Las Vegas Family Vacation
Dec. 29, 2008 - Jan. 1st, 2008


We took the boys for their first trip to Las Vegas.
We were comped rooms by my casino host at the Flamingo Hilton It was a great way to combine a fun New Year's Eve celebration
with my 40th (ouch) birthday on December 30th...

Friday, December 29th

The first place we took the boys was next door to Paris and up to the top of the Eiffel Tower.
They loved it because you could see all of Las Vegas from the top of the tower

New Year's Gift Basket from our casino Host waiting for us in our room when we arrived

After a walk around the strip we went to dinner Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville.
When we got back to our room there was a surprise knock on our door...IT WAS JULIE!
We were excited to see her because said she had to work!
lol It was an awesome surprise!

The kids wanted to go see Julie's room
Jake & Shea

Shea LOVED the view

We went for a walk to see the strip at night...
Here we are in front of the Mirage waiting for the volcano to erupt
(and it never did-lol)

We were so happy to have Julie with us

Back to the room...the boys loved looking at the strip at night.
We had a great view of Caesars Palace and they got a kick out of all the limos
lined up when celebrities were checking in

Good Night!
Jake & Ryan took the bed and Shea claimed the roll-away bed
in front of the floor to ceiling window with a strip view

Saturday, December 30th (My 40th birthday)

Good Morning! What a view!

Enjoying the view

Breakfast...

On our way to the monerail for more site seeing

Ryan with his mom and dad

Jake & Julie on the strip

The M&M Store!

...and the Coca Cola Store

Posing with the live statue

Back in our room there was a birthday cake waiting for me from our casino host :)

We took the boys to the dinner at the Rio then they watched the mardi gras show
& caught the beads being thrown at them
After dinner Julie and I went down to the casino and I won $1,000
playing .50 cent video poker - Happy Birthday! Yay!

Sunday, December 31st

Unfortunately Jim woke up in the middle of the night with the flu...
he was sicker than I had ever seen him

Since Jim was in bed for the day,
Julie and I took the boys on a walking tour of the other side of the Strip
They loved the Hotels


Back to check on Jim and he was up for a walk...

We got the boys some ice cream

YUM!

Julie flew home as the New Year's Eve parties closed the strip for the night
Jim wasn't up for much partying (or eating), so we got Margaritaville dinner to go and ate it in our room... the boys ate on the ironing board, lol.

They watched a movie in the room & I went down to the casino and celebrated-lol. Back to the room about 11:00 excited for the fireworks that we were "supposed" to have a fabulous view of. At midnight we could see the parying on the strip BUT the fireworks were being let off directly above us on our roof. We could only hear them live as we watched them on TV. It was a lot of fun taking the boys to Vegas even though we didn't get to do everything we had planned because Jim was sick. (We're actually going back in August for more comped rooms
so that the boys can swim in the beautiful pool.)