Las Vegas Trip

We got back from our Vegas trip late Wednesday night. I just haven't had a chance to post pictures until today. We started out by flying into Vegas on Saturday and renting a car to drive to the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam. We drove over Hoover Dam on the way to Kingman, AZ (where we spent the night) but we decided not to stop until the next day. This is why I should have blogged earlier...I honestly cannot remember what we did besides drive on Saturday! :) We got up on Sunday and started our drive toward the Grand Canyon. Evidently, we were going to the wrong way to get to the glass sky walk... so we had to turn around. Neat. After A LOT of backtracking AND twisting and turning, we got to the place where you are supposed to go out on the the sky walk. We had to pay $43 to get on a bus just so they could drive us out to the "park" and then if you wanted to walk on the sky walk, it was $75 total. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? Even after all that driving, there was no way that I was going to pay that. It's the principal of the thing People, take my advice and go to the National Park side of the Grand Canyon!! So, I bought a souvenir T-shirt of something that I didn't get to see and we got back in the car. :) We headed back towards Vegas and stopped at Hoover Dam. The first thing we did was eat (I shared a Dam Cheeseburger with my mom - hee hee) and then headed over to take a look. It was pretty awesome.

They were in the process of building a new bridge that I'm pretty sure would freak me out to drive over!

It's a weird vertigo type sensation when you look over the side - pretty amazing... (If you click on the picture and enlarge it, you can see that little white rectangle is a truck - it's crazy just how far away everything actually is!)

The white stripe around the bottom shows where the water line used to be... evidently it takes quite a bit of water to keep all those golf courses green in the middle of the desert. :)
We got back to Vegas and checked into our hotel. We spent a lot of our time looking at all the hotels and their awesome lobbies. The Bellagio had this amazing light fixture by their check in desk - I think I saw on the Travel Channel that it is all hand blown glass - very pretty and very odd all at the same time!
We saw Serendipity 3 in front of Caesars Palace and I got so excited! I had seen one of their Frozen Hot Chocolates on Oprah years ago and promised myself that if I ever got to New York, I would get one. When I saw LV had one, I knew we had to go! It was such a cute restaurant and our meal and the frozen hot chocolate were yummy (even if I was only able to drink about a 1/16th of it)!

We saw Cirque Beatles Love on Monday (I did not get a picture except on my phone) and then we saw Blue Man Group on Tuesday night.

After Blue Men, we headed over to the Bellagio to see the fountains - they were pretty cool...

I also gambled a little on the slot machines - I stuck to the penny machines because I am so super cheap. I won $20 at one point and cashed out to buy a souvenir shirt. I probably lost $20 or so dollars, but I think it was some pretty cheap entertainment for as long as I spent in the casinos! Two things we didn't get to do just because we ran out of time - I wanted to see the lights at Freemont Street and eat at In and Out Burger. Oh well... maybe next time! All in all, we had a great trip. I was glad to get to see a new place - Las Vegas is an experience!

Vacation: Part 2

Today we headed to Sea World.  We had heard the best place to start is the dolphins.  We got to see the last of the feedings for that hour and the dolphins were frisky and active.  you could just almost touch them if you reached over and put your hand in the pool.  The boys really liked it!

Next, Reed and Gammy rode a little roller coaster.  If you look closely, they are in the car second from the back.
While we waited for them on the ride, Hudson sat with DadDad and sucked down his drink.
Then we headed to the pirate 3D show.  
Grace and Hudson hated it because of the super loud noises and puffs of air.  They both took an early exit.  Sara and I began to despise it once we had been sprayed with water 3 times.  Then there was a part with a skeleton and Reed wanted to leave, so none of us lasted the entire time.  The good news is that we got to sit in the a/c for at least a few minutes. :)  Next we headed on to the sea lions.  We only had a little while until the Shamu show started, so we didn't spend too much time there... but man, those suckers were cute!
By this point, it was way past nap time and Hudson was SO whiny.  DadDad ran him around in his stroller and he quickly went to sleep...  So precious!
Grace had also fallen asleep, so Eric and Sara (who had both seen the Shamu show) volunteered to watch the sleeping kids while we went.  Here's Reed and his Daddy getting ready for Shamu!
The Shamu show was by far my favorite part of SeaWorld.  It was no need to see the huge animals that were so sweet and gentle.   Some of the pictures aren't the greatest, but I had to put them in here.  
I couldn't catch both the people in the frame, but I thought it was so cool how they stood on the whales noses.
It was amazing how far they could come up out of the water...

We had a great time today, but are pretty pooped.  The kids did great and we have some really great memories.

Beach "Vacation"

Whew.

