Vegas Baby!!

I have this week off and the travel bug has been biting hard for the past few months!  Justin and I have been wanting to take a vacation on our own for a while since this is the first time in our relationship that we feel that we can afford it without using credit cards since we are working on paying down our debt. I found a 2 night cruise to Mexico for $170 a person... Soooooo tempting! But we would of had to take a few days off of work and neither one of us felt comfortable doing that at this time so I brushed that off. Then I found a groupon for Evil Dead 4D in Las Vegas but of course the tickets are only available for Friday and Saturday. I started looking around for a cheap hotel in Vegas, but having it be Valentines weekend, I knew I was going to find any cheap hotel rooms. Plus the shows started at either 10:30 on Friday or 11:30 on Saturday... What are we.. 18?? Neither of us knew we could stay up that late anymore :) We narrowed it down to playing 6000 rounds of bingo in Mesquite and spending the night or finding a show in Vegas during the weekday. We love bingo and have been playing a lot; so we decided on finding a show in Vegas. Get away a little bit further than Mesquite and visit all the stores and restaurants that we miss from moving away from Idaho.

One of our favorite actors/tv personalities/whatever they are called is Penn and Teller. We have always loved watching their TV shows and specials! They are amazing magicians and just amazing people. We saw their show about 2 years ago when we moved here and decided we wanted to go see them again. I got their tickets for $54 a piece! Yay for all those Vegas show websites :) We looked around for a cheaper hotel too but decided on just staying at the Rio for convenience sake; plus I use my AAA card and got the hotel or $70 dollars! We hardly spent anything for two days of a vacation.

We left on Wednesday and had to do about an hours worth of errands around Cedar before we could leave. We had to stop and get gas and wash the filthy car.

 

Thanks Justin :) 

 We had to stop and get Justin's new phone fixed and set up his voice mail and of course get a snack. We had to stop in St George and drop Justin's knives off to be professionally sharpened. Then we finally got to finish heading to Vegas.

Just outside of Northern Vegas there is a NASCAR racetrack and a truck stop and there is a DUNKIN' DONUTS!! AHHH! I miss not having Dunkin's everywhere. We of course has to stop and get some!

Yay!!!

We made it to Vegas around 1:30 in the afternoon and Justin wanted to walk to strip since he's never gotten the chance. We took the shuttle from the Rio to the Paris casino. Justin had his fill after an hour, but he got to see almost all he wanted to see. We couldn't see the fountains at the Bellagio due to the high wind.

According to Justin these ducks were us.. He was following me because he didn't know where to go.

So sunny and warm. It was almost 80 while we were there!

We walked to the Venetian and walked the canal mall, just to get out of the sun... since I'm a ginger :)
These two people were walking in front of us. I don't really know what think... :-S

My family and I stayed at the Venetian when we came a year ago and I wanted to show Justin the center of the reception area. It had changed from butterflies to horses. It was still very pretty.

Apparently Buddy from Cake Boss has a restaurant in the Venetian and they are putting one of his bakeries in there too!

And we had to stop at Planet Hollywood and see Gordan Ramsey's restaurant. We decided that we weren't going to eat there this trip, maybe the next one :)

We spent about two hours on the strip and Justin was done.. Guess he didn't appreciate being solicited every 100 ft.. to be honest, neither did I! Around 4 we headed back and waited for the shuttle, checked in, and relaxed in our hotel room until dinner and the show.

The view from our room!

Thank AAA for the amazing suite

 We decided before we came down that we weren't going to spend $100 eating at the buffet and we would eat at the smaller restaurants or head further into Vegas to find something. We figured since we were both tired and for convenience we would eat at the grill by the sports betting. Loved it!
 

Hi Justin! 

 We walked to the Penn and Teller theater, got our tickets, and enjoyed the show!

We had great seats!

They let you come on the stage and look at the box that Teller comes on the stage in and sign a manilla envelope used in the show later

The only picture I got of Penn. He is an amazing bass player. He played along with Mike Jones... an amazing pianist :)

Yeah.. I gave up and put on my glasses! Love the lady photobomb in the back. 

 Loved the show! They changed out a few of their tricks from the last time we saw them.

 The next day we hit all of the stores we don't live anywhere close to. Justin had to hit DXL!

Apparently he wanted the ugly jacket

Much better!

We met up with my friend Carrie and ate a Schlotzaky's. It's been over 4 years since we've eaten there. I miss it :(

Yay crappy picture!

And ended our trip with Winco! Hey gotta get it while I can :)

Oh look an even crappier picture!

We ended our trip and Costco to buy socks... I know.. Don't be jealous...
It was so much fun and it was so nice to get away and enjoy our time away from work and inspections!