Las Vegas '09: Part I

Our long awaited Fitzgerald family trip finally came!  For our last family trip we traveled to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and that was when I was about 8 months pregnant with Preston.  This year my parents decided to take us all to the fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada!  And this time it was Nichole's turn to be pregnant.  Here's a rundown of some of the amazing things we got to experience on our trip.

We stayed at the Summer Bay Resort.  The rooms were fantastic!  Very up to date and very comfortable.  Our view and the short distance we were away from the strip was incredible.  Here's a night time view from our 3rd story balcony.  Notice the Vegas Strip in the background!

For convenience and cost effectiveness we bought most of our food for the week at this little know place called Costco.  Here we are enjoying the bounties of our trip.

The first day we stopped by the Ethel M® Chocolate Factory and Botanical Cactus Garden.  We walked through the tour and got our free chocolate (Evelyn got two :), hence the picture, and we enjoyed the beauty of the Cactus Garden.

We swam A LOT, almost every day in fact, but with the weather as hot as it was it was almost out of necessity.  The resort had 3 beautiful pools for us to choose from and by the end of the week we had been in each one at least once.  My dad bought water guns for each of the kids and they had a blast going around shooting each other.

Sunday we dragged ourselves out of bed and went to church.  I had Evelyn go with Eliza to Sunbeams just to see how she would do in the older class and she had so much fun.  She went on and on about it afterwards.  And since we were so close we decided on the way back to stop and take a stroll around the Las Vegas Temple.

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas... Right,  I got a ticket!  The cops really love me there.  But what can you say when you look as guilty as I do...  Oh well...

Monday we had quite the experience.  We took the kids on the shuttle and over to the Excaliber.  The girls LOVED the idea of being in a "real" princess castle.  We took them down to the bottom level where all the games are and let them play.  Evelyn and I played this fishing game and she won!  She picked a little stuffed monkey to take home as a souvenir.  Preston had a good time "playing the games".  I never did put any money in the machines for him but he spent a good long while with Joshua pushing all the buttons on this one machine.

I got to see just about everything on the strip between the two nights that I got out without the kids.  

The first night my group and I got to see a good portion of the North end, some of which included the Mirage, the Wynn and the Venetian (above). 

We walked by Madame Tussuad's and caught a glimpse of Whoopie Goldberg.