Vegas Baby!!! Part 1

Day 1 in Vegas consist of lots of time in the water! :) We stayed at the condos which had a lazy river, which I planned on riding around in the whole time, but Charlene didn't like being on top of the tube, so we spend most the time in the other pool.

Charlene learned how to jump into the pool.

Theodore on the other hand had a blast doing his super crawl all around the kiddy pool

The next day we spent walking the strip. Even though it was during the week, it was PACKED! So we decided to leave the stroller and just walk.

First stop: The MGM Grand Lion Exhibit. Charlene who had watched "The Lion King" on the way up on her DVD player in the car, recognized that this matched her movie.

After the Lion Exhibit we took Charlene to M&M World since they are her favorite Candy.

Day 2: After walking part of the strip the first day, Joshua's feet were hurting him. So we went first to get a picture by the famous vegas sign so it wouldn't be busy, then we headed off to the outlet to buy Joshua a new pair of shoes which he has been needing for months.

While at the outlet we let the kids pick 1 thing to do. Theodore picked driving the panda bear car. He was so happy in it.

Charlene picked to ride the carousel. Of all the horses she could have chosen from...she picked the boring bench.

We then headed to the Bellagio to see the beautiful fall garden and the world famous chocolate fountain that is 27' tall.

At the garden they had a talking tree. Guess who was scared of it?

On the other hand...Theodore liked it.

We walked the whole garden and it wasn't until the end I could finally get a picture of Charlene trying not to look out for the talking tree. ha ha

This picture didn't turn out, but its the famous glass umbrellas.

And here is the world famous chocolate fountain. Yum!

After the Bellagio we headed to Caesar's Palace

All of our things on our to do things were free. and that included the Fall of Atlantis Show. This was taken RIGHT before it started. Once it started and there was fire...there was a lot of screaming. Charlene is DEATHLY afraid of fire, so....yeah...that didn't go to well.

We took the free tour of Ethel M. Chocolate factory. The day we went they were making my favorite chocolates: Dove. :)

of course we bought some. We each picked out 3. They were good. :)

Las Vegas - Part 2

Part 2 of Vegas

At California Pizza Kitchen you can set up a little kid craft time (don't know what it is called) for FREE. My friend set up a day to do this since we had never done it before.

STEP 1:

Create your pizza.

Step 2: While pizza is cooking, the kids get a tour of the whole pizza parlor.

Step 3: Color your box

Step 4: Eat your pizza

Here is a picture of all the kiddies and parents. All the kids had fun and at the end, the kids got a little surprise cup with a coupon for free kids meal! So yeah...if you want to do something cheap with your kids and there is a california pizza kitchen around...I would recommend it! :)

Another day we drove 20 minutes to the Las Vegas Temple. It was so BEAUTIFUL! I will have to say...one of my favorites now. :)

While there Theodore would do this "silly" smile as he would pose for the pictures. It was super cute and funny.

Another day we decided to take the kids to Circus Circus to see some acts. We didn't realize that the whole second floor was full of games to play. So we decided to spend $20 so Charlene could play a little. Within 25 minutes she won 6 stuffed animals. she was in HEAVEN! She loves stuffed animals.

Then another day we decided to take Charlene to The Lion King show. She LOVED IT!!! Before we went to vegas I wanted to take her, but then realized in Vegas...Even Theodore would need a ticket (sad times) Well I didn't want to fork out the $83 for a baby that wouldn't even remember it. So I didn't buy the tickets. While we were there, my friend told me that if your a local resident that if you buy 1 ticket, you get 1 free. So instead of taking my friends to the box office, I decided to google to see if by chance they would have a code online. SURE ENOUGH..there was. :) and not just that...it made all the tickets 1/2 off. So we left Theodore with our friends, and had a date night + one. It was well worth every penny!

That concludes our visit to Vegas.

Tonsillectomy anyone?