I now understand when people say that a trip is when you go away with your family and a vacation is when you go without kids.  I'm exhausted. This last week has been fun, but I'm glad to be home.  The boys were not only a handful, but Brian ended up not coming down on the weekend because rain was in the forecast (and I thought it ridiculous to drive 6 hours to sit in the house).  The fun started on Tuesday with a 6 hour drive with a 5 year old and 1 year old who didn't understand why he had to stay in his car seat so long.  Good times.  Throw in a nauseated grandpa (I'm sure from my driving) and bad directions and we were all just downright chipper.  :)  When we finally made it to the beach house, we were all too tired to go back into town to get groceries for an actual dinner, so we ate rice krispie treats and other various snacks.  We got the groceries out of the way on Wednesday and started out to test out the sand and waves.  Neither of the boys had ever been to the ocean, so I was anxious to see how they would react.  Reed wasn't too excited about the water (it wasn't clear and he was afraid of the "fish" which I think meant sharks - he watches too much Discovery channel with his daddy).  However, he LOVED the sand.  He spent the majority of the trip digging, making sand castles and just plain getting dirty.  Hudson didn't care for the sand, but loved the water.  He would kick his little chubby legs like crazy when the waves hit him - so cute.  He loved low tide when he could run around and splash without falling down.  One funny thing about Hudson - when we would take him down to the beach in the middle of the day and he hadn't had a nap, he would get whiny and want us to hold him, then he would promptly fall asleep!   As the week progressed, Hudson got whinier (I believe for a lack of toys and his familiar surroundings) and by our last night, he was crying out a lot and I only slept about 4 1/2 hours. Follow that with 7 hours in the car (yes, it took longer to get home than the trip down - we missed a turn), and I am beat.  It might take me a few days to get the pictures posted, but at least we made it back home in one piece.  Gotta love "vacation".  :)

Memorial Day Trip

We have a tradition of spending Memorial Day weekend with my parents.  We rent a house somewhere (when I say "we", I mean the grandparents - they are kind enough to let us tag along) and we spend a long weekend hanging out.  I look forward to it every time.  This Memorial Day, my parents picked a house right on the beach in Freeport, near Galveston. The boys and I are leaving tomorrow and Brian is going to finish out the work week (yes, I know you're all shocked he'll be working) and join us this weekend. I have a LONG list of things to get done today, so I'd better get started... but I'm sure I'll have plenty of funny stories and pictures to post from the beach, so stay tuned! 

Canton

I just got back from an awesome weekend in Canton! I went with my friends Sarah, Cami & Amy. Cami's parents have a time share cabin just outside of Tyler (which is about 45 minutes from Canton) that they graciously let us use. Cami, Amy & I left about 3:00 on Friday and headed to Fort Worth to pick up Sarah from where she works. After coming back to the house twice (once for my money that I left and the second time for my tennis shoes) and waving at the same neighbors who were standing in their driveway watching us pass by multiple times, we were on our way! We picked up Sarah and decided to eat at one of our favorite places...P.F. Changs - YUM! We had great discussion over dinner and really enjoyed each others' company. We headed on to the cabin (stopping at Dairy Queen on the way where I looked at my lap the whole time to avoid ordering their dairy goodness) and finally got there about 11:00. We went in, took a look around and proceeded to head out to the car to unload our bags and as we were walking down the stairs to the cabin, I squealed "SKUNK!" Yes, there was a skunk about 20 feet outside our door! All I had was a sad little flashlight about 3 inches long that really only works in "close up" situations, so here we are, 4 girls squished up against a window, watching a skunk stroll around aimlessly outside. It finally headed off into the trees and we made a run for our pajamas & toothbrushes.


The next morning we got up early and spent about 6 hours shopping Canton. We found almost everything we came for and a few more fun things! Here is a picture of my favorite purchase of the day (my McCain/Palin T-shirt) and some other fun things:

Sarah in a Hillary mask at Wal-Mart...VERY creepy and for so many reasons!

Eating at Mercado's

After shopping, we had another great girls night of food, chatter & fun. We ate at an awesome restaurant called Mercado's - the best tamales I have EVER had...Yum! We slept in Sunday morning and after Cami cooked us breakfast (thank you, Cami!), we headed back to our families. I was so glad to see my boys, but the weekend was a much needed break. My batteries are recharged and I'm so thankful for sweet friends!

Pictures I Need to Explain...

I have some pictures that I took on our trip that I wanted to post, but they need some type of explanation or caption. Since we were paying for the internet by the minute, I didn't want to expand upon things too much! Here are my "free" ramblings...

First, here is the picture of Reed in his pirate hat and face paint that he wanted so badly. He 's such a spaz - when i asked him to smile for the camera, for some reason, jazz hands popped up. Strange child.

In Ketchikan, we ate at AnnaBelle's and Reed order a grilled cheese and fries. When his plate came, they had the cutest french fries I have ever seen - I just had to get him to pose with one.

