A couple of months ago Will told me he would have to go to Las Vegas for work in October. Not one to let my husband run off to Sin City with out a fun-loving-companion I asked if I could tag a long?
He agreed.
So on Monday morning (at 4:00 am!) we left our children in the care of Will's sister, Emily, and headed off to Vegas. We were pretty tired but also excited for a few days of husband-and-wife time. We hadn't been away without the children for a long time...I cannot really remember the last time we went away-away. We also hadn't been to Las Vegas since Wyatt was a brand new baby...and we didn't do a whole lot of sight seeing then.
Vegas did not let us down. The city has changed a lot in the 11 years since we were last here. The strip is packed with high-end shopping malls and new hotels. We stayed in the Cosmopolitan, which is probably the fanciest (in an odd way) place I've ever been. You know all the hotels in Vegas kind of go with their selected theme: Caesar's Palace is all ancient Rome-y, The Paris is...Parisian etc. The Cosmopolitan was...I don't know. It was a homage to old Vegas, indulgence and quirkiness...there was a pair of binoculars in our room...for peeking out our windows and into the windows of the other hotels...weird. All of the decor was deep velvet and sparkling crystal. It was different.
Will did spend most of his time at a Solar Conference (the whole reason we were in Vegas in the first place). I was left to relax and wander around the Strip by myself. It was nice.
One night Will did plan an awesome date night for us. We had dinner up at the restaurant in the Stratosphere it is 107 stories high with a spinning restaurant at the top. We ate a fabulous dinner while we watched all of Vegas turn below us. After dinner we went to a comedy show. It is a little tricky to find evening entertainment in Las Vegas if you aren't interested in seeing 1/2 naked people. The comedy show was pretty great.
This place does not do anything in a small way. The hotels are the size of cities, you cannot eat a small meal, all of the stores are high-end and full of expensive merchandising and all of the people are there to party. Even on a Tuesday night people were parting like it was New Years. And gawking is A-OK. Hotel's have restaurants that face out on to the Strip for maximum "people watching" (and they advertise this point). People were not shy about giving anyone a head-to-toe look over. No one politely averted their eyes in any situation. Pan-handlers on the street, Show girls posing for tips and fellow tourists got the same up-and-down gawk.
It was a fun trip. Will got some important work done, we got to hang out together every evening and I got to walk around kid-free (which was super awesome because I don't know what I would have done when the "we bring girls to you" truck drove by if my children were there...). But after four days were were both ready to go home. The over-indulgent attitude of Vegas had been played out. We both wanted a regular sized meal and to see our kids. Too bad our flight got delayed until almost 10:00 pm.
Emily, and her husband agreed to stay with our kids and run the house while Will and I were away for the last four days. Seriously, Emily deserves a medal for stepping in and taking care of five kids! Emily and Kenny are expecting their first child in the spring and to go from "just-dreaming-about-what-it-will-be-like-to-have-one-child" to "five-children-and-managing-their-daily-schedules" is kind of a big jump. Emily was a champ and the kids loved having her here. When Will and I left on Monday Colter could say about 25 words...most of which were truck sounds we counted as words. When we came back Thursday night Colter was speaking fluent French. Kidding, but he was speaking in full sentences and parroting every phase he heard. Emily ran the Anderson-home show perfectly: children were fed, homework was done, the house was clean, and every kid made it to their various activities. She is awesome! She sent me this picture of Colter one afternoon and I cried for 20 minutes.
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