Vegas Vacation ~ Our Way

Last weekend we were in Las Vegas. It was a last minute decision to take a small family vacation. We have so much to do around the house and I thought it would be better to spend the money on the house (backyard, basement, furniture... etc) we weren't going to go anywhere for spring break. Then, another part of me kept thinking about how many more chances we will have to go on a family vacation. I mean... my oldest is going to be 14 this year. If he is leaving home at 18, we will only have 4 summers! By then, they get busy with school, work and social life it will get difficult to go as a whole family. The last 13 and half years went by SO fast, I can only imagine how quickly the next 4 years will go by.

We decided the destination, booked the hotel, and we were off Friday morning.

I love driving through the valley, well, to be specific, I love looking at the amazing views from the passenger seat. Driving the winding road myself makes me nervous. The blue sky, telling jokes to each other, we were having a good time.

There were several memorable moments during our trip. I will list a few.

We were able to visit a couple LDS temples: the St. George Temple and the Las Vegas Temple. We spent time there to visit the visitor center and walked around the beautiful garden.

We went to Mandalay Bay Aquarium. It wasn't a very large aquarium, but we all enjoyed it so much that we were there for easily more than a couple hours.

Next we visited the M & M store. We all got our own combinations of M&Ms to munch on later. My personal favorite was the Raspberry M&M.

One the right hand side corner Rachel is taking pictures with her DS... I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Until I can go to Paris and see the real Eiffel tower, this is the closest I can get.

I took this picture with my phone, and this doesn't do it justice, of the gorgeous flower arrangement at the entrance of the buffet. Vegas is famous for their buffets. Yeah, there are restaurant offering buffets where we live but we had to do a buffet in Vegas. We decided to go to Wynn after reading tons of reviews (eating is serious business for me! I love good food) and it was so good! We have never spent that much eating out as a family in one setting, but this was part of the vacation. Everyone got what they wanted and we were all happy. I went back 4 times and by the time we were done, I had to sit super straight so I wouldn't feel so stuffed. We rolled out of there and went back to our hotel to sleep.

While we were there, we also ate at a sushi restaurant, went to a Japanese Ramen noodle shop (I wish they were in Utah too! They were so good!) visited several different Japanese/Asian super markets and I even went to one thrift shop too!

I wanted to visit at least one quilt store in Vegas. When I googled it, I found a store called "Quiltique" in Henderson. For some reasons I was drown to this store more than the other ones. I am so glad I was able to go, it was one amazing store! Their fabric selection is wonderful, also the staff was very friendly and helpful. Oh! They also had a little "cart" to put fabric bolts in to carry around while you shop. It was very helpful for me since I didn't have to carry around the bolts while trying to look at other things.

I spy with my little eyes... Amy Butler and Anna Maria Horner's fabrics!

While I got permission to take some pictures around the store, I was looking in to their class room... I saw something very familiar on the wall. I was thinking to myself :

"Huh, I have seen that quilt somewhere... WAIT! That is my quilt!"

They were offering a class for the quilt "Bubble Up", I designed and published in "Quilts and More" a while back. It was such an unexpected nice surprise; that made me want to go home and start sewing right away.

We don't need to have family vacation to spend time and make memories as a family. Though, it is so nice and fun to get away from the usual routine and do something completely new and share the experience.

We had a lot of fun while we were there, but when we came home at 1 am and hit the pillow to drift off to sleep I was thinking how blessed we are to have each other and have a place to call our home.