A few days to go and play!!!

So the husband and I took off to Las Vegas to play for a few days sans kiddos! I’ve been to Vegas a few times but this time we did ALL NEW things! We met up with our awesome friends that drove down from St. George and got the party started!!

The day we flew in it was raining POURING!!! The boys were NOT happy about this as it cancelled their golf plans. We assured them that they would live.

We checked in at our awesome hotel.  We decided to try out the new Vdara and it did NOT disappoint!

 

(Interesting “art”/collection of canoe’s in front of the hotel)

I know it’s Vegas and it’s all about casinos and what not, but really, I hate the smell of the casinos and feeling like I’m getting lung cancer as I walk through the lobby.  The Vdara is a non-gaming, non-smoking, “Green” certified hotel and it is FABULOUS! It was always so nice to walk from the walkway from the Bellagio and walk into the Vdara and have this nice fresh smell!  It was very spa-esque.  Loved it!

The Kitchenette right when you walk in:

The beautiful bathroom stocked with Aveda products.

The nice KING sized bed that is SOOOO comfy!!

Nice flat screen tv and sitting area

We also tried out their nice Aveda spa/salon and got pedicures!!! Yay! After walking around all day the day before it was just what the feet needed!

Did I mention in rained?? Ya, well shortly after arriving we headed to Walgreen’s and purchased some much needed umbrella’s! We weren’t HAPPY about the purchase, but it had to be done!

Now for the entertainment! We decided to risk it a bit and not get our tickets to shows before we got there.  We went to the “Tix for Tonight” kiosks where they offer discount tickets for the day of or the next day shows.   If it’s not really busy when you go, I suggest maybe doing this as it saved us over $180 total in tickets for the 2 shows we went to! Not bad!

First up was “Blue Man Group”.  I know this show has been there for awhile and probably a lot of you have seen it, but we hadn’t yet so we figured “why not?”  So we got our tickets and went on our way. 

Jed and I being goofy before heading in. 

The show was FANTASTIC!!! I thought it was going to be just drums and paint stuff being splashed everywhere. Well it was that, and SO MUCH MORE!! I won’t bore you with all the details but it was so fun! We all laughed so hard our faces were hurting (mine was at least!).  I didn’t realize it was going to be so COMICAL! I highly recommend this show if you get a chance!

More about the other show later.  Onto the great food we ate.  LOVE!!!! Okay so our first stop was P.F. Changs!  We love this place, we really do but maybe we love it too because of the company we were with and all the memories it brings of the good times in Milwaukee ordering PF Chang’s take-out on many occasions!

We also went to the Hash House for some breakfast.  Another first for us. If you go there, either go when you are ravenous or plan on sharing with someone because the portions are HUGE!  I ordered a pancake, A pancake:

I could not finish it.  Tried and failed! I did share a little bit of what Jed ordered but not much. 

Walking about while the boys were golfing Staci and I were walking by Serendipity (remember that show?? awwww so cute!), we were talking about the Frrrozen Hot Chocolate and we’re like “why don’t WE get one?” So we did.  And we ate devoured it!!!! Right down to the very last slurp (literally!).  It was one of my highlights of the trip! Surpassed my expectations BY FAR!!!! Again, if you get a chance to go to Serendipity (in front of Caesar's Palace), DON’T PASS THIS BABY UP!!! You won’t regret it.  We shared one because we thought it would be too big.  We were wrong, it IS big but you will WANT the WHOLE thing to YOURSELF!!!!

Of course another favorite is Maggiano’s! YUMMMMMMM! Again, huge portions so we shared the 3 dishes we got: lasagna, spaghetti and meatballs and 4 cheese ravioli (so good!). 

(And if you look closely you’ll realize that the boys are both wearing green shirts and jeans! Seriously, we had a good laugh over that one!) And then there’s this picture:

and this one:

 

The boys and their phones, waiting for us while we did a bit of shopping. (Lucky for them the rain stopped the next day so they could get out and golf a little bit!)

Love it.

Our next show that we went to was V: the Variety show at Planet Hollywood.  We weren’t too sure how this was going to be. We hadn’t heard anything about it and just kind of got the tickets because they were a pretty good price.  Again, exceeded my expectations! Wow! We laughed SO MUCH!! My stomach muscles were so sore! The host was hilarious. He’s the fastest juggler ever (or something like that) and has been on the Tonight Show and a gazillion views on Youtube.  He was talented but even more, he was funny hilarious!

Another fun thing we did was a little interview! Staci and I were looking for the husbands in Planet Hollywood and a guy from Extra (you know the tv show?) came up to us and asked us if we wanted to ask a question to Leonardo Dicaprio? What?? Ya, that’s right.  So moments later were were on camera asking our questions.  

 

Really, it was SO MUCH FUN to get away for a couple of days.  I missed my kids a lot and I know they missed us but a little break every now and then is healthy, right? We LOVED hanging out with our awesome friends.  There were some GREAT laughs and some great times.  We were sad to see it come to an end but just made us look forward to next time!!!

 

Waiting for the water show at the Bellagio

 

Vegas 2010: Great times, Great food, Great friends! Loved it!