Vegas Baby

Here is a (somewhat lengthy) recap of our recent trip to Vegas. It all started Friday afternoon (with a little prep work on Thursday night)…

After my last conference call ended at noon on Friday, my mom and I packed Natalie into her car seat, loaded her in the car and proceeded to Trio to meet the uncles for lunch, followed by a pedicure at Nailed and a quick treat and a coffee to split at a local bakery. Warning to all of you who venture from the Holladay area to the 9th & 9th area… 900 East is a disaster and the construction “workers” (I use this term lightly) don’t understand what lunch or pedicure reservations mean and therefore move at a snails pace. We changed our pedicure appointment time twice while driving/waiting for the workers to get out of our way. We took 1300 east home – we learned our lesson!

After the wonderful afternoon, I finished a few loads of laundry and started to lay out all the items we were going to need to pack with us. When I’d had enough of this fun task, I decided to finish the signs that I was making for the Miss USA pageant (the reason for our trip to Vegas). I had already (Thursday night) cut the black poster board into squares so they met the “Miss USA Pageant Poster Requirements” on size and I cut out letters in neon pink paper. I pasted the letters onto the black poster board and took the 8 x 10 photos of Laura and glued them on poster board as well. I now had 3 photos of Laura and letters spelling out LAURA and UTAH! Now all that was left to do was tape dowels on the back of them so we could lift them into the air when we were cheering! The silver duct tape that I used sure made them look classy!

Once I finished that project, we fixed a quick dinner and I finished packing. Natalie had a total of 4 bags including her diaper bag, Phil and I shared one suitcase and I didn’t even take a purse! We had a peaceful night of sleep and woke up around 7 am to pack the car and head to my parents house to pack their stuff in the MDX and hit the road. We made two stops on the way to St. George.

We dropped everything off at the hotel and drove the boys to the golf course for a quick round. Grandma, Natalie and I hit Wal-Mart and Costco and then hung out at the hotel…until my mom decided she was sick and needed to hit the local Instacare. She was so worried she would get Natalie sick, but the doctor reasured her that Natalie would be fine (clearly the breastfeeding is paying off). We made it back to the hotel in time to leave for dinner. After dinner we had a drink with Uncle Philip and went to bed.

Sunday morning we left for Vegas and made it there by 10:30 am (love the time change). We checked into the hotel and had some lunch. After lunch Philip and Phil did some gambling (Philip up $200, Phil down $3). I got ready and tried to convince Natalie that she needed to take a nap. She didn’t agree and in the end she won, by only taking three 20 minute naps the entire day (except for the 30 minutes she slept in the car ride down). I left rice cereal and sweet potatoes (Natalie’s favorite) with Grandpa and everyone else left to attend the Miss USA pageant.

Here I am next to the photo of Laura that was in the casino

During the pageant, two musical guests “sang” and by sang I mean, lip synced their way through the song playing in the background. Also, the hosts were very lame and had trouble reading the teleprompter (which we could see and therefore knew when they were messing up). Overall, it was exciting. I loved being so close to the stage, which made it easy for the camera to find our signs, which meant that I got to be on TV. Waving my sign around and screaming like a crazy person!

I don’t think I could have screamed any louder for Laura! It was so nerve racking waiting for her name to be called. First for the top 15, then the top 10, then the top 5! After her final question I thought for sure she was going to win. Beauty and brains, she was a shoe in. However, they were clearly looking for a blonde with fake boobs, and they got one. I say good luck to her in the Miss Universe competition, hope she doesn’t fall down. It was annoying to see someone win who didn’t give a very good answer to her question, but alas that is why I’m not a judge.

The girl who won is in the blue dress, the girl who should have won (Laura) is in yellow

After the pageant, my mom and I ran back to the room so that I could feed Natalie (and yes, we literally got off the elevator and started running down the hall). Natalie was very happy to see me! She was a trooper for Grandpa, she didn’t ever take a nap, but she had some sweet potatoes and played the entire time. After that we traveled to the buffet for dinner – overpriced, but what isn’t these days? Once dinner was over Phil took a nap and Natalie decided that meant she should go to sleep too, so I left them in the room and hung out with my mom and dad.

Laura came to see us and chat about the pageant, which was great! I left for bed shortly after and found Natalie and Phil still sound asleep.

The next day, I helped pack Laura’s room (she was in vegas for 20 days, so she had A LOT of stuff). Once she was pretty much packed up we packed up the cars and set off for St. George. Phil and my dad played golf again and Natalie, my mom and I hung out at the hotel. That night we had a WONDERFUL dinner at the Painted Pony and then walked back to the hotel and enjoyed the warm summer air.

We took Natalie for a dip in the pool – which she loved even more than the last time she was in the water. She was laughing most of the time and was very happy that we were the only three people in the swimming pool.

Here she is in her "pool robe"

Big bonus, the water tired her out and she slept over 10 hours straight! We clearly need to put a pool in the back yard.

We traveled home Tuesday afternoon. What a wonderful vacation!