Our Anniversay. New Year's Eve.

It's time to get back into a solid routine.

I'd like to say that we've been relaxing and playing and enjoying the span of the holidays but in reality, our house has been hit by a nasty cold bug and a few of The Circus as well as The Man and myself have been under the weather for a bit.

It's what The Man gave me for our anniversary, wasn't that that thoughtful of him? ;)

Speaking of our anniversary, as well as the holiday season, we had spent a good solid week sans kids and we were itching to get out of the quiet house for a bit.  Our anniversary happens to fall on New Year's Eve, and living in the Salt Lake Valley, as well as not being a fan of the cold, our options of where to go were limited.

We decided to flee to the south for our anniversary (New Year's Eve) and catch a few shows in Vegas, and hopefully some warmer weather.

We were successful on both counts.

We headed down to Vegas after working half a day on Monday Dec 30th.  We stopped in St. George and met up with my parents for dinner and then made it our hotel in time for a late show.  After the show The Man took me to see Freemont Street, which I'd never seen before.  It was fun seeing the lighted roof down the entire stretch of street, but there were no shows or displays going on like The Man was hoping for; they were too busy getting ready for New Year's Eve which was the next day.  We at a midnight meal in a casino cafe and stayed up way past our bedtime.

The following day we woke to celebrate 4 years of wedded bliss.  6 years together.  We ate breakfast in our hotel's buffet where we met a friendly gentlemen who talked our ears off during the meal.  We were coming down with the nasty cold, and it was hitting The Man a bit harder than it was me, but we hit the strip and wandered in and out of the casinos, looking at the details and themes and decorations.

 We picked up our tickets for a Cirque de Soliel show, rode the New York New York roller coaster and visited the M&M shop as well as the Coca-Cola shop where we found the coolest  activity.

We got to taste test different sodas from different countries, which was a really awesome and disgusting all rolled up into one.

The rest of the day was spent napping, dinner at a Mexican place, and dessert at Serendipity's.

Our show was done by 10:00 and we wandered back down the strip to our hotel, navigating the crowds (all these people celebrating our anniversary with us!).  I grabbed some food court pizza and then we doped up on cold medicine and hit the sack.

 We listened to the pounding of the fireworks outside at the strike of midnight but didn't bother to crawl out of bed to witness it.

I was okay with that.  The booms are the best part anyway.  And being snuggled up with The Man who showed me that love really did exist, when I'd decided that it didn't, was exactly perfect.

New Year's day dawned with the hope of a fresh beginning.  We drove home, taking turns as we fought our colds, and I continued on to get the girls from their dad, spending the entire day in the car.

Finally, our home was full of life again.

To the finish line

It seems I'm always behind on blogging... I still need to cover my sister Kimmy's wedding, being a leader at Girl's Camp, maybe I don't need to dedicate a whole post to it, but Brynn's ear drum burst (poor thing, it really hurts her :( ), our family trip to Raging Water's (which is now Seven Peaks Salt Lake but I don't really want to stop calling it Raging Water's) where I don't have any pictures (I know, what is wrong with me? What good is a waterproof camera if I don't use it?) but my dad, Brent, was an amazingly good sport. And I mean amazingly. And now our awesome 4th of July celebrations.
BUT these things will have to wait.
Right now I'm wanting to talk about something that is NOT near and dear to my heart. But I have such a strong urge to tackle it. I'm not a runner. I could be. On the few occasions where I've joined others on a run (and they have been very few) it hasn't been hard for me at all to slip into a runner's high. I could keep a steady pace forever if I wanted to. But getting me going on running... I just don't like it. Having said that, there are now two things that have landed on my bucket list and I feel I really want to do:
The Dirty Dash
Who wouldn't want to run in a 10K that starts out with this description:
"Have you ever said to yourself, “Marathons are too easy, and Triathlons are for sissies?”
We haven’t either…those races are really hard. Think about it…the first person to run a marathon actually died. HE DIED!...and he probably didn't even have fun along the way!
Well let us introduce you to the new race in town…THE DIRTY DASH. This race puts all other races to shame. The Dirty Dash is a mud run obstacle course where a military boot camp meets your inner five-year-old’s fantasy and subsequently converts boy to man and then…man to swine."

Once I posted on facebook (because it isn't official until the facebook world knows about it, right?) my cousin then introduced me to the idea of "the worlds largest night time running event", the Rock N' Roll Las Vegas half marathon.
I don't know what's wrong with my brain. Calling the dirty dash a 10K hardly counts. Seriously, it's just a giant obstacle course in the mud and I'm down with that! Plus, 10K is only 6(ish) miles. I can wrap my mind around that. And did I mention it's just a big obstacle course in the mud??? Yes! But for some reason, the thought of doing a half marathon suddenly intrigued me when placed before me.
I just listened to a motivational speaker (more of this coming up when I finally get around to blogging about Girl's Camp) about her experience in her first half marathon. It was gruelling to say the least. But her recap of the finish line... plus she got a medal.
I'm going to do it.
And thus I'm embarking on the start of my running career. Which, I might add, will also be the end of it. I just want to check it off my bucket list (and get my medal), I don't need to repeatedly torture myself with it.

