Vegas, baby!

We went with Ben & Trista, Greg & Loree and Ben's sisters Sara and husband, Josh from New York and Amy and husband Dan from California to Vegas for five days in December to celebrate Trista's birthday.  It was a special one... ending in zero.   What a fun trip!!  I took my camera but found it was much easier to take snapshots with my phone; it's a hodge-podge of pictures...

We stayed at the Bellagio.  Nice rooms, great service, excellent food options, gambling was good. 

We spent a lot of time out and about - shopping, people watching, we seemed to do a lot of eating, too.  But this was one of the first sights we saw on the Strip.  The Grinch.  We saw more and more of these "characters" throughout Vegas.  There was Mickey, Minnie, Donald, Sponge Bob, Woody & Buzz Lightyear... they were panhandling for money.  I thought they were kind of scary. 

Trista loves Coach.  Has-a-closet-full-of-Coach-purses kind of love.  The sales people really enjoyed our visit.  Everyone but at least one thing :)  We must have spent enough $$$ that we earned Coach water. 

This is the view from our room.  Awesome - the Bellagio fountain in front of the hotel. 

The birthday girl. 

We went to dinner at Aureole, a restaurant in Mandalay Bay.  It was by far the best meal we ate in Las Vegas. 

This is the wine selection at the Aureole.  Seriously. 

Do you see the wine angel floating upside down near the top of picture?

This information is from the restaurant website:  Four stories high and 14 square feet this skyscraper-like structure is a frame of stainless steel fitted with laminated glass. 9,865 bottles are held in the sandblasted Plexigas wine racks and the entire structure is climate controlled to a wine-keeping ideal of 55 degrees F and 70% humidity.  Inspired by the movie Mission Impossible, Adam D. Tihany designed Aureole's wine tower with mechanical hoists to lift wine stewards or "wine angels" up and down the four sides of the tower.  Equipped with an intercom, printer and wine bottle holster, a wine steward travels from the ground floor to the top of the 42 foot tower in about ten seconds.  Really cool.

Brent and I had a great time on our trip.  The kids were in great hands at home with Molley for a few days and then with Gramma Connie and Papa Steve.  But we loved getting texts and pictures from home.  Even better when we FaceTimed the kids.  We showed Lucas the water show view from our room and he thought it was really neat.  Brent opened the vent on the window and they could even hear the Christmas music playing with the water show.  Hannah was giving kisses and trying to lick the Ipad screen :) 

The stunning glass flower structure in the lobby at the Bellagio has 2,000 hand-blown glass blossoms. 

The Conservatory and Botanical Gardens at the Bellagio were decorated for the holidays. 

I loved the penguins... especially the little guy in front playing hockey.

Our last night in Vegas we ate at Battista's Hole in the Wall - a Rat Pack era Italian restaurant.  The boys were in awe of the collection of mini-alcohol bottles.

We also saw a Cirque Du Soleil show and a comedian, but I think the majority of the time was spent enjoying friends and good food.  A common theme of ours - regardless of the geographical location.