Vegas Vacation, Part 3

Day 4 - January 1, 2014 - the Las Vegas Strip

After our long day of driving to the Grand Canyon New Year's Eve, we weren't exactly feeling like partying it up for New Year's Eve. I actually even took a nap after getting the kids to bed and woke up with a little time to spare before the clock struck midnight. Mark and I watched the fireworks going off in downtown Las Vegas from the window by the ice machine. Romantic, right? As simple as it was, this was the perfect way to ring in the New Year, with my love at my side, enjoying life's little pleasures together.

Instead of eating breakfast in the hotel's lobby on New Year's morning, Mark brought food back up to our room, which we enjoyed while we watched the Rose Parade on TV. The kids especially loved the horses in the parade. There was also some bouncing on the beds with the cousins. I guess this is the kids' version of "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas":

After relaxing for a few hours at the hotel, we drove down to the Las Vegas strip to look around. I was interested to see what all the hype was about, but in all honesty, I wasn't too interested in gambling in the casinos. My first impression is that Vegas basically seemed like an adult version of Disney World. One of the things I enjoyed most was seeing the girls bond with their cousins and watch how caring my niece and nephew were with our kids. They each had their buddy for the day:

And Merrick enjoyed hanging out with the guys:

Mark's parents, and his aunt and uncle were going to try to meet up with us, but they decided it was too busy to park and deal with the crowds, so we just got to visit for a few minutes while they were waiting for the stoplight to turn green.

One neat part about being in Vegas right after Christmas is that most of the decorations were still up.

Ceasar's Palace

The Bellagio:

As we were leaving the Bellagio, we caught the tail end of one of the fountain shows, so we slowly walked around the front of the small lake, and then found a spot to wait for about ten minutes until the next show started. We were all so glad we waited! I have often heard of the fountains and seen them in different movies, but they were much bigger than I had even expected!

After watching the Bellagio fountains, we headed back to where we parked at the Fashion Show Mall, and then we discovered why the mall has that name: As we were walking through, a catwalk started rising up out of the ground and there was a fashion show right in the middle of the mall!

After we had already been walking for a while that morning, I decided to track our distance using an app on my phone, and when we got back to the car, I was shocked to see that we had walked 5.4 miles since I started tracking it. We headed back to the hotel for nap time before heading out to the RV Campground for dinner with the whole family at Mark's aunt and uncle's RV. We had a fun time, dinner was delicious, and I'm excited to try out the wild rice recipe that his aunt Coreen made for us.

When we got back to the hotel, I opened the door to see that Kaylee and Merrick had fallen asleep holding hands. So precious! It was a long, but very fun day, and a great way to ring in the New Year.