Las Vegas Trip!

We had an "anni-vegas-ry"!! 

My wonderful mom drove up to spend a week with our kids, while Michael and I went to Vegas. It was the first time in 3 years since Michael and I went away together, and it was so much fun to be carefree and focus on us and moments of fun. 

We arrived and picked up our "sparkin" rental car. 

I think this was the smallest car we had ever driven, and we had a great time with it.

The famous strip was dazzling at night. 

It had the air of mischief and excitement that lasted literally all night long.  

During the day (and nights) we walked... and walked... 

We made a list of all the major casinos and sites we wanted to see, then worked our way through the list.

This is the view at the top of the Eiffel Tower at Paris.

We shopped and ate a lot of tasty food! 

We didn't get to eat the Ketchup Burger Bar we found, but we figured it was worthy of a picture due to our ketchup addiction. 

We stayed at the Marriott Vacation Club-- it was a great location just off the strip.  We felt very centrally located and able to walk to many of our destinations. 

One super cool thing about our visit was getting to see friends! 

I love this couple so much-- we get a long so well. I don't know how often it happens in life where you meet another couple whom you feel instantly connected with as if you've been friends for much longer than you truly have, but I'm grateful that it happened to us. 

We met up with them a few times during the week and it was blast seeing them and their sweet family.

Another cool thing was the pool at the Hard Rock. We enjoyed our time there so much we even went back a second day at the pool. 

And, for anyone who may be reading and planning a trip to Vegas, if you go to the Hard Rock's pool.. stop at the Japanese place inside to eat. It was so tasty!

We were fun and careless as we played a few dollars away on various machines in casinos. I actually won a grand total of $18 on the walking dead slot machine! woohoo!

And our most favorite casino was the Venetian.

We rode the rides on top of the stratosphere which was scary awesome. 

It was such a great get-a-way trip for us. we had a blast being dazzled by lights, getting swept in crowds of people from many walks of life, experiencing a nightlife that apparently never ends.  It was not the cleanest or most wholesome place in the world, but it was fun to see.