Viva Las Vegas

Buck and I just had our first "non-honeymoon" vacation.  We wanted to do something with the time we had off for Thanksgiving, but didn't have enough money to fly all the way to South Carolina.  We decided that Las Vegas would be a great place to visit since I've never been, it's a pretty quick drive, and it's within our budget.

We had a blast!  The hotel (Mandalay Bay) as nice as we expected.  We had a large room with a pretty good sized TV...and CABLE!!  Buck was very excited to catch up on PTI and other ESPN produced shows in real-time versus watching them online later.  It was great sleeping in a larger bed without having springs poke you all night as well.

We shopped and shopped, and shopped some more.  We got many fabulous deals at Planet Hollywood's "Mile Mall."  If you ask Buck, we probably spent a bit too much time there.  I did end up talking Santa into buying me some brown equestrian boots from Ann Taylor while we were there.  I can die happy now.

On Wednesday (our first full day there) we started the day off right with breakfast at The Paris.  Made-to-order crepes were what drew us in, but everything there was great.  We then tried to find Xan's mission office (which we never did) and visit the Temple (which closed early on Thanksgiving eve).  It rained and rained, but we still walked around for a straight 6 hours visiting every hotel and store on the strip.  We estimated walking about 10 miles in one afternoon/evening.  Needless to say we were exhausted after all of that!  Because of the rain we didn't get to see the outdoor show at Treasure Island, but we did get to see the water show at the Bellagio.  I've always seen this in movies and haven't thought too much of it.  Can I just say I walked away with my mouth open?!?  It was awesome, and free of course!

Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, we decided to take it easy.  After all, we had just practically finished a half-marathon the day before!  We slept in, then went downstairs to Mandalay Bay's buffet for Thanksgiving dinner.  We ate an unbelievable amount of food!  I personally ate at least three dinners and six desserts.  They had traditional Thanksgiving food (meal 1 for me), sushi and loads of seafood (meal 2), as well as fruit, salad, and other random goodies (meal 3).  THEN I proceeded to walk over to the dessert buffet with a dinner plate.  Yes, I have no shame.  At least Buck and I shared that, but we both ate until we were in pain.  After a nap and some family phone calls we visited the Shark Reef Aquarium.  I LOVE aquarium's, so this was a treat.  They actually had barracudas in there, but picture taking was impossible.

We left on Friday (when the sun finally returned of course), but not before visiting the Temple and In-n-out burger.  Buck thought it was the best burger place he's ever been too.  I was upset there was no chocolate in my "Neapolitan" shake.  All in all, it was a great vacation!