Vegas Vacation

We are back from our wonderful Vegas Vacation. As part of Josh's 3oth birthday gift, we spent 3 days in Las Vegas with our friends, Katie and Saunders, who were also celebrating Saunders's 30th birthday! Josh and I had never been - so this was quite an experience for us.

We arrived on Wednesday afternoon. The flight was very long - 4 hours - but with the time change it was still mid-afternoon in Las Vegas. We stayed at the MGM Grand, which was absolutely fabulous! Luckily Katie and Saunders have been to Vegas a few times and knew which hotels were the best to stay in - and which to avoid. The location was great - it was on the south end of the Strip, but was right on the Monorail route and had tons of great restaraunts and entertainment. After getting checked in and settled, the guys and girls went our separate ways. While Katie and I stood in the slowest conceirge line to secure show tickets and reservations, the boys hit the poker room at the MGM Grand. I had no idea that someone could play poker for hours on end - but Saunders and Josh certainly could.
Meanwhile, Katie and I toured the MGM Grand (it was huge) and found a delicious Mexican restaraunt for dinner. I had been warned by a friend who had recently been to Las Vegas that the portions were huge...so I had the grand idea to order an appetizer as my meal! When our meals came, I was slightly disappointed. Katie's dinner was huge and smelled incredible. My empanda starter plate was great - but very small! Thank goodness there was plenty of chips and salsa to round out my meal! After dinner, we wandered out of the MGM and went over to a neighboring casino, New York, New York. We found some cute shops that we made a note to revist and Josh joined us for a bit after winning big his first night at the poker table!

After an eventful Wednesday night, where my husband's breathing/snoring almost cost us our friendship with the Jones', we headed out for a breakfast at a local diner, Coco's. It was recommended by one of the staff members at the MGM and was wonderful! We had our fill of pancakes, bacon, hash browns, and eggs and again went our separate ways. The guys continued to push their luck at the poker tables and Katie and I set out to explore the Las Vegas Strip. I was completely blown away by many of the hotels we went into. I loved window shopping at Caesar's Palace and would love to have the Bellagio's gardner for my own yard! Josh and Saunders joined us for a bit, but definitely did not get in all the walking that Katie and I did. ( I wore my pedometer and we logged close to 10 miles in 2 days.) My favorites were Caesar's Palace, Bellagio, and Paris - and I found a few hotels that I would be okay never stepping foot in again!

As we wondered further up the strip, I started to encouter the "scenery" that I had been warned about! Needless to say, I'm thankful we stayed on the tamer, south end of the strip. Late in the afternoon, Saunders caught up with Katie and I and we make the trek up to the northern most hotel/casino, Stratosphere. Saunders had been wanting to go to the top to see the view, but also had other plans for us - thrill rides! He picked a ride called "Big Shot" - it was 100+ stories up and shot us up and down from the very top of the Stratosphere! I'm sure the views were great, if I had been brave enough to open my eyes! It was super scary - but really fun too!

Thursday night, we got dressed up and headed to dinner at SeaBlue, which was within the MGM Grand and whose chef was Stephen Hopcraft from Bravo's Top Chef. The food was impecable - we all were starving and had steak, potatoes and asparagus. After dinner, we headed over to the Hollywood Theatre for the David Copperfield show. We were delirious by this point - thoroughly exhausted from the time change, lack of sleep, and walking from the day - but the show was amazing. We had great seats and Saunders even got on stage for one act. It was so neat to see David Copperfield in person, and yes, his ego is really as big as it seems on tv!

On Friday, we had breakfast again at Coco's, got checked out, and continued our poker playing/sightseeing divide. Katie and I toured the rest of the southern strip - Mandalay Bay and Luxor and really enjoyed getting to go through both The Bodies and The Titanic exhibits. We did some souvenier shopping for the kiddos and ourselves - including some cute scarves and headbands to start trends back in Cartersville with and met up with the guys to prepare for our red-eye flight back home.

The red-eye was rough, but worked out great to give us a full extra day in Las Vegas. Lucky for us, we had Saturday to recuperate, as my parents were keeping Lily and Bear until Sunday. We had such a great time on our trip and made tons of memories with our sweet friends. Katie did a great job highlighting the more humorous points of our trip on her blog. We will certainly look forward to taking more trips with them in the future - but definitely with different sleeping arrangements!