1st Birthday Party for Connor

We celebrated Connor's birthday today at Thunderbird community center. When we arrived, the party room was filled with people with an arts and crafts table on the side and playmats for the younger kids. There were balloons everywhere. What is it with balloons? For some reason, the kids just go crazy over balloons.

There were lots of food and drinks. And of course when it came to cake time, Jas dashed over to the table like a lightning bolt, anticipating the singing and blowing out the candle. Thanks Connor for inviting us to your 1st bday party. Next time, we'll have to invite you over to play with all of our toys.

Jasmine - Stomach Bug

Unfortunately, whatever bug that Julia caught last week, has passed on to Jasmine. She threw up in bed tonight, twice. Just as we finished off our Chinese New Year cleaning (or so I thought we were finished, we had to do one last load of laundry). Poor Jasmine. So that means she can skip school tomorrow?

Julia - Projectile Vomit

Poor Julia is still very sick. Just as we were putting Julia into bed, she starting making these funny "hurl" sounds. She looked like she was going to throw up... and then she did. Ohhhhh. The first one, went across the living room. And then 2 more of them. Yuck.

Ok ok, I got it Julia, you are sick. Can you please keep your food inside of you?

Julia - Stomach Bug

Julia really wasn't feeling well tonight and decided that throwing up her milk in bed would make her feel better. Luckily the bulk of the mess landed on her most beloved dog blanky. She had to wait until the blanky was washed and dried before being ready for bed again (that took 2 hours). She's still fighting a mild fever, which I'm not complaining about, considering how high her temperature was yesterday. When will this end?

Julia - High Fever

Julia has been very clingy and needy to me lately. I love her dearly and secretly don't mind it at all until... I find out that she's sick. She spiked a high fever of 39.6 deg tonight, which scared me to the point of wondering whether we should take her to the children's hospital. We decided against it and gave her some baby tylenol and checked her every hour.

By morning, she was still 39.4 but she seemed to be acting fine so we kept our watch on her but didn't see the doctor. By the afternoon, her temperatue went down to 38.5 so that is comforting. Hopefully the temperature will go down to normal soon.

Vegas - Day 6 Heading Home

We fly back home today. Sad that this is the end of our vacation but happy that we are leaving LV with more cash than we started. It felt like a 2nd or 3rd honeymoon, without the kids. Thank you inlaws for taking care of the kiddies while we were away.

(we did do last minute shopping today and went to Costco, but didn't end up buying anything. The Costco there is a business center only so does not have a food department or electronics or clothes or any of the good stuff).

Vegas - Day 5 Shopping and Ka Cirque De Soleil

Today is the last full day before going home tomorrow. Since we've pretty much exhausted ourselves with sightseeing, we decided to go shopping, have a nice dinner and then see the Cirque de Soliel show "Ka".

We went shopping at the Northern Outlets. We spent a good 5 hours shopping. A lot of the shops were similar to the Southern Outlets so we didn't buy alot for ourselves, however, I could not believe there were clothes for the girls at $3 a piece at Carters so I spent a fortune there. Great deal.

We decided long ago that we wanted to have a nice dinner at one of the better restaurants in Vegas and we chose the restaurant Envy. It had great reviews online and it wasn't too far away (we had a car anyways). Plus we bought a $75 gift certificate which can be used towards a dinner over $150 so it was going to be great...so we thought.

We made our way to Envy (inside the Renaissance hote) and found parking easily. When we got inside the hotel, it seemed really quiet. Maybe 2 people at the reception desk and then in the far right corner, was the restaurant. Maybe it was early? I don't know but there was only 1 other table that we saw eating. Anyways, we sat down and the waiter served us water while we looked at our menu. The price of a steak, with nothing else on the plate, was $50! Better be good steak I was thinking. Each of us ordered an appetizer, a steak and we shared a strawberry cheesecake.

For appetizers, we had crab cakes, and a calimari with rock shrimp. They were a good size and they were tasty. But unfortunately, I can't say the same about the entrees. I ordered a filet mignon and R ordered a new york strip with vegetable sides. The steaks were burnt on the outside and it wasn't as tender as it should have been. I thought the Keg had better quality steaks. And at $50 a pop, I didn't think this restaurant was up to par as the reviews say.

Because this dinner was to celebrate my birthday, we ordered a cheese cake, which was ok. How can you mess up a cheesecake at a restaurant? With the tax and tip, the bill was over $200, which wasn't worth it in my mind. Maybe the chef just had a bad day, who knows? Won't be going there ever again.