Our state room on the ship had two twin beds and a bunk that pulled down. We pushed the twin beds together for Mimi and Hudson to sleep on. He had a little bit of trouble staying out of the "crack". We started laughing because it looked so funny and the more we stared at him and laughed, the madder he got. It was funny, though...he just kept sinking....

Here's a picture of the creek in Ketchikan. This was a view from Creek Street - the boardwalk type street where the building were built above the little river running through the town. There were TONS of fish in it as you can see. Uncle Brandon would have fished on the spot if he could have!

Here's Pepaw and Hudson on the trip back down from White Pass. They both had just a little too much excitement...
One last story that was too funny...we had been eating from the buffet and getting room service throughout the trip on the ship, so we were kinda spoiled. Our last night in Seattle, we were in our hotel room and Reed looked at my mom and said "Mimi, could you call somebody and tell them to bring us something to eat?" Uh-Oh. I think the next few days might be long ones.

Winding down...

We spent yesterday at sea heading back to Seattle. We spent a lot of time out on the deck watching the scenery go by. Reed saw another kid with their face painted and a pirate hat on and said "I want to do that!" I took him back to the Aqua Kids Club and he stayed for 3 hours and had a blast. I have a good picture, but my USB cables are packed up...I'll have to post that one later! We packed up our stuff and got ready to leave this morning. As we were walking off the ship, Reed said "I don't want to go home!" He has had so much fun - I'm sure because he's gotten to do so much and I've let him get away with a lot. He's gotten dessert with every meal and most of the time as snacks, Mimi and Pepaw have bought pretty much almost anything he said he liked...what could be bad? The last few days have flown by and I can't believe we'll be home tomorrow, but I am ready. I'm missing my husband and I'm sure my little guys are missing their daddy.

Glacier Bay & Ketchikan...

Yesterday we cruised Glacier Bay. It was gorgeous. After breakfast, we went out on one of the top decks and took lots of pictures. The water was so smooth with little chunks of ice floating here and there. The glaciers themselves were awesome. I never did get a picture of when a piece broke off, but it was so cool. When it did happen, the chunk would hit the water, and then we would hear a big crashing sound. Reed wasn't all that impressed and kept wanting to go back inside. Here's some shots from the day...
We ate dinner at Teppanyaki. We all sat around the hibachi table and Reed loved it. He really like Miyako's in Granbury, but this was more of a "show" . Lots of knife twirling, egg throwing, etc. The cook really made it a priority to involve Reed which was neat. We all really enjoyed it.
This morning we docked at Ketchikan. It was awesome - my favorite port by far. The town was so cute was in such a beautiful spot. Mimi, Uncle Brandon & Reed started out to explore town while Pepaw, Hudson and myself stayed behind to see the ships' doctor. Hudson had a cough that was really bad when we woke up this morning. After seeing the doctor, he diagnosed it as a cold (no ear infections, throat irritations, sounds in his chest or dehydration). After we saw the doctor I felt so much better - I had been on pins and needles! Anyhow, Pepaw stayed with Hudson and I met everyone else to look around. We walked along Creek Street which was a bunch of shops built over a creek that was filled with fish. Reed had a fascination with totem poles, so Uncle Brandon took him to the museum and we had to get him a souvenir. There were a lot of things that we wanted to see, but the boat was leaving at 2:00, so we caught a quick lunch and headed out. A few pics...

Skagway...

Yesterday we went to Skagway. We docked early and went into town to look around. Pepaw volunteered to had stayed behind to with Hudson - I didn't want him out in the rain and cold. Since we are on such a different schedule as everyone else, we got there early and escaped the crowds. It's a cute little town. And when I say little, I mean little. They have one grocery store and it has about 5 aisles. We got a few souvenirs and headed back to the boat. We ate some lunch and got on our White Pass Train tour. We rode the train up in the mountains and took a bus back down. It was beautiful! Here are a few pictures from the tour...

The tour took about 5 hours total, so by the time we got back to the ship, we were all pretty beat. We boarded, put on our pajamas, ordered room service and had a "picnic" on the bed. Reed loved it and thought is was so much fun. Today we aren't going to dock, but just cruise Glacier Bay. It's still pretty foggy outside with very limited visibility, so hopefully it will clear up soon.
Ketchikan is tommorrw...see ya then!

Juneau...

Here are a couple of pictures I took while we were at sea yesterday...

Mimi & Pepaw catching a few quiet moments...they are hard to come by on this trip!