New Year's Eve in Sin City or Happy 1st Wedding Anniversary to us

Well... what do you do to celebrate your first anniversary because you never had a wedding (yet) but it's not only month end at work, but year end too so I can't even have the whole day of New Year's eve to go somewhere to celebrate? (Like a BEACH). Well... for two people who hate being cold, and for the fact that it is solidly in the middle of winter, our options for driving somewhere were extremely limited. So we did the only thing we could do... drive south to Vegas. Neither of us gamble but we booked a show and left for a weekend away.

We saw fireworks going off from five of the seven casino tops. I love fireworks! We walked the entire strip (in heels, never again) and now know, if we ever hit Vegas for New Year's eve again we know what are game plan will be, and it won't be walking the entire strip.

The next day we played tourist. We checked out the aquarium at the Mandalay Bay Casino: And checked out the pawn shop from the History channel's "Pawn Stars". I felt so incredibly star struck just by being at that tiny little pawn shop. Pathetic on all sorts of levels but it didn't stop me from taking a picture of myself trying to look tough like they do in the opening of the show ;p I think I need to work on my tough guy look... Drive thru weddings??? Do you want fries with that? We checked out Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville for lunch (hello amazing nachos!).

I seriously think the funnest part of our weekend was chilling at the Rio waiting for the Penn and Teller show to start. We found a little bar nitch and got to play chess on a touch screen table. I want one of those! Even if West did keep beating me...What's better than taking a picture of the Penn and Teller light up poster?
How about taking a picture with Penn himself? He made fun of me for dropping my coat on the floor (hello, I didn't want it in the picture!) and was super nice. I'm 5'9" and was wearing 5 inch heels... I STILL only go up to his chin! That dude is TALL!
And I would highly recommend the show. Loved it. It was mind blowing!

And our last stop of the trip the next morning before heading to St. George to collect the circus from Grandpa and Grandma's... was back to the pawn shop. It had a line down the block the first time we went so we didn't go inside... but wait for first thing Sunday morning and... you get to walk right in, no lines :). And look! We saw this episode:
A huge thanks to the parentals for watching all the circus over New Year's eve for us. Jay got her guitar for her birthday and Brynn got one from her dad for Christmas, so Grandpa was showing them a thing or two.
Happy anniversary to my man. I didn't believe in soul mates... until him.

Blue Man in Sin City

We have determined that taking trips with Wess and Ashley, and Aaron and Megan, are successful and extremely lucky. Proof #1, our cruise (the initial cheap price, the scooter chaos, the snorkeling etc etc etc) and proof #2, our Vegas trip. Wess got a hair brained idea Friday afternoon that we should take a trip this weekend, being Valentine's weekend. He calls West. Who's not a planner, but more of a doer, so he passed the planning on to me. We jumped from going to Mesquite, to Park City, to St. George, back to Mesquite, and then finally Wess and Ashley found discount tickets for the Blue Man Group (yes!) so Saturday morning we headed to Vegas. Crammed into a booth at Denny's. Reminding myself NOT to drink whatever Meg and Ash are drinking. They're both prego.
We bummed the strip all afternoon, peaking into this casino and that hotel. Seeing cool things, and not seeing cool things.

And seeing all together different and bizarre things.

We checked into our hotel (a nice one, just off the strip), where, after I managed to trip and land flat on my arse we grabbed dinner at a dumpy mexican place

with way too much red lighting

and THEN... Oh boy! We made our way to the Blue Man theater.

I LOVE LOVE LOVED them. The way two would just stop and stare at the third if he did something different from them. Oh I cried I laughed so hard. My stomach ached. And miracle of miracles, those discount tickets we bought the night before, were to a sold out show. See, that's what we mean, we have incredible luck when we all travel together.

West and I aren't really into Valentine's. He got a card when we got home that I hadn't even signed, and he had the kids give me a card the day AFTER Valentine's. Considering our lack of enthusiasm for the day, I love that we took this last minute get-a-way for it. If you ever get a wild hair, I would HIGHLY recommend the Blue Man Group. We want to take our kids some day. Did I mention I LOVED it?

P.S. Treasure Island has ruined their pirate show. Skip that part, totally not worth the wait, and certainly not family friendly. Unless you like cheesey jibes and a fake attack over closet space. Yes, closet space.