Las Vegas--Image heavy

September 14

Charles' sister Ashley is trying to get into BYU and needed to take the ACT in September. When she went to sign up, she found out that it is only offered in select locations in September and Utah is not one of those locations. So, we offered to take her to Las Vegas so she could take the test, since we have been talking about going for a weekend since Charles started his new job.

So, Thursday, we set out on our road trip. We left about 3:00 and got to Las Vegas at 8:15ish, thanks to the fact that Las Vegas is in the Pacific time zone. I checked us into our hotel (which I had found an awesome deal for) and we brought our luggage in and then went and caught the shuttle to the Strip, so we could see the Fountains at the Bellagio at night and check out where we might want to go in the morning. Holy cow, can I just say that we were all a little amazed by the lights and the sheer amount of people there. It was slightly overwhelming. But we made our way down to the Bellagio and took in the last half of the show there. Sydney loved it, she kept saying "wow" and clapping her hands for every large burst of water that happened. Then, we made our way back to the shuttle and returned to our hotel for the night.

Friday, we got up early and ate at the hotel and then took the shuttle back to the strip. We checked out the Luxor and Excalibur quickly before heading to M&M world. Four floors of melt in your mouth, not in your hand paraphenalia and the smell of candy coated chocolate. Wow, it was quite impressive. Next to that was the World of Coca Cola store, which made me think of Brooke with the aluminum bottles, the old bottles and the pop can tab purse they had. After this, we ran and grabbed some fast food and then headed over to the Miracle Mile shops where they had an indoor rainstorm and some really cool stores that I have never been in before. (while we were here, Ashley started to feel a little sick and we ended up spending over an hour getting her back to the shuttle so she could lay down at the hotel and then coming back) Here, we were stopped by a guy who asked us if we wanted to review a tv show that may go on the air for free tickets to Madame Tussauds. We said yes and, while we were glad we did, we both have to say that the show Whale Wars was NOT worth sitting through for anything but $25 dollar tickets to something that we would have only gone to if it was free.

Anyway, after all of that, we stopped at the Bellagio to check out Tiffany's, since I have always wanted to go in one and this is probably the closest we will get to one for a long time. We also spent some time checking out the fountains again, including one inside that "hops" from bush to bush. When we were done here, we caught the shuttle (Sydney woke up when on our way back to the shuttle and was not happy for the ride back) and got Ashley and went to In-N-Out for dinner. This was everyone's first time, but mine, so it was quite an exciting trip. They were as delicious as I remembered them and everyone else was quite impressed. We went back to the hotel after that and Charles, Sydney and Ashley swam in the pool, then we went to bed.

On Saturday, Charles took Ashley over to UNLV to take the ACT (since that was the reason we had come) and then the rest of us went back to the strip. This time we went to the other side and went over to the Venetian so we could visit the wax museum. It was pretty neat to see how lifelike the figures are and it was really fun to be able to pose with them Sydney didn't like it as much...the figures scared her pretty badly, especially Abraham Lincoln (we tried to get a picture of her sitting on his lap and she FREAKED OUT and ended up overfilling her diaper...it was pretty funny after the fact).

After that, it was time to go get Ashley and head back, so we grabbed lunch and left. Charles was frantic to get the BYU vs UNLV game score, so we spent the first hour with him calling people trying to find out the score. He was thrilled when we finally got close enough to get it on AM radio and even more thrilled with the outcome of the game (59 to 0; Go Cougars!) We made pretty good time coming home and decided that we should stop at Cove Fort on our way home and check out that historic site. which gave us a nice break from driving.

It was a nice weekend, although we wished that we could have stayed longer.