Last night after I posted, we went up to grab something to eat and as we were sitting there, people started crowding around the windows in the reaturant. We got up to see what the deal was and there were dolphins jumping through the water EVERYWHERE! If I had to guess on the number of them, I'd say there were at least 50. It was awesome and something neat that Reed got to see. I left my camera in the cabin, so sorry, no picture! We finished our meal and I took Reed to the Aqua Kids Club. It's a neat little place where you can take your kids and they do games, coloring, watch movies and so on. He LOVED it. As I mentioned in my last post, he gets tired of "just sitting", so the AKC (which I will refer to it from now on) has been a blessing. I went to pick him up yesterday afternoon and they were having a birthday party for everyone. I don't know all that was involved, but when I got there, he was playing pin the nose on the clown. As I stood there watching, I was amazed at how well he was doing. He ended up getting it right on the clown's nose! One of the workers looked at him and said "Can you see through your blindfold?" and he said "I can see a little bit." Well, so much for that. He made a neat "birthday" hat and had his face painted so I had to get a picture...




Our schedule is so much different than everyone elses - we still feel like we are on Texas time. We're getting up around 4 or 4:30 (6 or 6:30 Texas time) and going to bed around 7:00 (9:00). Last night was a little rough. I woke up in the night and felt the ship rocking like crazy. Luckily I am doped up on dramamine and have a motion sickness patch behind my ear...if it wasn't for that, I'd be in big trouble.
Yesterday we docked in Juneau and walked around a bit - the scenery is beautiful! It was pretty chilly for us Texans, so we had to bundle Hudson up!



Juneau is very touristy and has a gillion jewelry stores. We ate at the Red Dog Saloon - it's one of those touristy places and Pepaw really wanted to go, so we had a quick bite to eat. The piano player had quite the mouth, so we got out pretty quick! We had some gelato and coffee and found that our phones would work, so we made some calls home. It was really good to hear Brian's voice and I know he enjoyed talking to Reed. We ran into some great picture oppurtunities with Reed and various dead wildlife - here's ahuge bear we found.

What a beginning...

We have had quite the eventful trip up to this point and that is why I have neglected to write (also the internet wouldn't work at the hotel and I had to go get a cable to use on the ship)! I won't give too many details because I believe they would be quite boring to you all. We started out Saturday morning headed to the airport. We dropped of luggage and parked the car and headed to check in, we hit a couple of snags with Hudson (we didn't buy him a seat, but still had to have a boarding pass), but everything worked out fine. We had two flights, the first from DFW to Phoenix (very rough with all the turbulence). The bad news? I threw up. The good news? I made it to my airsick bag. The second flight from Phoenix to Seattle was also pretty bumpy but not near as bad. Both boys did GREAT on the flights - hallelujah! Here's a pic of Hudson finding a new use for the tray table.

We got our bags and by this time Pepaw wasn't feeling so well. We got our rental van (it was a minivan, but I gotta say...it was kinda neat) threw our bags in and headed to get something to eat. Pepaw was horribly sick, so he slept in the car while we ate. We had a quick dinner and off to the hotel. Pepaw got up feeling better in the morning, bit still a little nauseated. Uncle Brandon and Reed got sucked into a "chrane game" and about $3.50 later, Uncle Brandon "caught" Batman and Reed was ectstatic!

We drove around Seattle a little to sight see. Here's some pics from Puget Sound.

From this point on, this had to be one of my least favorite days ever. It was a pain. We hadn't ever been on a cruise ship before, so since we didn't know what to expect, it was tiring. Uncle Brandon dropped us at the pier and drove the car back to the rental office. I sat out with our carry-ons and the kids while Uncle Brandon, Pepaw and Mimi took our obscene amount of luggage to baggage. After about 30 minutes, we went to check in. Hudson was tired and not pleased with being in his stroller, so we ended up carrying him a lot of the time which ended up making everything kinda hard. We had 4 backpack, 3 rolling carry-on suitcases and a 12 pack of Dr. Pepper for my addicted brother. Then there was Reed. Poor, sweet little Reed. He was SO tired of all the boring stuff of dragging luggage around and he was being very patient...I told him when we got on the ship to eat dinner, he could have ANYTHING he wanted..more about that later. SO, after checking in, showing our keycards 84 times (while holding a crying. exhausted baby), we finally made it on the ship. Our staterooms weren't ready so we went to find a restaurant to eat. After pulling all the above metioned stuff around for 2 decks (nobody we asked sent us to the correct place) we finally found the Summer Palace. Hot diggity - I wanted to sit down!! I let Reed pick and he ordered ice cream with chocolate syrup. Whatever. At this point I would've let the kid eat the sugar packets off the table if he wanted to. We got to our stateroom, unpacked and before long, it was time for our lifejacket drill. The whole time Reed was pulling on his lifejacket saying "This hurts my neck! This hurts my neck!" OH. MY. GOODNESS. I'm not a drinker, but after all the mess we dealt with that day, I firmly believed I could easliy turn into one. We explored the ship a little last night, but we were exhausted and went to bed fairly early. We haven't done much today - the water has been exceptionally choppy - but I'm looking forward to sightseeing in Juneau tomorrow!