Vegas 2012

Oh, Vegas. You never disappoint. You're always up and ready for anything. The slowest time of the day is 8AM-10AM, believe it or not. None of the shops are open, other than the 24 hour Starbucks that are everywhere you look. Mind you, you can pretty much get anything, anytime anywhere. It really is the city that never sleeps.

So this was our third trip to Vegas. We first went in 2008 with a bunch of people, stayed at the MGM Grand and it was a TON of fun. Then we went last year, and decided to go on an early 5th anniversary trip this last week...because this summer we'll be wanting to spend our vacation with Braden!

We stayed at Treasure Island again, and it didn't disappoint. I'm not totally up to snuff on my Vegas history, but I think it's one of the older hotels. They have definitely upgraded and remodeled, but we love it most for it's location. Pretty central on the strip, close to both north and south bus stops, Fashion Show Mall is right next door, and our favorite place to buy show tickets, Tix 4 Tonight. Seriously, unless you're going to Vegas and need to see a certain show or act, or a big show like Garth Brooks or Celine Dion, buy your tickets when they're there. It's so worth the savings! We've gotten in to see every show we've wanted to, except this time - Terry Fator. He was sold out, so next time we'll know!


We didn't see a show the first night, but the second night we went to Cirque du Soleil Ka at the MGM. It had it's slow parts, but overall it was flippin' amazing! The stage itself is unreal. For those Bachelor Pad fans out there, this was one of the challenges they had last year - remember them being on the harnesses and essentially walking straight up a stage? Yup, it's that one!

The second night we went to the show Absinthe. It was at Caesar's Palace - which is STUNNING! The show itself...I don't recommend. The chairs were awful, you had to be in the venue and wait 1/2 hour for the show to start, general admission...the acts were pretty good, ranging from tumblers to tight rope walkers, but the comedy was extremely vulgar. I'm no prude, but it was pretty out there.

We shopped. Did the north outlet mall, which is the only outlet place we go. Not a lot of luck for me, but I got some birthday gifts for my nieces and some stuff for Braden from the Disney Store. He LOVES his new Cars toys, hasn't let them out of his sight since. I did Fashion Show Mall by myself (bliss) while Jay played black jack, and they have the biggest Forever 21 I've ever seen. In a store that size, last year I had about 8 shirts I wanted to get but narrowed it down to 5. This year? NOTHING. Such bad luck.

But, then came Nordstrom! How I love your American department stores! They have 5 major department stores in Fashion Show Mall. CRAZY! I found me some Toms. Some CHEAP Toms. So I got 2 pairs for me and 1 pair for Braden!

We highly recommend dinner, or probably any meal, at Sugar Factory. It's not all candy, though they have a LOT of it, but the meal selection was phenomenal. Plus, if you can get out on the patio, this is your view:

And then this is the inside...

 We really like going in and touring the different hotels and casinos. How "Sex & The City" is The Cosmopolitan? It is perfectly pink & sparkly!


Our one and only picture. No one can take pictures with my DSLR except me - I swear! It angers me so much!

I sure enjoyed the opportunity to get dressed up a bit! The first top and dress are from F21 and the last top is from Smart Set.

And I close with...who doesn't love the strip at night? It's just so amazing! (My fave pic from this trip):







Okay, question for my photographer friends:

How do you take a picture of PEOPLE at night?

I have tried all the settings I can think of and the flash just ends up washing out faces. I've turned the flash exposure as low as it can go. Is the only thing that can save me an external flash/speedlite? (I shoot with a Canon Rebel Xti) Thanks in advance!

And just a little WestJet humor on our flight home. Generally, we love flying WestJet!

Happy (Early) 5th Anniversary to Us!

We have been married just over 4.5 years now. I always had it in my head that we'd do a 5th anniversary trip somewhere. I had an even better idea that it'd be super cool to celebrate our 5th anniversary and Ben & Jess' 1st anniversary as our anniversaries are 5 days apart in July. Then Jess had to go get all knocked up and the trip probably wouldn't be as fun with a 3 month old baby! However, I'm super excited to meet said niece in about 6 weeks or so, so Jay and I decided to book our trip to go...next month! We figure we'll go before seeding starts, and we can use our summer vacation time to go to BC with Braden. Plus, since we already went to Maui...we just wanted a short 3 day trip somewhere. Now where's the perfect place to go for 3 nights?

Yup! This will be our 3rd trip. I'd really love to go to some other US cities like San Francisco or New Orleans...but anywhere else we'd want to make it a longer trip. We got an AMAZING deal from WestJet and Mom was excited to have Braden all to herself again. We decided to stay at Treasure Island again. We really liked it last time, mostly for it's location on the strip.

