hey guys, i am officially on christmas break!!! i know i have been a bad blogger. how about some pics as an apology. ok here are some pics of the christmas parade and capitol lighting.

Finally the rest of the Vegas pics. Ok this is inside the Bellagio. This was on the ceiling...too cool

They also had this little area set up with lots of cool different things, water shooting across and talking trees and other such things.

This is outside the Bellagio, in front of the fountain. This is Drew, his Grandma, and me.

Here are some fountain pics.

Ok here are the last of them. This is Freemont street. There was a cover band playing there that night. They were pretty good.

Every hour they turn on the canopy with lights and music. It is different everytime, but this time it was Queen! I don't know if you can see what is going on in these pictures, but it was really cool. They had all sorts of Queen images going on with the music blasting.

Classic Freemont pics. Gotta have them.

Us!




Here is the chapel where we got married. We took more pics here but none of them came out. Oh well.

THE GREATEST RIVALRY OF ALL TIME!!!!!!!!!!

well at least at my house. the eagles play the cowboys tonight. i am a long time eagles fan and is a huge cowboys fan (shocker). they play each other tonight! they both kicked major butt in their last games. so, it is going to be tense, to say the least, tonight in my home. don't worry though, when the eagles smack down the stupid cowboys all be right with the world.

ok here are some more vegas pics. i guess we are on the third day. it is all starting to run together now. there was a very cute park right across the street from jr's parent's house. so we went there early to beat the heat.

that night we went to the cirque show KA. it was frickin awesome! it is very hard to describe how cool it was. i'll just say that everyone needs to see a cirque show at least once. they are worth the money.

the next day we spent time exploring the strip. this is the wild wild west. it is a trucker casino and hotel. this is where our maid of honor and best man stayed for our wedding. haha. it is sort of a running joke with us. so, elizabeth here is your precious wild wild west. i know you've missed it so.

we made a stop at the hilton. i am sort of a star trek geek. so, i wanted to see the star trek stuff they have at the hilton. we just happened to be there for a star trek convention. hilarious! drew got a stuffed borg bear (you can barely see it in the pic with elvis) if you don't know what a borg is....i won't go into all that. moving on...

We walked from the hilton to circus circus. they said it was a short walk. they lied. we took a cab back. anyway, in circus circus they have a new thing called the adventure dome. it has tons of rides and games inside this huge dome. it was fun and expensive (just like everything in vegas)

pause in the vegas posts....

drew had his first day at a new school today. we all (all 4 parents) walked him into his new classroom and met his new teacher. for those of you that don't know, he is no longer at christ lutheran. he is starting second grade at jefferson elementary school. it is within walking distance from our house. it was very cute. he just went in and sat down at his desk like he had known these people for years. he is a little man. susan was sad that he didn't want a hug or anything. he is growing up soooo fast. i love that he is so independent. there was a little red head girl sitting across from him. so, of course i started imagining their wedding and all their beautiful little children. haha. is that strange?

Well we are back from our week in vegas!! We had a blast. We spent way too much of our time in planes. There was something wrong with each one and i think we were delayed a total of 7 hours for the whole trip. Anyway on to happier subjects.

The first day we went to the bass pro shop. it was frickin huge!!

There was a really cool aquarium just outside of the bass pro shop in the silverton casino.

After that we went to a chocolate factory and took a free tour with free samples. The chocolate was yummy but kind of expensive. Right outside the chocolate factory there is a cactus garden. I never knew there were some many different kinds of cacti.

OK this was day 2. We loaded up Gary's jet skis and headed over the dam to Willow Beach on the Colorado River.

You can see how low Lake Mead is...notice the old water line.

They are building a bridge across the mountains. I don't know if you can see it. It was crazy how they have to move pieces along the wires and add piece by piece.

Willow Beach was so much fun. The water was freezing. It felt like it was from melted snow. This was a weird experience when it was 108 in the desert. There were lots of ducks and they would come right up to you.

We took the jet skis out and they were a lot of fun on the smooth water. I didn't have my camera with me but we saw mountain sheep with huge horns jumping from rock to rock on the mountain.