A few days away

After Nate's graduation, my fabulous mother stayed for a week and Nate and I spent 3 days in Las Vegas while my mom stayed with the boys. This was my graduation gift to Nate. We started by going to a par 3 Golf course. I'm not too good at golf a prefer Par 3 course for now. Well, this one was kind of a joke. The grass was awful, even a good golfer would have a hard time with the putting green. Next we went to this:

We advise you don't go see this before you eat, or too soon after you eat. Luckily, we had eaten an hour or so earlier. It was pretty amazing, really interesting, and very stomach wrenching for both of us. We went to the M&M store where we saw a silly 3-D movie and then got the boys these:

Joey often tells me that he "so love[s his] M&M shirt", but he was very ornery about putting these on a taking a picture.


We had dinner at the Cheesecake factory, mostly filling up on cheesecake. We had these Mexican egg rolls that were really yummy and then I had pineapple upside down cheesecake and Nate had dutch apple, I guess we were in a fruity mood ... too much time on the strip can make you feel that way. We got pizza too, but only ate a slice and then took it home but the next day it was already gross ...

Then we saw this show by Cirque de Soleil:

 

 Pretty crazy stuff. Our favorite part was this ....

 

The next day we went to the Ethel M  Chocolate Factory and cactus gardens. We spent a lot of money on really yummy chocolate and peanut brittle and loved every bit of it.

We had lunch at Whole Foods. I have to highlight this because I love eating at whole foods! We drove by it at lunch time and I was thrilled. We also really liked doing some things that were not on the strip. We then went to the adventure dome and went on some rides, but our favorite thing there was the bumper cars. For some reason we both had a blast driving bumper cars. The funny thing, too, is that we went three times and every  time all the cars were filled with adults. We went on a roller coaster that was crappy and bumpy and my head banged around, Nate could barely fit into it. We played laser tag, too. We just acted like little kids again, which was nice to do after a few years of having to act older than I feel I should be. 

Then we went around the Circus Circus hotel and while waiting for a circus act to start we did some (gambling) booths, like the ones at state fairs (we really didn't gamble, I promise). I won a giraffe shooting what you might call a gun:

 

Nate won a monkey throwing ping pong balls into little cups floating on water (it was actually hard, way harder than it sounds or looked):

The boys think that they belong to them:

We then watched this crazy girl do crazy things with her body:

Next, we spent an arm and a leg for dinner at the Mesa Grill (actually, more like three arms and four legs) which was pretty good, but I wouldn't go back. My brother would go back though so I guess it depends on who you are; I should probably ask Nate if he would go back. (I asked and Nate said it was really yummy (I was shocked that when I ordered goat chesse "fundido" that Nate ate it and liked it more than I did, and I really liked it ... Nate ate, and enjoyed, goat cheese). He says he would "hmmmm, maybe" go back.)

Then we saw this:

It was freakin', and I mean freakin', fantastic! I think this was our favorite part or the trip.

The next morning we went here:

And, oh, what a difference! Such an Oasis in such a busy, crazy traffic, lots of crap town. Next we met up with Nate's buddies and went to Lake Mead.

This was kind of the point of the trip in the first place. His friend lives in Vegas but they are moving soon and Nate wanted to see him before he moved further away. Nate did some Wake boarding, while I just sat on the boat and enjoyed some sweating.

 

 I think that's all folks, if you even made it this far. Thanks mom for watching our cutie pies!