true love

My husband just described a wedding announcement as, "to die for" and meant it.

The Rest of Vegas

The pictures from the rest of our trip to Vegas are few and far between. On Tuesday, we decided to get off the strip and we drove out to Red Rocks Canyon.

We did enough hiking to get pictures to prove it, but decided that we weren't as hard core as some of the other hikers that we saw and cut our trip a little short.

While in Vegas, I discovered that there was a Cafe Rio nearby. I haven't had a Cafe Rio pork salad in almost two years (although my Mom makes a good knock off) so I jumped at the chance to go. The trip reminded me of the times that Mike Nations would go 3 times in a week just so he could fill up his punch card.

I was a little excited about going:

Here's where our documentation falls behind. We spent the rest of Tuesday hanging out at the pool, following which we went and saw that movie Duplicity, had a little bit of Yogurtland (which was fun), and went to the Fremont Street Experience (which is kind of just like watching a lame music video on the ceiling).

On Wednesday we finally did something that we spent two days trying to do: eating here. We had the Bobbi and the Capastrami -- both so so good. Remnants of the Capastrami can be seen in the bottom of this photo.


After, we saw Twilight at the $3 theater -- I am so over teen vampires.

The rest of the time was just more eating and walking around the strip. One of my favorite things that we did was seeing these birds with small heads at the Flamingo.

The rest of our trip was filled with three more awesome eats: The Original Thai BBQ, Luv It Frozen Custard, and the Ellis Island Casino.

Mmmmm. Overall we loved the time that we had off, the warm weather, and lots of good food -- what else could you want in a Spring Break?

Vegas Day 2: more awesomeness

This is all from Monday evening, which was pretty excellent. Obviously.

But first, look at who we found in Paris:

A day on the Strip can make a couple cats hungry, and we weren't about to spend the $$ to eat in the hotel/casinos. We had been driving around trying to find a Capriotti's sandwich shop, when we finally found one, it was closed! (this happened to us the next night too) No worries, In-n-out was right next door.

I think it's just obligatory to eat at In-N-Out if you're in a town that has the restaurant. I've actually eaten there 3 times, all in Vegas, but this trip was the tastiest. I think because I wasn't concerned about comparing it with Dick's, I was mostly concerned about getting the double double cheeseburger into my belly.

Then, off to the Pinball Hall of Fame. You can guess which one of us put this spot on the itinerary. BUT... even though that wasn't me, I actually had a lot of fun. Turns out sucking at video games doesn't mean sucking at pinball.


Quarters are good for other things, too.Look at all the machines! There were 3 or 4 rows just like this with new (Batman Dark Knight) and old (those were the cheap ones = the ones I played = more quarters for m&ms) pinball games. I don't remember which one Rob is playing here. He was pretty good, not great, but good. Turns out being awesome at video games doesn't mean being awesome at pinball. I tried getting video of his really good games, but the pressure of the camera being on made him lose 100% of the time. Kind of funny.

We also found Medieval Madness - I had learned earlier in the week that Tina Fey and Scott Adsit (plays Pete Hornberger on 30 Rock) are the voices on the game. You totally can't tell, though.

We recommend you go there next time you're in Vegas. When you do, this will be waiting for you.

Just a few Bellagio pictures

I loved the Chihuly sculpture in the lobby. I think I could have look at it all day, especially because my feet were killing me from all the time spent on The Strip and I needed a break! Also, I'm trying to figure out why I want to eat the flowers. It's either because they remind me of the edible flowers in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or jolly ranchers.

I missed the conservatory the last time I visited the Bellagio. Big mistake! You know what else? I just love poppies! It's because they look like crepe paper! It's like, "You thought this was flower, but it's paper. Sike. It really is a flower."

There was this neat walk way in the conservatory with "water arches." That's not a real term, but the pictures and video below will show you what I mean. They were neat.

The Bellagio is so romantic. See how in love we are... (ps. Alicia, I borrowed your shirt)

I was curious, so I just checked how much a room would be at the Bellagio for tomorrow night. The least expensive is $359. We're spending $200 for the five days at the place we're staying. We don't have dancing fountains, though, so the price difference makes a ton of sense.

