las vegas: part trois

The third (and final) installment of the Las Vegas recap. I realize it has only taken me a month to get this out, but I do have a life. You know, and a family and house to maintain.

And for some strange reason, I have almost zero pictures from the last few days we were there-I don't know what came over me, but please don't take this piece of news too hard.

I left you off with our night out to Paris.

The next morning, we woke up and decided to hit up Dick's Last Resort where we had heard that the food was good and atmosphere was fun. Both were true, but I didn't realize how crude and crass the atmostphere would be. Here, the waiters are incredibly rude and throw insults whenever they can fit them in. My advice to you if you ever visit one of these ever-so-proper restaurants would be: 1. don't bring children, 2. try to refrain from talking just to be safe that you aren't at the wrong end of the harassment, and 3. go in there with the right mindset for rude behavior and below-the-belt insults. The food was fantastic though, and the experience was fun. Can you tell that I didn't end up as the one that was picked on primarily? That was the mother in law, in case you were curious.

After lunch, Jimmy and I headed to the Bodies Exhibition which was unbelieveable. I don't possibly have the words to explain to you how amazing this was to see, but let me assure you it was worse the pricey admission. It's basically like a little mini museum in which human bodies in whole and in part have been preserved and showcased so that you can understand how every single body part and parts together creating a system work. I came out of there with a stronger desire to go back to school for a nursing degree one of these days-it was that fascinating. Ruby slept most of the way, too, which made it easy for Jimmy and I to thoroughly enjoy every bit of it. We were able to spend nearly two hours in there, just taking it all in-it's a surreal experience to see actual humans in there and to know that right inside of my own body, those same organs, nerves, and parts are housed.

We made a quick stop at Cold Stone (come on, I couldn't break the junk food eating streak I had kept up prior to this) and got a big waffle cone full of ice cream for our walk back to the shuttle stop. Upon lifting the kiddo out of the stroller and folding it up to board the shuttle bus, we realized that Ruby had a huge blowout (this kid has impeccable timing) and so I had to hold her like she was contaminated for the ride home. Well, and hope that no one realized that she was covered in poop and think that we didn't believe in changing diapers. Or something. The rest of the night was spent waiting around to go to the bowling alley. The guys had to be there insanely early, so the rest of us hung out (read: Me, Ruby, Robert, Nancy, and The Girl) until the guys would be starting. I'll just say this: when stuck in a room with someone you don't know, it makes in incredibly awkward for that person to be texting the entire time. I just sat there and wondered what stupid things I was doing for her to be texting about. Suppose I'll never know the answer to that.

The awkwardness continued on the drive to and at the bowling alley. Bowling took an eternity, and Ruby was so well-behaved for it being so far past her bedtime. The guys didn't do all that well, but apparently the theme at National Bowling is to squish the confidence of every bowler as much as you can, because no one did well. Our guys were probably average or slightly above the rest of the people there (that I could see). We came home and continued our disgustingly-high-in-calorie nightly tradition of eating a piece of cookie dough cheesecake and promptly fell asleep.

On Monday morning, I made cinnamon rolls, and the guys left. The awkwardness at this point became even more awkward because Jeremy confronted the mother in law about us not treating The Girl nicely enough. Remember the texting? That was her texting and quite honestly, it was hard to get a word in, and when we did, she gave one-word replies and barely looked up from her life support machine phone. So I quit trying. The guys left early for another bowling event-this time it was the 40 frame game (a normal game is 10 frames) and it had all sorts of fun twists and challenges. This was in a different part of Vegas, so it was sort of fun to be away from the strip for a day. After bowling, we found a huge buffet for lunch that was highly disappointing. I thought most of it was absolutely disgusting and would have ranked it right up down there with my hospital food (which I didn't eat, by the way). I was also a little annoyed by all of the offers to feed my child things like pudding, potatoes, and dessert. Jimmy and I headed out to the car so that I could feed Ruby (the only food she really needs or wants at this point) and I was able to get a break from some of the negative energy. We went back in and gambled for a bit. I should just be real clear and tell you that we made a small donation to the city of Las Vegas, but it was about an hour of entertainment. We went home and decided to hit up the lazy river. I politely declined and instead sat on a deck chair and watched. I also called my mom and a friend to pass the time. Ruby spent most of the time floating with Jimmy.

