Megan's Water Party

At the end of August Megan turned four years old.  She requested a water party, and she is the only child who could probably ever have one.  So we thought this would be fun to try.

First we decorated baggies - with fish stickers, of course.  Then the kids all got to put in a couple of goodies.

I love paint by water, really love it.  My kids like it too and even Adam can do it.  Since this was a water party I bought a few of these books from the dollar store.

Then it was time to try to collect beads in a pan of water using just your feet.  Some of the kids were more successful at this than others.  They got to trade their beads in for some candy.

I saw this in a Friend magazine - Duck Duck Splash.  So you use a little water sponge ball to play and the kids dip this into a bowl of water.  Instead of saying goose, you say 'splash' and get to squeeze the ball on the person.  The kids thought this was really fun and played for a long time.

Even Adam got a turn to be the "It" and pick someone to splash.

This game probably would have worked better with older kids. oh well.  The kids stood in line and they each had a cup.  The first person was suppose to fill their cup and then dump it behind their shoulder to the next person.  The first team to fill their bowl in the back was suppose to win.  So the little kids didn't seem to understand this game.  Maybe we will try again in a couple of years.

And it isn't a water party without water balloons.  Will was very nice and filled like 80 water balloons.  They were all gone in about five minutes.  But it was a really fun five minutes.

Then it was time for food.  I scoured the Internet for food ideas for a water party.  We ended up with goldfish crackers, watermelon, and cute little quesadillas shaped like fish or ducks.  I think most of the kids liked their light lunch.

Megan loved opening presents.  She got a lot of fun things.

And my favorite was the "water" cake.  Most people put Swedish fish on their cakes on-line.  But I think Swedish fish are not so tasty and I didn't want to be stuck with extra.  So we used blue frosting and mnm's.  I thought it turned out cute.

Happy Birthday Megan!  Hard to believe you are already four years old.  I am glad you liked your party.

Last of Las Vegas

This will be the last Las Vegas post.  There was just so much to see and do there.  It was an awesome place to visit.

We had our choice of chocolate places to visit in Las Vegas.  There is a Hershey's World and an MnM world.  But we decided to go to the fancy Ethel M Chocolate Factory.

We picked this place because you could take a free self-guided tour and watch the workers as they made the chocolates.  We saw some delicious looking fancy chocolate apples and somebody cutting a huge slab of caramel.  It was interesting.  We stopped at the gift shop afterwards and admired all the choices.

Outside of this factory is a cactus garden.  I guess the man who originally ran the Ethel M factory wanted to have a sanctuary.  So he had this built.  It was fascinating. I had no idea there were so many kinds of cacti.  These paper spine cacti reminded me of the cactus ball men in the Nintendo games.

I thought these ones were also really beautiful.  It is kind of hard to tell in the picture but they were tinged purple.  Very pretty.

Another place we decided to go to one afternoon in Las Vegas was to the Siegfried and Roy gardens.  There were dolphins that you could watch through the glass.

Every half an hour was a "water show".  The dolphins did some flips and would get rewarded with fish.  They would also weigh the dolphins and the workers would check to make sure they were healthy.  I did not get a good picture but there was a baby dolphin that was kept in a separate pool with its mom.  It was so cute.

The dolphins were only a couple of feet from me.  I really wanted to touch them but that is a big no no.  They are such fun animals.

Also part of this garden were some big cats.  This was a white lion.

And a white tiger getting a drink.  I didn't know much about these big white cats, so they were cool to learn about and watch for awhile.

We stopped at the gift shop/museum where we could touch these sea creatures.

Anyway, Las Vegas was great.  I am so glad we got a few days to spend together.  Thanks again Ma and Pa Keeler.

The Strip

You can't go to Las Vegas without walking up and down The Strip.  This place is a street filled with extravagant hotels and thousands of people.  It was a fun crazy time.

This is the beautiful Bellagio hotel.

There is a water show every half an hour in front of the hotel.  Anyone walking along The Strip can stop and watch it.  There is music and everything and it changes so you can watch it over and over.  That was pretty cool.

Inside was a beautiful garden with thousands of flowers.  I am standing in front of the American flag made out of flowers.  There were a lot of other things like that too.

