14th Anniversary - Las Vegas

For Byron & I's 14th anniversary, we decided to head to Las Vegas to enjoy 3 days without children. We have driven through myriad of times, but never have spent any time there to see the sights. We decided that this would be a great time to finally see what Las Vegas had to offer. Jeff & Emily watched our children while we were away. Thankfully they were willing to switch with us so we can return them the favor in August.

On July 9th we headed out around 1:30 p.m. to the Salt Lake City airport. Johnathan wasn't very happy that we would be leaving on his birthday, but soon got over that when he realized he would be spending the weekend with his cousins. We loved being able to fly instead a drive. We found some great ticket prices and couldn't pass up the opportunity. Once we got to Las Vegas, we got into a taxi and headed to the Luxor. Having to rely on public transportation is quite a different experience. I realized how grateful I truly am for our van.

The Luxor was quite a hotel. We stayed on the 6th floor. Our room was very nice. The elevator was quite an interesting experience. It travels diagonally instead of straight up since it is shaped like a pyramid. Definitely a weird sensation! This is the view from outside our hotel room. The Luxor was absolutely massive! You can seriously get lost inside and I thought I had a few times.

We ate dinner at a fast food restaurant inside the Luxor. We both got some delicious philly cheese steak sandwiches. We could have seriously shared one meal - the meal was so good and hit the spot.
There were some really cool statues at the Luxor - I have always been intrigued with pyramids and Egyptians since 4th grade when my teacher had us study them. Pretty cool!
Here Byron is in with the Luxor in the distance.
I had the awesome opportunity to get a massage at "The Spa." I have never done anything like this and definitely hope it isn't my last. I loved everything about the experience - including the almost falling asleep part. I definitely felt very relaxed and loved every minute for the 50 minute massage. Byron was so nice to let me do this and actually got a nice nap in while I was gone. Las Vegas is quite a night city - nothing much is going on during the day, but everything wakes up at night. I can't say that it was my most enjoyable vacationing spot, but great to get away with Byron. There were many bad influences and things that we needed to be careful about seeing. Even through it all, though, there are some awesome free things to see and enjoy.
This is a cool aquarium of salt water fish in one of the casinos.
We enjoyed going into the "M&M Store" and seeing so many different types of M&M's - my kids would have loved this!
Inside the Coca-Cola Store - we were able to purchase samples of coke from around the world. There were 16 to sample and quite an experience. I tried about 6 without any problems, but there were some pretty nasty ones that made me loose my appetite very quickly. I can't believe some countries actually drink some of them!

Byron absolutely LOVES coke and was so excited to try one in a bottle.

We went to the Flamingo casino and enjoyed the beautiful wildlife habitat. We saw some cool turtles, flamingos, and fish.
Here Byron is in front of the cool fountain at the Flamingo.
The "Donny and Marie" show is currently playing there. We enjoyed looking through some of the gift shops where we saw some cool displays for Donny & Marie. Below I am next to a picture of Donny in this shop.
Heading over to Caesars Palace where some really cool fountains.

The casinos were absolutely massive. This particular strip of stores was inside one of them. There were very high ceilings with the sky painted like you were outdoors. Pretty cool overall scene.
We ended up watching the Nathan Burton comedy/magic show. We were actually impressed and love every minute of it. I was so glad that it was fun family entertainment. His acts were absolutely amazing and left us wondering how in the world he did that. We were very close to the stage, which added to the show.

Because we purchased tickets to this, we also received a free buffet - the food was delicious. Byron's favorite part was the huge pile of crab legs that seemed never ending. We enjoyed eating right next to a huge window that overlooked the outdoor wildlife habitat. There was a beautiful black swan asleep right outside of our window - pretty cool!
Almost all of the casinos have free things to see and do. We tried to make it to the ones that intrigued us. We went to the Winn to enjoy a light show that started after it got dark. The only seating was in an area where you had to order drinks. We decided upon some yummy pina colada and strawberry daquaries. After waiting for the show to start for about 45 minutes, we realized that they were having technical difficulties. We ended up waiting for almost 2 hours for this particular show - when it never came on we ended up finally leaving. We did enjoy a great long conversation and some yummy drinks though:).

This waterfall was outside of the Winn hotel - it was absolutely beautiful at night with the lights on it.
We headed over to the Venetian and went on a gondola ride. All of the tickets were already sold out for the outdoor ride, so we opted for the indoor instead. We were on the gondola with another couple. Our gondolier was amazing and sang us some pretty cool songs in Italian. We passed over quite a few bridges and was amazed each time that the guy didn't fall off since his head pretty much touched the top of it.
Above the gondolier with the couple we rode with. Below we are on the gondola.
We headed over to the Mirage to see the volcano erupt. What a cool experience with fire, water & awesome effects. We had a great spot to watch it and felt quite a bit of heat coming off of the volcano.
One of my favorite shows was the fountains at the Bellagio. They were awesome! I wish we could have just sat and watched them longer, but it was pretty late by the time we saw them. The fountains played to music and took in an area around the length of a football field. We heard it go off twice - once to the song, "Singing in the Rain" and to an opera song. My kids would have loved watching this.

Both mornings (Friday and Saturday) we slept in until around 10:30 a.m. Las Vegas is such a night town that we didn't get to bed until around 1:30 a.m. each morning, so sleeping in felt great!

Our last day there, on Saturday, we headed over to Mandalay Bay and enjoyed seeing the Shark Reef Aquarium. I am so glad we spent the time and money to do this since it ended up being one fo my favorite parts of our trip. One of the coolest parts of the aquarium were phones we carried around with us. When we came upon an exhibit, we could dial the number on the exhibit and listen to information about that particular thing. We were able to see a cool komodo dragon, sting rays, turtles, sharks, golden crocodile, saw fish, piranha and many more. I loved a huge 1.3 million gallon aquarium with almost a 360 degree view where huge turtles, fish, sharks and many other species were all swimming around us. There is also a cool tunnel where the fish swim right over our heads. Byron & I were intrigued with the huge sea turtles swim around. They were fun to watch!
There was a cool touch pool where you could touch sting rays and horse shoe crabs. Byron was more daring than me to touch them.

The jelly fish were fascinating to me. The colors are so beautiful and bright. I enjoyed watching them move in the water.
Here we are in the taxi heading back to the airport. We had such a great time together, but need to get back to real life.
My eyes were open to how sinful the world can be while there and was so grateful for where I live. We definitely have things all around us that can be bad influences, but not to the extent as I saw in Las Vegas. I realized how much I love living in Utah and all that it has to offer.

Thanks Jeff & Emily for watching our children.