Vacation!

We're home from our week of vacationing. It was a lot of fun, but we were gone for long enough that it was nice to get home. The only reason we even went in the first place was because there had been a family reunion plan in the works for a vacation to St. George but when the plans fell through, I was too depressed to sit at home the week that I would have been gone. So we decided to go spend some time in Salt Lake visiting family and then go to Vegas, where you can get super cheap hotel rooms.

We left Boise Monday afternoon and spent some time with John's parents.
On Tuesday afternoon we took the kids down to BYU. I'm not sure why we went there this trip, we usually don't, but it ended up being fun. We ate at the cougar eat, shopped at the book store, and then made a visit to the Bean Museum.
What's not to love about dead stuffed animals? There are some pretty cool ones though.

Wednesday Morning we headed off to Vegas. We thought the kids would think it was fun to stay at a castle. And they did.

Maybe because I let them jump on the beds?

The night we got there we walked down to the Bellagio for the water show. I was amazed at how captivated the kids were with it.

We even went into the botanical gardens at the Bellagio. I had never been in there before, they were amazing, unfortunately we didn't get any amazing pictures of it.

We made the mistake that night of staying out too late watching the water shows over and over and had to walk back to our hotel with a little rougher crowd and past some skanky ads...luckily our kids were happily oblivious. Ains did great on the walk...as is proved by her black feet when we finally made it back to our room.
That night we also checked out a great little magic shop that night at the New York New York. A lady that worked there did some great little tricks for Ains, had they not been ridiculously overpriced, we might have bought one for her. We also went into a New York shop where John proudly took this picture....

We also visited John's beloved In N Out. He was in heaven. We ate there twice while on vacation.

I think Owen's favorite part of the trip were all the escalators, luckily Vegas doesn't disappoint in the escalator department.

The following morning, after some time spent in the pool, we hit M&M world and visited the lions at the MGM Grand. There is just something disturbing to me about lions that will lie down and be pet like kittens.

Our last night in Vegas we drove off the strip to visit my Aunt, Uncle, and cousins. It was really good to see them. I haven't seen them in years. I guess that's what happens when extended family lives 12 hours away. By this point John and I were stripped out and tired. We headed back to our hotel and after some bed jumping, we all crashed. The next morning we tried our best to get some energy out the kids before hopping in the car again by walking around the Luxor and Mandalay Bay and taking the train (the tram that connected the 3 hotels) which was also a highlight for Owen.

Friday night we made it back to Salt Lake. Our plans to hit the Timpanogas cave the next day were changed due to rain so instead we visited the Dinosaur museum at point of the mountain. It was a really cool museum.

I thought the little erosion area where the kids played in sand and water was pretty cool.

We had a BBQ with John's family that night and then headed for home on Sunday afternoon. It was a great little get away and a lot of fun to visit family, and we even learned a few things along the way.

Our kids are whiny, both of them. Two year olds are not ideal vacationers. John did battle with Owen on more than one occasion as Owen insisted that he was big enough to use a casino bathroom by himself, he wanted John to wait outside, not outside the stall, outside the bathroom! We would like to go to Disney land in the next 4-5 years, and we will wait to go until we can afford airfare...because we are not driving. But other than that...Awesome trip!