We stopped at McDonald's to feed the kids lunch on the way back to town and they were able to run off a little energy at the playplace. We made a stop and In and Out for Matt and then went to the Ethel M's Chocolate Factory to check it out. The kids seem to think it was neat but next time we'll go during the week when the factory lines are going. The kids were pretty tired so we drove out to Red Rocks and did a scenic drive. Matt took some pictures and then we went to Fuddrucker's for our Valentine's Day dinner. J was coughing and not acting like he felt great so after dinner we headed over to Target and got him some medicine. We wanted to get them in bed early since they are going to have to adapt to another 2 hour time difference but since J had taken an almost 2 hour nap he didn't go to bed quite as early as we had hoped. Oh well. It still didn't go as bad as day 1.
Day 5:
We woke up early and went down to the buffet for breakfast and then got in line nice and early for the shuttle (we learned our lesson) and left for the airport around 11. Once we got to the airport and through security it was lunch time so we stopped at BK to eat, did some shopping and let the kids play in the play area until it was time to board. Our flight boarded at 2:30, the kids slept all the way home (so did I) and we got home around 8:30 and started unpacking. I'm sure bedtime won't go smoothly tonight either.
I managed to not eat more calories than I burned any day of our trip. I stayed under 2000 every day except Valentine's Day and I let myself have 1 splurge meal. I feel like I'm retaining a lot of water though so I'm not expecting a great weigh in on Wednesday. I'm back on track tomorrow though and I'll do a round of turbokick for the next few days and maybe try to up my burn to 3000 for this week to make up for it.
Photos will be up sometime in the next few days. I have a new recipe already planned for this week too! I just need to get to the grocery store for the ingredients (and things like bread and milk...).
Some pictures from my phone:
Saturday night I went to see a movie with a friend that I've been wanting to see since it came out and haven't been able to. It was wonderful. :)