Bowling on this night wasn't until 11:30, so the guys spent a long time in the lazy river (hey, with beers in tow, they had it made). We took our time getting ready and then decided to find a place with Mexican food for dinner. We picked out two and drove all the way there to find out they were closed. I don't know if they had been closed permanently or if they were closed because it was later, but either way, I ended up paying way too much for a pepsi and a hotdog. Bowling wasn't too bad-it went by fairly quickly, but it was so late that I found it hard to concentrate on watching. Watching bowling to me is like watching golfing. I don't like either and would probably choose to watch grass grow over one of the former if given a choice. I spent a little bit of the time walking around with Ruby until she finally crashed. Wanna guess what we did when we got home that night? Go ahead-I'll give you one chance.

Tuesday morning, we missed the departure of The Girl...I couldn't be bothered to get out of bed at a time when the sun was still sleeping for someone that may or may not have acknowledged my existence. The rest of the crew was leaving this day as well, but not before dumping everything they decided they didn't want to transport home into our hands. We decided to hit up the other outlet mall that afternoon, after a little bit of time in the lazy river (which was more like bumper cars-this was apparently the choice activity for all residence that day). The outlets were all outdoors, ridiculously hot, and we were starving. Made our way to the foodcourt where the food should have been gourmet to match the price, and then we were off. I caved and bought a Coach bag. You could shake your finger at me for spending that much on a bag, but I shall direct you to the tiny little Japanese girl in front of me that spent over $6,000.00 on bags (I'm not kidding when I tell you she had her arms out straight with bags all up and down them). I also got a handful of clothes, some jewelry, and Clinique makeup before making it out of there. We were rushed to leave because Ruby once again chose the perfect time to blow out of her diaper. And guess what-this time I didn't have an extra outfit packed in her diaper bag, so she rode home naked.

We decided to return to the other outlet mall that we had previously visited, because Jimmy was still searching for Oakley sunglasses. He wanted me to go in and help him but with Ruby being naked, I decided I couldn't. So, instead I went in and bought her an oufit (for once, I had a legitimate excuse to buy her more clothes), so that we could help him. He did find some that he liked, but we spent way too much time there. We rushed back to our condo and I got ready in record time so that we could make it to dinner before going to see our Cirque du Soleil show.

We ate at Kahunaville, where looking back I wish I would have been a good thinking on my toes kind of person. We had one waitress (not ours) ask what Ruby's name was so of course I told her, but every time she walked by after that, she talked to Ruby like she knew her. It was a little obnoxious-Jimmy and I joked that we should have told her her name was something like...Blanket. Either she wouldn't have stopped to say her name each time, or she would have and we would have had a nice laugh over it. We split some appetizers for dinner which were unbelievable (seafood type things), and then headed for the Cirque line to be seated.

We saw the show Mystere and it was fantastic. Ruby was a little off the wall, but the show was unbelieveable. Everytime it got quiet, it seemed Ruby would take that opportunity to screech or clap or just call attention to herself in general. And everytime people clapped, I truly think she believed the applause was for her-she ate it up and responded quite loudly. I wish she would have been a little quieter so that I wasn't worried about the people around me as much as the show, but I still was able to enjoy it.

We hit up Starbucks and headed home to pack. Cheesecake again? You bet. We got to bed way too late for how early we needed to be up and gone the next morning.

We returned our cute little PT Cruiser with no issues and got to the airport with plenty of time to spare. With it only being 9 in the morning, I was working up quite the sweat lugging all the bags and Ruby around. We did have to play some musical luggage in order to meet the weight requirements for checked bags. Jimmy's bag was too heavy, so he moved enough weight to my bag. Then my bag was too heavy, so he moved half of that to the third bag and we were set. Nothing like having all of those other passengers checking in seeing your skivvies. Kidding (sort of). I completely spaced removing all of the liquid-y things in the diaper bag so I got the sunscreen taken from my diaper bag in security. I realize baby sunscreen is prime material for creating bombs, but I can assure you that was not my intention. The flight back went well-Ruby slept most of the time, and despite one of those lurching drops which ends with breathing hard and your stomach in your throat, we made it safely home.

We made back to our car and I remarked about how wonderful the weather is in Colorado-I could breathe again without all of that 110 degree weather. We made a few stops on the way home, grabbed lunch at Chick Fil A and were immediately thrown back into everyday life upon returning home. I guess that's usually how vacation works, huh?