After dinner, we headed over to the MGM hotel for our free Ka Show. Yep, free. The tickets were included in our Monte Carlo hotel reservation. Deal! We had great seats too. Too bad R fell asleep during the show (tired from gambling late at night). I'm just happy he didn't start snoring at the show!

Vegas - Day 4 PowerPass

Today we used our second day of our Powerpass and these are the places we visited:

- Hoover dam (6 hour tour which included pick up/drop off from our hotel)
- Beattle show (a live performance with Beattle impersonators)
- Eiffel tower
- NYNY roller coaster (had to do this one again)
- Stratosphere X-scream (you sit on this spaceship-like thing and then suddenly dives you off the top of the Stratosphere)

For the hoover dam, the tour bus picked us up at the Monte Carlo hotel at 8am. It was really hard for us to get up in time since we were up past midnight the night before. We were very thankful that the Powerpass included this place because we originally going to drive there on our own.








The Beattle Show was sort of an "extra" place to go to, as we would not have been upset if we missed it. But it turned out to be a really good show. Although I didn't know most of the songs they sang, I can see why they had so many fans. The tunes were great, even for virgin Beattle ears. We enjoyed 1.5 hours of resting and listening to music with a drink in hand.

We were completely exhausted after today, doing all these activities. We had a fabulous time and really made use of the Powerpass. If any of our friends ask us what there is to do in Las Vegas, I'd totally recommend looking into this deal again.

Vegas - Day 3 - Powerpass

Before leaving for Vegas, we found a sightseeing pass called the Power Pass at Costco. It's a 2-day pass that allows you to enter several attractions for 1 price. Today is the first day we used the Power Pass and we saw the following places:

1) Fremont zipline - you zip across LV downtown area, from the top of a parking garage roof to the Four Queens hotel. With speeds up to 35 miles an hour this canopy level ride lasts about 25 seconds and zips nearly 800 feet.

2) Pawn Stars, from the TV show (not part of Powerpass)

3) Stratosphere


4) Stratosphere Insanity ride (This ride lifts you off the ledge of the hotel, then spins you around and around.)


5) Snack at Planet Hollywood

6) Wax museam


7) New York New York roller coaster (loved this ride. We sat at the front and the thrill was awesome)

What an activity packed day. Had a really good time. Let's see how PowerPass Day 2 will turn out.

Vegas - Day 2 - Shopping

We finally got into bed at 2am the first night. We were so happy with our fortunate win at Luxor that it was hard to sleep! So we slept in this morning. We didn't get out of bed until 10am. We drove to Orleans for the champagne breakfast buffet (so-so) then found our way to the Las Vegas Outlets South for some shopping.

We spent a full 5 hours there, and didn't even hit all the stores! This outlet mall was huge. We would have shopped longer if we could but we were pooped. Awesome deals as well. We spent over $700 today. Take a look at all our goodies.

Vegas - New Years Eve

We've been planning our Las Vegas trip since September. And there were plans to cancel the trip after our FIL had a heart attack so this trip has been much anticipated. Finally, we left Vancouver on Dec. 31st afternoon. The statue below is from the YVR airport.


We arrived into Vegas at 5:30pm and picked up our rental car by 6pm. Made our way to our hotel for 2 nights at South Point Casino and then 3 nights at Monte Carlo. Check in was easy and the room was quite large with a separate sitting area and nice size washroom. We literally threw our luggage against the wall, changed really quickly and then drove to Tacos and Tequilas restaurant at Luxor. It is new years eve tonight and we've been told that Las Vegas Boulevard on the strip will be closed down, for pedestrians only. We needed to get to Luxor for dinner.

As it turned out, the strip was already closed off for cars and only hotel guests are allowed into the hotels. We had dinner reservations for 7:45pm so the guard for the parking lot allowed us in. Lucky. Or else, I'm not sure how we would have found parking that night.

Dinner was fine. We ordered 3 dishes: taco combo, appetizer platter and sea bass. The atmosphere was awesome as everyone there had hats and sparkly stuff on, getting ready for new years. And at 9pm, everyone received a free shot of tequila to celebrate the count down on the East Coast (3 hours ahead). That was cool.


After dinner, we had a couple of hours before the count down so we explored the casino. Richard played poker and I watched the craps table. Richard was very lucky that night, as he managed to win the highest hand of the hour - a $450 win! In addition, he also won $ on the table so we were up a good $900. Thank you Luxor.

Just before midnight, we ran outside onto the strip to watch the fireworks (4 hotels had fireworks). The street was completely packed and you could barely walk through. It was awesome. Everyone was friendly and smiling. What a terrific start to the new year.