Stopping in a hotel for some gelato.  That was one really nice thing about this vacation.  Most of our days were unplanned so we could stop and explore and enjoy taking our time.

This is inside Caesar's Palace.

There is an aquarium for admiring fish while you wait for the show to start.  There is a show with a bunch of mannequins that show the downfall of Caesar.  It was pretty interesting.

Standing outside the Paris hotel.  I stopped and went to the bathroom in this hotel and I had to prevent myself from taking a picture of the sink after washing my hands.  It was decorated so beautifully.  But I did not want to look too much like a tourist.

Many of the hotels had beautiful artwork.  This was on the ceiling of one.  We also stopped inside some art galleries that were in the hotels, but you weren't allowed to take any pictures.

Will stands in front of an Avenger.

We weren't super close to this show but there is a "volcano" eruption a couple of times a night in front of one of the hotels.  I guess you can really feel the heat coming from it but we weren't close enough for that.  It was still cool to watch.

So The Strip is pretty awesome.  I wouldn't want to take little kids though.  There are thousands of people walking around and crazy taxi cabs.  But still fun to see.

Las Vegas

This August was our ten year anniversary.  We spent a long time trying to figure out what we wanted to do to celebrate.  Then Will's parents were very nice and agreed to watch our kids for a few days after the Keeler family reunion.  We didn't want to pay to fly anywhere so we finally decided to go visit Las Vegas.  It is close enough that we could drive from Utah after dropping off the kids.  We had a blast.  It was nice having a few days to ourselves where we didn't have to worry about counting kids or packing extra snacks and diapers.

After checking into our hotel, we decided to go to the Las Vegas temple.  It is so beautiful and very big.  I am glad Will and I were able to do a session together; I usually go by myself while Will watches the kids.  I love the temple.

One touristy place that got great reviews on the Internet was The Mob Museum.  This place really was cool.  You got to see all kinds of artifacts and I learned how the mob began and how it made its way to Las Vegas.

Unfortunately, you couldn't use a flash inside the museum so most of my pictures didn't turn out very good.  Here is one of the actual revolver used by Al Capone.

The mob museum used to be a courtroom.  In here there was a video that talked about some of the famous cases that were tried here.  It seems like a lot of mobsters mysteriously lost their memories when they they were being questioned or lost their lives if they remembered too much.  I am sure Whitney would have been fascinated with this museum and all the creepy videos and artifacts.  But it might be too scary for little kids.  We were there for three hours, so definitely an interesting museum.

This is the V Theater in Planet Hollywood.  It is a huge hotel on the strip.  This is where we went to watch our show.  You have to see a show when you are in Vegas.  Unfortunately, you weren't allowed to take any pictures during the show.  But it was really cool.  We saw a variety show (family friendly) and got to see acrobats and muscle men balancing on each other.  It was like watching a live America's Got Talent when the performers are all really good.  I am glad we got to see a show.
 
There is just so much to see in Las Vegas. Stay tuned for pictures from the Strip next.

Yellowstone

I have never been to Yellowstone, so I was excited when we decided to go there one day as part of the reunion.  I did not know how big Yellowstone is.  You could be there for days and not see everything.

An especially cool area was the paint pots geysers.  These were beautiful colors.

We could see blue and brown and red and orange and all kinds of beautiful colors.

This geyser does not go off very often.  Se we were lucky that it went off as we were traveling by.  A bunch of people rushed down to get closer to it.  Now I can say that I have been misted/sprayed by a geyser.

Of course, we needed to see Old Faithful while we were there.

While waiting for the eruption, which happens about every 70 minutes, we went into the visitors center and the kids got to learn more about geysers and other things in Yellowstone.

The geyser was amazing.  It lasted several minutes.

I thought it looked kind of cool against the cloudy sky background.

While waiting for everyone to gather, the kids made sand/pebble castles.

Some of the grandkids after eating a yummy picnic.

We stopped for some ice cream while heading back to the car.  Adam was nicely fed from everyone's ice cream cone; he got a little messy.

If you see a head cut out board, you have to stop and take a picture.

We saw this as we were leaving.  What an amazing trip to Yellowstone.
More vacation pictures to come.