first trip to Vegas

Earlier in the year, there were some rumblings that Nathan's work wanted to send him to a conference. We didn't hold our breath (or at least I didn't). But when a class showed up in Las Vegas the week after our anniversary, it didn't take us long to book our tickets (after we made sure the kids could go to Camp Cary, of course). After a minor fiasco (the Xterra had a "bad" battery and we had to have it towed from Nathan's work Wednesday and then fixed before we could leave town Thursday), we loaded up and headed to Cary. Dad's Taxi dropped us off at the airport early Friday morning, and we were in Las Vegas by 10am local time. We were able to check into the hotel right away, had lunch, and took a power nap. This is a picture of the hotel, from poolside: We did not stay out all night at clubs or in the casinos. We explored most of the casinos, and it reminded me of Epcot, how each place is its own little world. Here we are inside the Venetian, in front of the indoor gondolas:

Saturday night was our big date night. We ate at Les Artistes in Paris and then saw Phantom at the Venetian. Someone took our picture for us after the show:

Sunday afternoon we set out again with no real destination in mind. We road the monorail to the opposite end of the strip and walked through the Sahara, where Nathan had fun playing a Monopoly slot machine:

It seems like every time we left to explore, we were gone over six hours (of course it took almost 30 minutes to get to the monorail, nothing is as close as it seems...) This was our last time walking over Las Vegas Blvd Sunday night. It really is a fun city, especially if you like to peoplewatch, and you can get past all the secondhand smoke and the card clackers.

I flew back Monday, and Nathan will fly home Thursday. The kids had a great time in Cary and got good report cards, but man, there was some crankiness last night. Hopefully they got it out of their systems. We had a playdate this afternoon with three of Seth's former classmates; nothing like staying busy to make the time pass until we had to drive back to pick Nathan up!