Vegas, Football & 23¢

This past weekend has made me realize one thing:

I hate being in the car.
And Las Vegas is very far away when you're driving there one morning and coming back the next day.

So, I guess I realized two things.

But, at least we got to stop and see Molly & Christian in St. George along the way.

Molly practically grew up with my family (she even came on family vacations with us), so when Mike and I were looking for our first place to live, Molly & Christian let us live across the hall from them. And we loved it! Until Christian got into graduate school. In Kansas. But, after he graduated, he got a job teaching in St. George, where they have been for a whole month now. He's actually a Professor! Can you believe that? Yes, we give him a hard time and call him "Professor Edwards," which he hates.

Professor Edwards.
Hilarious.

Then it was on to Vegas. Mike reserved us a room in a very nice hotel, but our room wasn't ready when it was supposed to be.

So, we're in Vegas, with nothing to do for an hour and a half. What would you do?

Gamble!

We did some major gambling. Huge. The Everest of all gambling. Those penny slots never knew what hit them. The anticipation as Mike inserted a crisp $1 bill and pushed the red glowing button. As the reels began to spin, my heart quit beating and I quit breathing. The anxiety of waiting to know the outcome of his spin. Would we lose it all? Or could we possibly win?

23¢

Yes, we lost. 77¢. And did you know that if you cash out with an odd-number you can't re-insert it into a machine? We found that one out the hard way, so it was either go to the cashier and collect our 23¢ (and be completely humilated by our wanting to get back 23¢) or keep the cashout slip. Hence, our one souvenir from our trip.

Then we went to the game.

And met up with Mike's brother, Tom, and his girlfriend, Stephanie, and the Steed's.

I'd like to give you a play-by-play of the game, but I know I'd do a horrible job and Mike would just have to correct me, so I'll spare you that little tid-bit. But I do know that UNLV tried to get a 2 point conversion at one point instead of kicking for the extra point. No such luck. We stopped them cold!

I must mention that I do feel sort of sorry for the UNLV cheerleaders. I mean, even if their outfits weren't sparkly and their choreography wasn't full of butt slaps and hair whipping, they'd still have the stigma that they're going to be strippers when they grow up, just because they cheer at the University of Las Vegas. But I guess it's their own fault too, or they would have picked a different school to go to.

But, I divert. Yes, the Utes beat UNLV. 35-15. Go Utes.

Here's a cute picture of Tom (Jessie snuck in there) and Stephanie. The first time we met Stephanie was at the UNLV game two years ago. Makes me wonder when Tom's going to man-up and marry her.

After the game, we went to Margaritaville with Tom and Stephanie. It was loud, but the band was pretty good.

This is what we ate:

The biggest plate of nachos I had ever seen. Yum.

After we inhaled the nachos, we decided to walk over to the Bellagio and enjoy the fountain for a while. As you can see, the fountain quits going off at midnight. And it was 1:00 in the morning. At least we didn't wait too long (thank heavens for the iphone or we would have been there all night).

The next day, Mike and I just got up and came home. So exciting. But at least Mike didn't get pulled over on this trip. That was my biggest worry. We did almost get into an accident going into the canyon because of some idiot in a blue car who wasn't paying attention, but luckily we made it home safe.

To a very angry cat.

Since we were only going to be gone one night, we left her at our house and asked my sister if she could look in on her Saturday night, but then Jenn came down with the swine flu and couldn't drive (she's okay now) so, Cat was all alone. When we came into the house, she wouldn't even look at us.

Such a diva.