Mini Vacay!

We went on a mini vacay with this lucky couple, the Tiner's.  Bless their hearts!

Our first stop, and main reason for going at all, was to visit the St George Temple.  This will make the fifth temple in our 12 temples in 12 months goal.  Hooray!  Since St George is a short two hour drive from Las Vegas, we decided to make a weekend of it.

We left St George early Saturday morning to check in early to the Ritz Carlton, Lake Las Vegas.   This way we were basically able to get in a full day at the resort with only a one night's stay.  Pretty sneaky!  Before you start thinking we spent a ton on this trip, just know we shared a hotel room with the Tiner's and we held back in St George so we could splurge in Las Vegas.  The resort was worth every penny!  We ended up eating lunch by the pool so we didn't have to miss a drop of sunlight.  I would go back again in a heart beat.  Now visiting the strip again...that's another story!

Things started off great with a quick fountain show at the Bellagio.  Who doesn't love that?

Buck does!

We even found a Serendipity 3 and split a Frozen Hot Chocolate.

After several brain freezes we mostly finished it.  Yum!

And then comes the ugly!  We decided to go see the show at Treasure Island.  Bad idea!  The women in the show wear barely more than the women on the baseball card sized porn the hispanic men try to hand you all over the strip.  The story line is beyond stupid.  And the worst part, about six times too many people show up to watch it!  Buck and I got a bad case of the giggles when we finally got so wedged in to the crowd that I had to take a picture.  We were stuck watching this trash, until we got a lucky break when a man in front of us decided to nearly pass out.  One of his friends carried him out, the sea of people parted for him, and we snuck in right behind them to leave.  Thank heavens for extreme temperatures in Las Vegas!

By the time we got out of that mess, we were pretty much gross and tired.  Needless to say, it wasn't the highlight of our trip.  But then again, what did we expect?

Ahh, back at the hotel.  It's hard to believe we were in the middle of the desert.

The views were quite pretty.

We even had the chance to go to church there.  This was especially exciting for me since my brother is a missionary in this area.  I didn't plan on seeing him, and I'm not even sure which church he would have been going to.  It was cool at least being in the same general area he's been in for the last 1.5 years.  I met some missionaries that serve in this exact area, but they didn't know Xan too well.  Think that's hard to believe?  Well then you don't know Xan.

And to top it all off, we had (what these Utah people like to call) a BBQ for Memorial Day.  In the South, if you said you were having a BBQ people would darn right expect pork.  Here, no one expects more than hamburgers and hotdogs.  That's what I like to call a "Cook Out."  It only took a few church BBQ's before I stopped even getting my hopes up for pulled pork.

We had a great time, and boy are we tan!  Just kidding, we wish.