Las Vegas Day Two Contined

Here is a picture of me next to a giant coke bottle. This was outside the Coca-Cola store. As I said in my last post, I was so grateful to find a real coke in Las Vegas. I could have kissed the machine!
We walked farther down the strip sightseeing and having a good time people watching. It was St. Patrick's Day so there were plenty of crazy things to see. (Now that I think about it, there's probably always crazy things and people to see in Las Vegas - St. Patrick's Day or not.)

We ate lunch at P.F. Changs on the strip. These were crab won tons that were really good. The fried rice was also really good. It had lots of veggies in it that I really liked. My entree wasn't great but Tina's chicken was really good.

After eating lunch we walked around some more. (I know I keep typing that sentence out but if you go sightseeing in Las Vegas, plan on doing a lot of walking!)

We went into a Field of Dreams store (sports memorabilia) and went past the Sony store. There was a giant playstation portable on the front of the building.

We then walked back toward the hotel. We stopped at the MGM Grand to see the lion. He wasn't impressed with all of the people who were gathered around to watch him. He basically just layed there. I did buy a cute magnet for my fridge at home. It has a lion on it and the words Here human, human. I thought that it was really funny.

We played the slot machines for a little while and then headed back to the hotel.

We rested for a while and then got ready to go to our next show.

What show did we go to you ask?

(insert picture here)

We went to see Criss Angel.

It says insert picture here because you are not allowed to talk pictures during the show and I am too lazy to find a picture of Criss Angel on-line.

The show was called Believe and it was really cool. I had never seen any of his shows so I really enjoyed it. I know that some parts of the show have to be illusions but the execution of the show is flawless. You cannot tell how he is doing them. The show also had Cirque de Soliel elements in it.

After the show we went to eat at Dick's Last Resort. All I'm going to say about that is that you have to be in the right frame of mind to eat at Dick's or it is going to be a really frustrating experience for you. My burger was good though.

Las Vegas Day Two (Part I)

Update: For some of you who are wondering, Tina is one of Jimmy's four sisters. She went on the trip with us. She isn't pictured in this post but she was in the last post - the picture with the drinks.

Now for the next Vegas Vacation installment:

Jimmy and I were up early on Tuesday of our vacation due to our early bedtime the night before. (We are probably the only people who went to Vegas and were in bed before midnight.

Anyway, we got up early and went to the food court to eat breakfast. (Starbucks has really good oatmeal, by the way.)

After that Jimmy and I went down to the casino to gamble while Tina got ready for the day.

Jimmy sat down and played video poker and I wandered around until I found a slot machine that only took 50 cents to "fill up." (I don't know what the correct term for this is. My mom always told me to fill up the machine. In other words, play the maximum bet. She's been to Vegas lots so I followed her advice.)

Since it was so early there were hardly any people around. I picked a machine based on the fact that is was only 50 cents to play and that there were no smokers playing nearby. (I know that these are funny criteria for most people - but they worked for me ok?)

I put in a $20.00 bill. (Do you know how hard it was for me to do that? It takes me an hour to make $20.00!) Before I knew it, all of my credits were gone.

I reluctantly put in another $20.00 bill. Once again, I was down to almost no credits very quickly.

I had $1.50 in the machine and had already decided that when that was gone so was I.

I pushed max bet and to my surprise this came up:

This was the top prize for the machine I was playing. I looked up and saw that I won but it really wasn't registering how much I had won.

Just then a drink girl came around. "I won!" I told her. At this point I thought I had won $400.00. Come to find out, 4000 quarters is a lot more than $400.00! (Yes, I'm a teacher. I obviously need to work on my mental math skills.)

The look on Jimmy's face when I told him how much I'd won was priceless. I wish I'd taken a picture of it.

I carefully filed away my voucher for my winnings and we went out to sight see.

Here we are in front of the MGM.
We spent over an hour in this store. It was four stories high. It had some museum type parts which told about the history of M&M's and how M&M's are made. It had tons of really cute merchandise to buy too.

(It was also next door to the Coke-a-Cola store so it contained a vending machine that sold Coke! The Luxor only sells Pepsi so I had been drinking Sierra Mist. I had a terrible headache from a lack of caffeine. About an hour after drinking my coke however, I was just fine!)

This was up in the museum area. As a teacher I couldn't resist taking a picture of this little diorama. In case you can't read it, it says "I will not melt in the hand." Adorable!Here's my picture with the big blue and red guys.

Las Vegas Day One

Here is a picture of me, Jimmy, and Tina. We flew out of the Houston International Airport. We had to get up at 3:00 in the morning so that we could get to the airport on time. Never again will I book a flight out at 7:00 a.m.

Since we left SO early, we arrived in Vegas at 8:20 a.m. We took a shuttle bus to the hotel but had to check our bags since it was too early to check in. We were starving but no one was serving lunch yet. We wound up eating a second breakfast at a restaurant inside the hotel.

We walked around a little, gambled a little, and were then able to check in. We went to our room and took a nap to recover from our early arrival time.

We stayed at the Luxor on the strip. Here's a shot from inside the hotel. We stayed in the pyramid portion of the hotel. It was very cool inside.