So we're going March 20-23 and we're really excited! It's always a really healthy thing for our relationship any time we can get to spend with each other sans Braden. A healthy marriage is the key to a happy family, in my opinion! It's always nice to have the opportunity to reconnect!

Viva Las Vegas!

We had a wonderful time in Vegas, but we were definitely ready to return home and get back into the swing of things. We ended up going on a weekend so we could have a babysitter which we are VERY grateful for, but it also was the Family Day/President's Day long weekend! So it was a very busy city and we were ready to get back to the quiet country life.

I'm going to skip ahead a bit in what we did in Vegas, because it is SO suiting to our story. We saw Carrot Top on Friday night at the Luxor. Carrot Top? Really? I know that's what you're thinking because that's what we were thinking when Ben said that's who he saw when he went to Vegas in December. Ben said he was hilarious and to go next time we went. Tix were cheap, so we waited in line at Tix 4 Tonight and got them even cheaper and also scored very hard to get Beatles' LOVE tix. Anywho, Carrot Top is a props comedian and uses music/sound in his act too. He started off his show with what he thought should be the theme song for Vegas "500 Miles" by The Proclaimers. You know - "I would walk 500 miles and I would walk 500 more...". And for those of you who have been to Vegas, it is so true. It is inevitable - you walk EVERYWHERE you go. Even if you're smart and buy a bus pass, which we did this time, you still end up walking tons just to get to different hotels/casinos/shops. Then he said...you wait in Vegas. Get off the plane - wait for luggage, get your luggage - wait for a taxi, get to the hotel - wait to check in, wanna get tix for a show - wait in line, and so on and so forth. So we literally waited 1 hour to check into the hotel, probably a good 20 minutes to get tix, it took us 1 hour to get to the outlet mall, 1 hour to get back. Just an insane amount of waiting, waiting, WAITING! I really don't remember it being so bad last time!

Anywho, I didn't go camera crazy, there was just the 2 of us and no one to take pictures of us so mostly just pictures of the strip...

View from our hotel room at Treasure Island:

Then we went shopping to the Premium Outlet mall..

This is a really neat building, the Centre for Brain Health:

Jay was such a good sport and went shopping with me 3 times! We literally wasted about 3 hours going to the other Las Vegas outlet mall (the indoor one south of the strip) it had NOTHING there of interest to me. All I did was go to Carter's to get Braden some PJ's. Here's Braden's stash of summer clothes!

And our room at night...

And some pics from down the strip...

Jay riding at the front of the Deuce bus (double decker) on top!

I know this picture sucks, but when it's only us 2 traveling/vacationing we don't usually get too many pictures of us together and it seems NO ONE knows how to use my Canon SLR camera - it's really not hard. So this is the best of the bad pictures we got, at least it's in focus...in front of the Bellagio fountains:

My faves:

Out of focus (thanks, Jay!) at pretty much the only slots and only gambling I did...the "Wild Huskies"!

I was up $50 the first time I played this game (betting $0.40 a pop) and then I was up almost $60 another time. Then the husky pretty much ate most of my winnings!

Bye, bye Treasure Island! Next time we go we'd like to go during the week - never again on a weekend unless we're leaving on a Saturday or something!

Vegas Vacation!

Callooh! Callay! As Homer would say. WE ARE GOING TO VEGAS, BABY!!! The flights are booked, the hotel is booked, and on February 18th we will be flying to Sin City for the 2nd time in just over 2 years. We last (and first) went in December 2008 with my parents and the Huska/Charbonneau clan. This time we will be staying at Treasure Island (TI) as pictured above. I took that picture last time we were there. We stayed at the MGM last time and this time we wanted to stay at a more central location on the strip. Jamie and Robyn actually planted the idea in our heads, as they bought a new truck this winter and got a free trip to Vegas with it. Well, once that seed was planted it didn't take long for Jay to get serious about this trip and for me to plan it out. We called my mom and she is more than thrilled to have Braden all to herself for the 3 days and 2 nights we'll be gone. It will be hard to leave Braden, but I know he's in great hands and he'll have so much fun with Mom. It'll be good for all of us, and especially for me and Jay to have some alone time - good for the marriage! We are planning on going to the Carrot Top show, and I've been told you can get tickets to any show on the day of, on the strip for 50% off, so I really hope we can go see Cirque du Soleil's "Love" it's The Beatles one...but I'm not paying $150/ticket to go see it! So it's some shows, SHOPPING, and a little bit of gambling. I will of course hit Carter's at the mall and I"m sure I can convince Jay to go outlet shopping too. I'm SO excited for this trip. We were invited to go to Maui this year, and they are leaving on Monday...so if we can't go to Maui, I'm glad we have a little getaway of our own. Thanks to ALL who are making this possible to us, we appreciate it so so so much!