Since Theodore was born my tonsils have been flaring up every once in a while. So about 3 days a month I couldn't eat/sleep or swallow because my ears hurt so bad from them if I were to swollow. My memory is so bad that EVERY SINGLE TIME I went to the doctors (usually 3-4 times a week) I would forget to bring it up. so I would suffer because I didn't want to make another appointment. Well in September while Joshua was gone to Holland, they just so happened to be acting up and I had remembered to bring it up to the doctor. This was my primary care dr by the way. She looked at the back of my throat, made this weird look and told me I have to see a ear nose and throat doctor right away because of how swollen the left one was (all the way to the other side) since to her it raises alarm for cancer being that big and how long it was bothering me. She wouldn't let me do anything else until this was taken care of. So...on top of my husband being out of town for 3 weeks, I had to deal with making yet another appointment. Luckily our ear nose and throat doctor had an opening the very next day so I could get them checked out. Went in with both my wild animal kids and she looks at the back and tells me I have a high pain tolerance considering that most people would be in the ER for how big they are. I get told that a lot but didn't realize how good of a pain tolerance I had if most people would be in the ER for this. Anyways - this doctor said they didn't look cancerous but because of how long they have been bothering me and how big they were, I had to have them out right away. NEXT WEEK she would like them out. only one problem....my husband was gone for another 2 weeks and its a 2 week recovery....so no. Then of course we were gone the whole month of October so come November 3rd...I got them out. The doctor who had been practicing for 10+ years hadn't ever seen them this big. Apparently my body grows big things, LOL considering when I had Theodore my placenta was the largest my doctor had ever seen in 15 years she had been practicing. ha ha grose...I know. Anyways - here is the picture of my tonsils. They look pretty small to me.

You know....I heard that having your tonsils out as an adult is bad....I didn't realize how bad it was. The first two days, surprisingly I had no problem. Took no pain pills, ate normally, we ran to 5 stores and just did our normal weekend stuff. day 3...pain started to kick in. Took some magic pills, and it was just OK pain. Yeah...by day 4 I was in extreme pain. Couldn't eat, sleep, my ears were hurting every time I swallowed to a point I didn't want to swallow. Day 7 came. Still bad pain but by 11pm, I woke up needing to swollow every couple seconds which is bad enough, but what came next was WAYYY worse. Found out my throat was bleeding for a while and now was THROWING UP blood!!! yeah...if you can't eat as is...try the pain that follows throwing up! I was wishing I was in the hospital!!! OH...it was the worst feeling EVER ALIVE!!! Well....luckily today is day 13 and I can eat very small about 4-5 bites, can talk, sleep through the night, still can't yawn and tomorrow is day 14 and a doctor appointment to find out results of what was wrong with those big bad boys. I am just glad I don't EVER have to experience that pain again. :)

Theodore 10 Months & counting!

This little Man is spending his 10 month birthday sick. :( He has a terrible cold and nasty gooey eye and refuses to eat therefore has been extremely fussy and throwing fits. His update for the past month: got 2 more upper teeth (total of 6 now), crawls super fast, walks assisted with walker/toy, likes to climb over and play with Shelby and his newest thing is when he see's you, he doe this GREAT BIG smile and puts his head straight into the air. Funniest thing we have seen in a while.

New Mexico Road Trip - Day 4

Day 4.

Today we begin our journey home. We decided to go a different way home so we can see more sites. Our first stop was Salinas Pueblo Mission National Monument. They had 3 sites (all 25 miles apart from each other) so we only hit up 2 of them. Here is the first one. You pulled up to see this! What a beautiful site!

We drove to the second site which was much larger area than the other. The stonework was a little lighter color also.

Between this rest and the next we had to take a state hwy for 55 miles. Along that hwy it was really over grown which means birds LOVE to be along the side of that hwy. Well there was one bird that had a suicide wish. I hit it going 70 miles an hour and you know how most birds when hit just fly up over the car? well not this bird...it SPLATTERED and was de-feathered and stuck to the windshield. Lets just say instant dry heaving was going on as I tried to look past it. After Joshua was done laughing at me, He had me turn on the windsheild wipers....which then of course spread blood and feathers so I couldnt see. SICKEST THING ALIVE! After a couple of minutes, all what was left was streaks. Of course after this incident, I had the instint to start yelling at the birds as they would fly up in front of the car "go, go, go, go, ahhhh!!!" Joshua was laughing so hard he was crying. Those stupid birds just had suicide wishes or something. They just couldn't make up their mind on which way to fly! Darn things.

anyways - 4 hours later and a couple stops through border patrol we arrived at White Sands National Park. Oh....it was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen! The sand was whiter than Florida sand and this went on for miles! Here is a picture that I got offline. We only went to the border of it and didn't feel like hiking the kids in sand to the big open area.

Charlene was so excited to see the sand, she started to do summer-salts!

This was Theodore's first time touching sand. We had to convince him a little that it was ok to play with it.

Once Theodore got used to the sand, all he did was crawl around like the wild animal. He would go in circles, stop, play a little then keep crawling. He was so cute!

After soaking up the sun a little. The next stop was suppose to be a old ghost town on the border of NM and AZ but I guess it is only open certain days, so we ended up going to Burger King for the kids to play in the play area for a half hour.

We pulled up into the garage around 9pm that night. We didn't unload anything but just simply take the kids in, put them to bed, put ourselves to bed and then in the morning deal with unloading the car.

What a fun trip. All I have to say is...I love Joshua's job that makes his traveling worth it when we can come with!