Weekend Trip to Las Vegas

This weekend we made a family trip down to Las Vegas. Rebecca's brother Ryan, who has lived in Las Vegas for the past few years, was getting married. His wife, Monica, had been living in Pocatello, and so we got to spend some extra time with Ryan as he made frequent visits up here while they were dating. Monica's previous husband had passed away a little bit ago. They had three children together (two girls and a boy). They match up in age with some of our children so our children got to become friends with them and they are super happy to have some additional cousins to play with. Unfortunately, now they live in Las Vegas instead of just 10 minutes away.

We picked the children up from school on Thursday and started with the drive. The drive took about 9 hours (should have only taken 8, but there was some traffic around the Salt Lake City area). It all went pretty smoothly. There were a few disagreements, but overall the children got along well. They listened to the final book of The Book of Three series. I haven't really been a fan of the series, but the children seemed to like it. They also got to eat some more of the Halloween candy along the way. A couple of them were not feeling very well, but we made it the whole way without having to clean up any car sickness messes. We got in at about 10:30pm, so it was straight to bed for them when we got there.

The next morning the children woke up at about 6:45am. It was kind of early, so I tried to keep them quiet, but evidently not quiet enough. A security guy knocked on our door informing us that there was a noise complaint. We tried very hard to be quiet after that, even tip toeing around, but about 30 minutes later he was back saying that they made a complaint again. We decided to get out as soon as possible for the day so as not to bother the people below us any more. Really, I don't know how we could have been quieter. Turns out that Nevada is in Pacific time and so it was really 5:45 when the children woke up.

With our extra morning time we made a trip to the strip. We started off walking through Caesar's Palace. I think the children really enjoyed that place. Then we made our way up the strip to the Mirage and Treasure Island (the kids weren't very impressed with the pirate ships and it wasn't a show time). Then on the way back we hit the Venetian and saw the gondolas.
























After that, we rushed off to the wedding. Because Monica was sealed to her first husband they had a small ceremony right at the base of the mountains. The red rock mountains and rock formations were all very pretty and it was a nice ceremony.

After the ceremony, we hit the pool back at the condo where we were staying. And then we had a party for all of the November birthdays. There was Agnes, Julia, Rebecca's mom, Rebecca's grandpa, and one of our nieces. The party included pizza and a pinata by the pool, then cake back in the condo.

The next morning we got up early and hit the rest of the strip. We made it to the New York casino, Excalibur, the Luxor, Chocolate World, M & M World, the Paris casino, and the Bellagio. The children were all exhausted by the end of that, but I am glad we got to take them to see all of the hotels. I think it helped tire them out for the long ride home. There was a little more crying and disagreements on the way back, but overall pretty uneventful. We made it in just a little after 9 pm. Again, we hit some heavy traffic right before Salt Lake City. I am so glad we do not have to deal with traffic on a daily basis. It was a fun quick road trip. We enjoyed seeing the sites, but most of all we were really happy for Ryan and Monica and being able to see them start their new life together.