Vegas!

Nathan was attending a conference in Vegas and I went with him to have a nice, relaxing time. (Remember Florida last year?) Unfortunately, relaxing it was not. I did not realize how loooooong the strip was. We stayed on one end of the strip at the Hilton. It was more of a business like atmosphere with no smoking and no casino, which was fine since we don't gamble or smoke. All the other hotels/attractions we wanted to see was on the other end: The Bellagio, the Venetian, Caesar's Palace, etc. The first night we got there, we were meeting some friends for dinner who were in town for business too. We knew where they were staying and hadn't heard back from them about where they wanted to eat, so we just started walking in their direction.(And by this time it was about 10 p.m. our time) We ended up walking about two miles to eat in the Venetian. And since it was night, I wanted to look nice so I wore some cute sandals with a heel. That was a bad idea. I think we ended up getting on the monorail on the way back to the hotel. But you still had to walk a ways to get to the station that ran BEHIND all the hotels.

I didn't get much smarter the next day. I wore the same sandals just a few blocks away to the Conference Center that Nathan was getting an award for a project he completed with his classmates from school in Michigan. It was a business casual event and I hadn't planned on going, but found out that morning he DID want me to go. All I had were jeans, capris, and a skirt. I really didn't want to wear the skirt so he suggested the capris and the sandals. On the way there, I ended up tripping and falling down on the sidewalk, and according to Nathan, I wasn't even chewing gum or talking on my cell phone. I did something to the top of my foot, and had a hard time walking the rest of the day. But after the conference, we walked around the strip for a little bit, but I had only changed into flip flops. We met some of Nathan's former classmates and professors for dinner, which turned into a 4 HOUR DINNER. We had a good time talking and laughing, but by the end of the night my foot was throbbing (the one I had hurt earlier in the day). It was only a few blocks back to our hotel but I made Nathan get a cab. Thank goodness there was one right outside the hotel we were at that took right to our hotel doors. I iced my foot that night and it felt a lot better in the morning.

The next day, I wasn't planning on going with him to the Conference, so I stayed back at the hotel. This was probably the most relaxing day. I decided I REALLY needed a pedicure and thank goodness they had one in the hotel. It was not cheap though but they gave me the royal treatment. My feet felt a whole lot better when they were done. After that, I went back to my room and had lunch and read a little of my book club book (The Book Thief). When Nathan got back around 2, he took a little nap and off we went to see more of the sights. This time I was smart and wore tennis shoes :-).
Some of our favorite sights: The fountains at the Bellagio-AMAZING and probably our favorite! We saw it two different times and it was different both times.


The main reason to go to Vegas. Two of his classmates that worked on the project.









This was our dessert one night...a strawberry tree with white and regular chocolate fondue. I didn't feel guilty about it since I had walked about 10 miles in two days. :-)

Next post: Madame Tussauds

Sledding

We went sledding on Saturday with some friends. This hill was a little big for Charlotte though so she didn't last long. Brooke had a great time! The hill was also pretty icy. We need to find a smaller hill...


Brooke lost tooth number 8 finally. It seems like it was loose for months. She had to take a self-portrait.



We had another snow day yesterday. But not enough for sledding or snowmen. We are now in school until June 3rd.

We leave for Vegas in 2 days!! See ya on the flip side!

Snow Days

So we've had more than our fair show of snow days around here. They cancel school when there is a THREAT of snow. Like yesterday. The snow wasn't supposed to come until the afternoon. But instead of going to school and maybe letting out early, they just canceled it altogether. Oh, the snow came. But it didn't really start until about 12:30. By 2:30 there was a lot on the ground. I've lost track of how many days we've missed. I think we're up to 7. We started earlier than everyone else, and now we're going to be going LATER than everyone else. What's wrong with this picture? Evidence that it did indeed snow:

All in all, I think we got about 4 or 5 inches. Nothing to write home about. It's funny just coming from Michigan, 4 or 5 inches would be nothing. People just went on about their day. School was NEVER canceled. Well maybe once or twice, but it had to be BAAADDD. What I disliked so much about Michigan was that it never STOPPED snowing. Once it started in November, it didn't stop until March. You never saw the grass, the sun didn't shine, it was FREEEEZZZZING. It was a little bit depressing. At least here, the sun shines and the snow melts within a couple days until the next snow comes. I can handle that.

