Our full day in Las Vegas was our last full day of the trip, and as I mentioned in a previous post, it was FULL. The kids and Brian sought out breakfast first thing, and since the kids got to pick it ended up being Subway sandwiches. Then we hit the wave pool and lazy river to get nice and cool before venturing out onto the sweltering sidewalks.
The kids were chomping at the bit to hit M&M World, so we headed across the street to check it out. On the way, we ran into Luigi and Mario (DUDE, those guys must have been hot) and Foxy enthusiastically gave Mr. L a big high five.
A quick snap outside M&M World:
The princess hands crack me up. I think it is on this trip that that became her signature pose.
Anyway, we made our way up four flights of M&M craziness, and Noah suddenly stopped and said, "Wait. This is just a store???" Not sure what he thought he was going to get here... rides? a rotating restaurant? life-size dancing M&Ms? Despite the apparent disappointment, when he got to the rainbow columns of candy, he told me "This is a dream come true." And we did finally find a 3-D movie on the top floor, which the kids all thought was entertaining and fun. We also picked up a violin Christmas ornament (with M&M decals all over it, of course) to commemorate the trip at the holidays and also mark the year Foxy took up that particular instrument.
Then we headed back outside...
...and headed to New York New York, to have lunch at The Sporting House (formerly the ESPN Zone).
To say that Noah loved this place would be the understatement of the century. This kid was in HEAVEN. He sipped his Shirley Temple from a fat black recliner in front of a 20-foot screen surrounded by about a dozen other screens. We watched baseball, softball, monster trucks... you name it. We also ordered "The Tailgater," which turned out to be a huge assortment of ribs, wings, chicken strips, sliders, quesadillas, and spinach and artichoke dip. With some cheese pizza on the side, we had more food than we could possibly eat and we were all veeeeeery happy. But it got better for Noah when he made a quick trip to the restroom. Because you know what they had in there?? TVs at every urinal and above every stall!!!!
After we ate and reclined, we headed up to the arcade upstairs, which was deserted. We had the place to ourselves and engaged in some fierce air hocky and motorcyle racing. And I want to record here for posterity: Brian and I played one air hockey point against each other. Guess who won? ME, that's who! It may be the first time that I beat that man in anything.
At that point, E and I split off and headed over to the Luxor to take in the Bodies exhibit. That was incredible, and we both loved it. We made use of the little audio tour headsets and read almost all of the placards and learned so much.
When we were done, we headed to Excaliber to meet up with the others. They'd gotten tickets to the Spongebob 4-D ride/experience, and we did that and its sister rides for the next hour or so.
From that point on out, I mostly grabbed cheesy posed snapshots. I couldn't use my camera in the bodies exhibit, and my energy was starting to flag. I still managed to have fun, though I was really ready to put my feet up when we finally made it back to our hotel.
Here's a selection of touristy snaps...
E before heading to Bodies:
And E in the Luxor:
The boys with Spongebob:
And the boys outside on the strip:
Finally, the boys outside New York New York (Foxy had gotten a head start back to the room with Brian):
The kids and Brian wandered around a bit more before dinner, and I met up with them to eat at the Rainforest Cafe. Despite eating at the Anaheim RC several times, the novelty has apparently not worn off for my kids. They were happy as clams. I didn't take the camera along to dinner, in part because I'd left my flash in the RV and in part because I was just tired of snapping photos. I wanted to sit and relax and enjoy that last vacation meal and I did. Until Foxy suddenly said that she wasn't feeling good and wanted to head back to the room.
At some point earlier in the day, I had realized that I'd left the violin ornament at the sports place at lunch. Brian went back for it but it was not to be found. So as Foxy and I walked back, she suggested that we duck in and get a replacement. According to her, that would make her feel much better. So we did, and suddenly she was 100% again.
We girls got back to the room and got into PJs. When the boys showed up with Brian, they were happy to announce that they'd stopped to get us a replacement ornament. Whoops! We thought we might get back to return one, but it didn't happen. So now we have two violins, and we paid for three. Good times.
The next day, we got up and made one last visit to the pools. Then we showered and headed out to begin the drive home. It was a long haul and we spent most of the day on the rather bumpy stretch of highway. Our consultation of the GPS led us to make the final push via Highway 58, which has got to be one of the windiest stretches of road in the country. If you ever drive 58 between Buttonwillow and Santa Margarita, picture us creeping along in our 31-foot RV and I guarantee that you'll laugh.
In all seriousness, it was bittersweet to wrap up this vacation. While we were looking forward to getting back to our own home, we'd had such an incredible time on this journey. The trip afforded so many opportunities to relax, to reflect, and to soak up the personalities of our kids at these very fun ages. There were moments of bickering and whining, but they were actually very brief. And there were moments of RV head-scratching, like the time I showered in the rig and accidentally turned off the water flow to the hand-held showerhead (Brian had to shuttle bowls of water to me to rinse off the head-to-toe suds).
But the happy moments -- the memorable moments -- were bountiful. And we surprised ourselves by declaring, to a man, that we loved this style of vacation.
Don't be surprised if you see us rolling out Huckleberry in another RV in the not too distant future...
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