Spring Break in Vegas: Day 1

Hi, this is Rob from Vacation. Las Vegas has been pretty fun/relaxing. Here are some things that we did on Sunday.

Church: We went to the Greenbriar Ward because it was the closest one to our resort. It turned out to be one of the best testimony meetings that I have been to. All the people were quirky/embarrassing but I could tell that they loved each other and they had awesome testimonies. I'm glad we didn't decide to do vacation church (although we did pop out after Sacrament).

After getting ready, we prepared for our trip to the Hoover Dam. We were pretty hungry so we stopped in Boulder City for some food. We were looking for a dive that wasn't too self aware of its retro feel. We finally decided on Mel's Diner.

A good choice. Mel's Famous Steak sandwich was totally awesome (and the fries weren't bad either).

After Mel's we were on our way to the Dam. However, it turns out that there was a lot of Dam traffic. It took us another hour or so to go 10 miles (You may be able to see the traffic build up behind us in this picture). That gave Steph plenty of time to sleep.


Here is a picture of the construction project to alleviate the Dam traffic. Thinking about driving on this bridge sometime in the future freaks me out too much.

When we got to the Dam, we decided to take the electrical plant tour. I liked it when the tour guide took us down into the dam. I wanted to explore these tunnels so bad.

I learned that lot of water runs through these pipes -- I can't remember where the water goes. I think it goes to makes the power.

After we saw where the water went, we saw where the power was made. I had serious issues with this room. There seemed to be very little between me and the 100+ foot drop to the marble floors below. Needless to say, I also had problems with looking over the edge of the Dam.



Stephanie, on the other hand, does not have problems looking over the edge.


Steph did have problems with this spillway tunnel. This is where the water goes if the water in Lake Mead gets too high. It reminded me of a water slide, a la the Howlin' Tornado at Great Wolf Lodge. I think it reminded Steph of the Howlin Tornado as well, hence why she doesn't like it.

Overall, the Hoover Dam was really excellent and a marvel of Engineering. I can totally tell that I am going to be one of those dads that drags my kids there on summer vacations.

Later on, we drove to the Silverton Casino to check out the aquarium there. It wasn't too big, but they had a bunch of sting rays and sharks.


Then to end the night, we filled my childhood dream by going to Circus Circus. My mom always tells me that Circus Circus is always the place that I wanted to go back to. I can see why. The place was loaded with kids -- crazy kids. We saw some Circus performers. Like these magician dudes from Russia.

I was convinced that the Russian Magician man hated his life. He didn't look like he was having fun. But the old drummer on the right is my favorite ever.


Oh yeah, and I totally won big.

Now I am nagging Stephanie over and over to let me go back to Circus Circus.

Lights off in Vegas

We're in Las Vegas for Spring Break!

We got off the plane and drove onto the Strip at 8:45. Earth hour started at 8:30 - so it was a little dark in Vegas, pretty weird to see:


I'm glad we had heard about Earth Hour before we witnessed it in the city of lights (not Paris). What would we have thought? Power Outage? Terrorists? Ocean and his eleven? No one else on the road seemed concerned though. I don't know what it would have looked like if they were concerned, but I had my window down, just in case they pulled up beside us to ask.

By the way, we got a free upgrade for our rental car and we chose a Prius. I think Rob has finally figured out how to start it. Before that it was guess work, we would just push a series of buttons and eventually it would turn on.

City of Ember

So after a crazy weekend of getting ready for our fun houseguests: Jacob and Lisa, who are here for Alicia's wedding. Steph and I sat down to watch a movie that we have had from Netflix for about two weeks. It is called City of Ember, and it was a relatively obscure kids movie that came out late last year.

I am just going to say that I love this movie. It was by no means perfect -- there are a ton of holes in the narrative and the conflict towards the end isn't very satisfying. But underground worlds are awesome -- come to think of it, I love any movie where the main characters are trying to find an escape to the world around them.

In thinking about it, City of Ember reminds me of The 5th Element, only underground, and made for kids. While we were watching it I commented to Steph that it was the type of movie that our kids are going to watch over and over and most adults won't understand why.

Oh, and Bill Murray is in the film. And he's awesome.

Netflix it.