After a nap we were ready to go. Jimmy and I took a cab to Treasure Island (stop laughing - the two hotels are pretty far apart and we were still really tired!)

At Treasure Island we stood in line for almost an hour to pick up our tickets to Mystere, which is one of the shows that Cirque du Soleil performs.

We ate dinner at Kahunaville where Tina bought me a drink that was larger than my head!
This was a huge seafood appetizer that Tina and I shared for dinner. The grilled shrimp were fantastic
The waitress was sweet and took this picture for us. Tina wanted to have photographic proof that I actually had a drink.

We still had a little time before the show so we went to the casino and gambled a little. I won some quarters but the drink had obviously gone to my head because I was unable to convert the number of quarters I won into dollars. A text message to Veronica later and I knew that I won $18.00. However, by the time she got back to me I had already lost it! Oh well, easy come, easy go as they say.

Mystere was AWESOME! I had no idea what to expect out of it and it was breath taking. I am really glad that we went to see it.

After the show Tina persuaded us to walk back to the hotel. "It's not that far," she insisted. We walked by the Venetian and saw the gondolas and by the Mirage. The volcano was erupting but we were too late to get a spot up close enough to really see it.

We then started walking back to the hotel.

We walked . . .

and walked . . .

and walked . . .

An hour later we stopped for a bottle of water and I drank half of it in one drink.

We proceeded to walk some more.

A total of an hour and a half later we were back at the hotel.

So many people told me that the hotels were not as close to each other as they seemed, and you know what???

THEY WERE RIGHT!

Oh, well. It was really neat to see everything all lit up at night. However, due to some construction, you could only walk on one side of the street at some points so it was pretty crowded.

When we got back to the hotel we gambled a little and then turned in early. (Is it considered jet lag when you fly somewhere with a two hour time difference??)

Meagan Competes and Succeeds!

On Sunday afternoon Meagan competed in her first Bible Drill competition. She earned a rating of Superior. We are so proud of her. She has worked very hard all year to learn all of the books of the bible, lots of scripture references, and being able to find any part of her bible in less than 10 seconds. Her skills amaze me. I am proud of the hard work she has put into learning all of this new material. I also want to thank the wonderful people who organize all of the Bible Drill activities at our church. Miss M, Miss S, and Miss W your hard work is appreciated!

Meagan will continue on to the Association Drill in a few weeks and hopefully on to the State Drill next month. We know she is going to do a great job!

We're Back!!! (said in a sing song voice)

I haven't blogged in forever (my mom has reminded me of this EVERY time she talks to me) so here's a quick recap:

March 9 - 13 The last week of school before spring break is always crazy. I can't even remember what I did to tell you the truth. Oh yes, I remember now . . . the weekend before (March 7th) my DI team competed in their regional tournament. Meagan and I left the house at 5:45 AM and didn't return until 8:00 PM. Yes, you read that right. We were gone from the house for a total of 13 hours! My kids did a GREAT job, even if they didn't win a medal (sniff . . . sniff . . . sniff) I thought we were all done with DI and then come to find out people from Central Office were coming to school on Friday morning to watch my kids perform . . . when I hadn't planned on my kids performing. Anyway, I freaked out and then got over it and the kids did their play again. And everyone loved it. Big sigh of relief. Crisis averted.

This week was also Texas Public School Week. I had helped my counselor and principal put together a calendar of activities for the week so I was busy all week making sure we were ready for the events planned for each day. Monday was simple - kids wrote about what they wanted to be when they grow up, Tuesday seeds were planted, Wednesday college t-shirt/field trip day, Thursday made a graduation hat out of 500 cupcakes, and Friday we planned a picnic. Did I mention that a front blew in on Wednesday night bringing rain and temps in the high 40's??? Needless to say, the picnic was shot. I delivered fruit cups and decorated water bottles to each teacher and collapsed in my room in the afternoon and waited for the day to end.

Why did I want the day to end you ask??? Because we were going to VEGAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and I needed to pack!

Garrett's PTA Program

In Februrary the kinder and first grade studnets performed at the school's monthly PTA program.

Here's a picture of Garrett at our house before the program. I got some really cute ones during the program but there were too many other kids in them to post them on the internet.

The kids sang three songs. Garrett's favorite was the Groundhog Hop. It's a really cute song about the groundhog seeing his shadow.

Garrett LOVES music and Miss Y. Thanks for all of your hard work!

Playtime at the park

At the end of January we had a beautiful weekend. Meagan was gone to Bible Drill so Jimmy and I took Garrett to an elementary school near our house. We went to practice shooting baskets for basketball but when we got there we discovered that the school removes their rims during the weekend. (Bigger kids will come along and hang off of the rims and ruin them.)

We walked a couple of laps (all of our elementary schools have 1/4 mile tracks) and then played on the playground equipment. This is the school where Garrett went to prekindergarten so these are his old stomping grounds so to speak.

I played around with my new camera some more. I'm getting better with it but I'm still no where near where I would like to be with it. I have learned to be more patient between pictures so I'm getting better pictures now.

These pictures turned out nice because of the bright sunlight. (Well, in my opinion anyway.)