Las Vegas Getaway

This last week was an especially rough one for Rob at work. He’s been working on a deal that was originally supposed to close on Friday, then it was bumped to today, and who knows when it actually will close, but it has been one of those killers trying to meet the deadlines. Every night last week he got home as early as 11:00 pm and as late as 2:00 am. I suppose it was lucky he didn’t need to pull all-nighters which he has had to do before. Anyway, the weekend came and we were faced with a blessing and a curse. There was another work obligation… in Las Vegas. There was a conference that Rob was signed up to attend. Luckily, we were all able to go and the firm paid for our rooms.

We made the four hour drive and arrived at the Signature at MGM Grand. We were all excited to find that our rooms were beautiful! We had adjoining rooms, one for the kids to sleep in and the other for us. From the balcony we could see the airplanes taking off and landing which was so exciting for the kids, and luckily not noisy enough to make it annoying. One of the favorite features was the TV that raises up out of the desk, fancy! I have to admit I wasn’t too excited about the idea of packing everyone up for a one night stay that would mostly be me and the kids in the hotel room, while Rob went to the the conference and a fancy dinner. It turned out to be a lot of fun for us though.

I ordered pizza and the kids and I ate, played games and watched the movie, Bridge to Terabithia. I warned them that it was very sad, but they insisted that it was one they wanted to watch. It was sad, but also a great story. I’d recommend this one for the family. About half way through the movie I took the little girls in the other room and put on Baby Einstein Farm Animals. They loved that one and had fun watching as they jumped on the big bed. Rob returned around 10:30 pm to find me and Emma crying on the couch at the end of Bridge to Terabithia, Hunter lounging on the floor seemingly unphased by it, and the little girls sitting quietly with me knowing that if they fussed at all I would put them to bed.

After we put the kids to bed, Rob and I snuggled up to watch Deadliest Catch Season One. We have gotten into this show since we expanded our cable a month ago. It’s the true definition of a reality show, following several fishing boats as they make their way through “the vast Bering Sea” to find crab. It sounds like it wouldn’t be very interesting, but somehow it is fascinating and we just had to go back and find season one, since we came in on season three.

The next morning we woke up and prepared for our trip home. But before leaving we took a long walk to see the lion habitat at the MGM Grand and then on to M&M World, where we were all left drooling. Sabrina literally was, and left the store sucking on a bag of M&Ms with a chocolate goatee. Having exhausted our knowledge of family friendly attractions near the hotel we headed home.

There was something surreal about the experience of leading our little kids through the hotel casino to get back to our van. There was a walkway running through it and on all sides we were surrounded by people planted at their slot machines with their hands poised over a button feeding quarters, mindlessly pushing the button hoping for a big payout. It was sad to me because none of them seemed to be having any fun. In fact most of them sat alone. Not quite the kind of fun you see in the images of Las Vegas playing on TV.

It was a great trip for our family though. We made some fun memories and I stocked up on hotel shampoos, lotions and soaps 😉 The return trip took us six hours because we hit a lot of slow traffic so we’re glad to be home now. It’s back to the old grind…