Ok sorry for my rant, but it is my blog after all. So what did we do on our snow days?


Thursday, Nathan (with help from the girls) made donuts. Yummy! Yes, he is quite the baker, isn't he? Now if he would just do the dishes...
Friday we decided it was time to leave the house. I guess I should mention I've been sick all week and haven't left the house in 5 days except to go to the doctor. So I was definitely ready to leave the house. They decided they wanted to go roller skating! Good thing we had a free pass! Brooke invited a friend to come along to make it more exciting.
Hope you had a great Snow Day!

Go Baby, Go!

Good news/Bad news

GOOD NEWS: We've been having fun with Girl Scouts, selling cookies and we went to the Human Society to learn about pet care and got to play with a puppy.

BAD NEWS: Brooke is the only one in her girl scout troop who doesn't have either a cat or a dog. Fortunately, she doesn't seem fazed. But after a certain post on facebook about having pets as a child, it makes me wonder if I'm doing her a disservice by not having that experience. Hmmm...I think I'd rather have another baby. And NOOOOO, that is NOT an announcement.



GOOD NEWS: Look how cute these girls are!
BAD NEWS: Some of them will probably be taller than me in 1 year. Shoot, one girls mom is over 6 feet tall and I'm barely taller than her legs.

GOOD NEWS: I started a dinner swap with some girls from church and I'm loving it!
BAD NEWS: It's only the first week and I can already see myself gaining more weight in the near future. These are some good cooks!

GOOD NEWS: Brooke is waiting on tooth number 8 to fall out (for several months now-I don't know how it's hanging in there. I keep trying to bump into her, it worked once)
BAD NEWS: We need our favorite dental hygienist to pull it out! But she's on the other side of the country in Washington. :-(

GOOD NEWS: THE SNOW IS MELTING!!!
BAD NEWS: School was canceled for 2 days, but at least we got to sleep in...oh wait...we got the cancellation phone call at 6 am. No going back to sleep for me. But hey, at least the kids slept in, right?

GOOD NEWS: I started a book club. Our library has book club kits you can check out; how awesome is that?! They have a great selection of books to choose from too!
BAD NEWS: Our first book is The Book Thief and it seems to be a love it/hate it book. Either you love it or you hate it. I'm still neutral, but this is my second time trying to read it.

GOOD NEWS: We (Nathan and I) leave for Vegas in a couple weeks! Woohoo!
BAD NEWS: We fly through Atlanta so let's hope they don't get any more snow!!

Somebody got a haircut!

Happy New Year!

We had a very low-key NYE. Absolutely no plans, which was ok by us. We stayed home and watched movies. We turned on Dick Clark's Countdown just in time to see NKOTB and BSB. Pretty much made my night. :-) I then waited for Ryan Seacrest to propose to Julianne Hough right on the air. It didn't happen though, and she wasn't even anywhere in sight. A girl can dream, can't she. Don't get me started on poor Dick Clark. When is enough, enough?

We had a pretty lazy morning. Which was needed after the last few days of ordering Nathan around getting things cleaned up from Christmas. We watched a little of the Tournament of Roses Parade. Charlotte decided to have a parade of her own. Well, at least with princesses standing on a truck. I thought it was cute. :-)



We then headed out to pick Brooke up from my parents. She stayed a few extra days after Charlotte and I left on Wednesday. She needed more time with gp's, cousins, and aunts, apparently. She had tons of fun, including a mani-pedi, Tangled, Great Times, eating out,sleeping in, and a birthday party. She needed to get home so she could use her new easy bake oven! We got the light bulb for it and she was excited to try it out.


She must've missed Charlotte...she was actually letting her help with stirring, and seen here, icing the cake!



YUMMY!!


Next on the list of things to do, was play the NEW Super Mario Brothers. We used a gift card to buy it this week when it was on sale at Target. Old habits die hard, and I think I prefer the OLD Super Mario Brothers on the original nintendo. But it was pretty fun trying!

That's pretty much all that's going on here. Looking forward to getting back on schedule on Monday, but not getting up early. It'll be a rough few days...

Happy New Year!