Leading up to the trip, I'll admit that I was pretty anxious. Jordan has spent several days away from Jo (usually due to ME leaving on a trip with the baby), but I had never spent a night without him (minus one NICU night where I came home for 6 hours). I was nervous about leaving my little guy. "What if he wonders where we are the whole time?" and "What if he thinks we abandoned him?" were only a few of my constant worries in my head. While lamenting to my sister over the phone about how I would probably not even have a good time because of all the motherly worry, my sister said, "I bet once the plane is in the air headed to Vegas, you won't even be thinking about your baby."
Whattaknow, she was right!
One fun part of our trip was that we were able to go with another couple from our ward, Alex and Kimberly (he is a PA who also went to the training). They were a lot of fun to hang out with and I was happy to have the company during the daytime while Jordan was at his classes.
On Wednesday, we checked into our hotel and then headed to Fremont District, AKA Old Las Vegas, AKA Street of Boobs. The scenery was charming. It is the iconic, original street of Vegas before the Strip was built... you know, with the neon cowboy and what not. It was fun to see the old casinos....what was less fun to see were all the young women who were topless, except for some strategically placed stickers! Yikes.
On Thursday, Jordan was in class from 7-5, so I had the whole day to kill without him. I tried to sleep in, but my body was still in the Central Time Zone. So I did the next best thing: lay in bed for as long as I wanted while reading blogs and facebook. That right there was a vacation! After a lazy morning, Kimberly and I hit the Strip to check out a ton of the free touristy things. We also saw a magic show together in the afternoon by a guy named Nathan Burton. The show was a lot of fun, EXCEPT for one problem. I was sitting next to this older guy and his friend (probably both in their late 60's). When the show started, they not-so-quietly discussed how EVERY trick was done. "I bet there are wires, " "She's holding onto something in that box,"...it was driving me crazy! Look, buddy, OBVIOUSLY there is an explanation for every single trick. Ugh! I finally tapped him on the shoulder and said politely with a smile, "It's no fun to try to guess the tricks! Stop trying to figure them out and enjoy them!" Thankfully, that seemed to put a stop to the mystery solving for the rest of the show!
After the show, we met up with our boyzzz, ate dinner, and headed to New York, New York to ride the huge roller coaster. It was a very fun, very windy, and very long ride! You can tell from my picture how fast it was. Haha!
We ended the evening by seeing Blue Man Group together. It was a great, interesting show- nothing like I have ever seen before. The show had a great mix of tricks, music, and comedy.The theater was full of black lights, so before the show started, the staff gave everyone tons of neon crepe paper to decorate themselves. I'm glad we went, but my only complaint was the show didn't start until 9:30 PM, and I was still very much on Oklahoma time. Jordan and I were sooooo tired toward the end of the show, which was too bad. But overall, it was fantastic!
The next day, Kimberly and I looked at a few more free tourist things. Jordan got off early so we hit the pools.... but didn't stay long. Caeser's Palace pools weren't very fun. Plus, they were all full of people not wanting to swim; just drink booze and talk loudly. Meh.
In the evening, Jordan and I ate at a very nice restaurant named Trevi. It was inside Caeser's Palace and looked as though it was outside. It was neat! We ended the night by watching the musical Rock of Ages. The music was a ton of fun, but the show itself wasn't very good. I'm no prude, but I felt like it was unnecessarily sexual. Oh, well.
Outside in Rome? Nope! Indoors in Nevada.
On Saturday, Jordan and I watched a daytime comedy show together by a comedian magician named Mac King. He was fun to watch. His stage was simple- no show girls, no music, no...nothing. He did some pretty cool tricks, though, like make a real life goldfish appear out of thing air, etc. It was cool.
We also got lucky on Saturday with the slots! Jordan and I decided to budget some casino fun money for the trip. Originally, we planned on playing something more interactive, like Black Jack or Roulette. But the tables always looked so intense and confusing, and the dealers seemed to have little patience for those who didn't quite know what they were doing, so we stuck with the less intimidating slot machines. I hit the jack pot and won $2.50, and Jordan hit one and won $50. Woohoo!
We ate dinner with our friends on Saturday, and then Jordan and I hit up the wax museum together. Jordan was willing to go, but I was EXCITED to go! I had a little too much fun dorking out with all the wax figures. At the end of the museum, we got to watch a 4D show with moving seats about Marvel super heroes. Then we watched the Mirage Volcano "explode" and headed back to our hotel.
The next day we slept in, checked out of our hotel and headed to the air port. It was a fun trip and it was the perfect amount of time to be away from the baby for the first time. We had a great time, but we all agreed that we were a bit Vegased out. The city has a lot to see, including tons of images of poor, most likely trafficked women scattered everywhere. It made me feel so hopeless for them. It broke my heart.
So that is what happened in Vegas. Woot woot.
