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:

A trip to Logan, etc.

Josh had Parker stand on his shoulders to help him thin out the baby apples on our tree.  Of course they wanted a picture.  Yikes!

The first week in June, Josh had some business meetings in Logan, so we went up with him and spent a couple of days.  We headed up Sunday after church and found our hotel.  It was in such a pretty spot - we loved this hotel.  Of course we got a classic Quinn-looking-out-the-window shot. ;)

After we got settled, we headed over to see the Logan temple.  We had never seen it before in real life.  Such a beautiful building!  I think it became one of my favorite temples!

It almost looks like a castle! So cool.

The next morning we had breakfast at our hotel.  They had an awesome free breakfast.  After we ate we headed over to see the Willow Park Zoo before Josh had to go to his meeting.  It was such a cool little zoo!  It had more regional animals.  It was surrounded by - you guesssed it - Willow trees!  It was really pretty.  We really enjoyed it!

Crappy picture because the sun was in a bad spot, but we got to see them feed the monkeys.

It was so fun to see them swinging around and playing.  They would pull the ropes and bring the food up to them.  So cute!

A pretty little stream ran through the zoo with swans swimming in it.

The next day after we checked out of our hotel, we decided to check out some of the Cache Valley Food tour (a bunch of food related businesses in town have little tours you can go on).  While we were waiting for our first tour to start we walked around downtown Logan.  Such a cute little town!  I would totally live here. :)  Not sure I'd love the winters though.  This is a tabernacle building on Main street.  Another pretty building.

Our first stop was the Bluebird Candy Company.  

 They took us on a little tour through the back where they make all of their candy.  It was so cool!

We saw the pots where they make some of the candy:

I think this was some toffee that they had all laid out and ready to cut.

Here is a candy slicer:

This was really cool, especially if you've seen the I Love Lucy episode where she

works in a candy factory.  This is a conveyor belt where they package the candies.

They said they use it a lot during Christmas time.

It was really fun watching the ladies dip the chocolates.  They each had a certain flavor

they were dipping.  They would pull some warm chocolate out of their little vats, then roll the 

candy in the chocolate and roll it around.  They knew how to make it perfectly smooth and perfect.

Each flavor even had a different shaped swirl on the top to distinguish it.  So cool!

These are some of flavors they make.  We each got to try one.  Yum!

We ate lunch, then headed to our next stop.  Cox Honeyland.  It wasn't much of a tour, but they had us watch a little video on honey and bees.  Most of it we already knew because we have bees of our own! :)  They had a little shop where we sampled fudge and different flavored honey.

They had a little window with real working beehive behind it.  The bees had access to the outside.

It was cool to be able to watch the bees doing their thing.

Not the greatest picture, but for our last stop we went to the USU Creamery where they make their famous (supposedly) Aggie ice cream.  (they had tons of places you could check out, but these are the ones that worked out for us time wise).  They had a video about how they make their cheese and we got to sample some different flavors of cheese.  Gotta love cheese! :)  Afterward we bought some ice cream cones.  It was pretty good!

On the way home we stopped in Odgen to have dinner at the Prairie Schooner restaurant where we had a gift certificate to use.  We were excited to take the kids here because Isaac had just done his fourth grade play that was all about the pioneers traveling West and they even had a song about prairie schooners.  The whole restaurant is made to look like it's outside in the desert at night and each table is a covered wagon.  The atmosphere is SO cool.  I have to say though that I probably wouldn't go there without a gift certificate.  The food was super expensive and was not very good.  We were disappointed in the food.  It was a fun experience though! (the pics were bad because of the poor lighting)

We also got to see a temple in the process of being built.

Back at home...

Our roses sure were pretty!

And we got lots of yummy strawberries this year!