Thursday, April 10, 2014

The rest of June 2013

We had a busy first half of the month!  For the second half, just some random things. :)

Nap with Daddy:

The kids and I read Candy Shop Wars again, so when we were done we made some
white fudge, like they have in the book. :)  

A favorite summer-time treat - chocolate covered strawberries!

Quinn loves to lick the beaters!

I found Quinn asleep like this.  Haha!

Quinn had fun playing Captain America. :)

The last weekend in June, the boys went down to do their annual campout with my parents.  They had a blast camping, fishing, hiking, and all the fun things that go along with it.   While they were gone, Josh and I went on a date for dinner.  We usually go to Bombay House, but decided to go to another Indian restaurant in Orem this time.  It was pretty good!


Some lettuce we grew in our garden:

The other night the kids were gone Josh and I decided to make our own shrimp cocktails.  They turned out pretty tasty! :)

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Las Vegas Trip 2013: Part 2

The next day in Las Vegas (Thursday), we started at Bellagio and walked through all the resorts heading south.

The Bellagio was awesome!  They had some really beautiful sculptures and a botanical 
garden to walk through.










Isn't this the coolest tile work? I loved it. 






One of the other casinos was pretty fancy.  It had some cool crystals hanging from the lights.

Josh wanted to go in this see-through elevator (scary).  Actually, it wasn't too bad.



Cute ladybug sculptures in this neat garden.

Loved this mosaic staircase:


These towers all had a water tornado in them.  So cool to watch:



These sculptures were made of ice!


We saw New York, New York:

...and Excalibur:

Josh played a few games at the arcade in Excalibur:


For dinner that night we went to the Silverton where they have a Polynesian buffet on Thursdays.  It was really good and fun!  They had lau lau (Josh's favorite), and some delicious Poke (my fav) as well as all the other usuals like kalua pork, lomi lomi, etc.  They even had some sushi.

The day before we went through one of those lame time-share presentations so we could get concert tickets to the Blue Man Group.  Josh had been dying to see this show.  We got to go that night.  It was a fun show!



The next day (Friday), Josh had one more appointment.  Afterward, we went over to the Stratosphere.  Josh had stayed there years ago on another business trip and wanted to take me to the top of the tower.  When we got there we found out unless you are staying at the hotel, it's super expensive just to go to the top.  Josh was disappointed, but we passed.  We went to lunch at a little cafe there and Josh got a Stratosphere cup. :)

After that we went to a couple of souvenir shops to find some little gifts for the kids.  We got them each a teddy bear with a Las Vegas shirt.  Back at our hotel later, Josh wanted to try the Oxygen Bar.  It was not my favorite - it gave me a headache for some reason. :)

We also got a free limo ride for doing the timeshare presentation.  We didn't really know where to "ride" to, so we decided to take it to dinner at the Main Street Casino where we had their Seafood Buffet (yummy!).  


We didn't do a whole lot on Saturday.  We walked around for awhile then went and got some lunch.  We headed back to St George where we were very happy to see our kids, and the next day we headed home!




Las Vegas Trip 2013: Part 1

A few days after we got back from Logan, we took the kids down to Josh's parents' house in St. George for their annual week-long stay.  They were so excited!  While they were gone, Josh and I decided to go to Las Vegas.  He had some business meetings down there anyway, so it worked well.
We got to Las Vegas  and checked into our hotel.  By then we were starving, so we ate dinner at Hash House a Go Go which was right at our hotel.  We went there years ago at the original location and loved it, so were excited to see they had another one there.  They have the best crab cakes ever! :)

The next morning Josh had one of his meetings.  He was researching a potential product he was thinking of incorporating into his massage therapy business.  Anyway, after the meeting, we went to lunch and then headed back to the strip and walked around.  We went to the Mirage first and saw their beautiful fountains and then went inside to see their huge aquarium.  It is so fun to just stand there and watch all the different fish.  Some of them are so funny!



After that we went through Caesar's Palace.  It is just the coolest place to walk around!




After our walk we decided to try the famous Frozen Hot Chocolate at Serendipities.  We also ended up just having our dinner there too.  They had pretty good food!  We ended up coming home and learning how to make the frozen hot chocolate ourselves.  So good!



After dinner we walked around the Paris.  It's another fun one to walk around.  Cool atmosphere.


We walked down more of the strip, heading toward our hotel.  We stayed at a new one called The Quad.


Josh had really wanted to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower at Paris, and we had a coupon, so we decided to go back and do it.  I'm SUPER afraid of heights, but it wasn't too bad because it was all enclosed.  It was pretty creepy when you could feel it sway a bit in the wind.


The views were amazing!


The next day Josh had another appointment in the morning.  In the afternoon we walked over to the Venetian to see Madam Tussaud's Wax Museum.  We hadn't been for a few years, so decided to check it out again.  They had a lot of the same statues, but did have some new ones.  These things are just so cool.  It's amazing how real they look and neat that they make them exactly like the stars (height, etc).  They never look as real in the photos though. :)

Will Smith:

Sandra Bullock:

Johnny Depp:

Can't remember who this was:


Michael Jordan:


Simon Cowell:

Josh got to dress up with Michael Jackson: 

...and drive with Elvis:

Louis Armstrong:

Yay! Thor:


George Washington:

Abraham Lincoln:

John and Jackie Kennedy

After the wax museum we walked through the Venetian.  It was pretty neat to see too.
They had a lot of medieval type actors walking around entertaining.




That night we walked around the strip.  This clock tower was cool:

We stopped to see the volcano show at the Mirage.


I don't have many pictures from the next day, but these are some fun little desserts 
that we had at dinner (at one of the buffets close to our hotel):

And that night we saw some fireworks out of our hotel window: