Waking up in the resort was so nice. I love camping, but when the sun is shining on your at 6:30 AM its a little hard to sleep in. We didn't have that problem on this trip.
I think we were all out of bed around 8:00, but time was a little fuzzy on this trip. Our phones were giving us time in Pacific Time. But the clock in our car and Derrick's watch were both still set to Mountain Time. Derrick LOVES to give updates on what time it is so he was constantly telling me things like, "Mom it's 9:32." And I'd have to convert that to mean "8:32." Also the clocks in the apartment hadn't been change to Daylight Saving Time so they were an hour behind. I'd read a clock that said 7:32 and have to convert that to 8:32. So yeah, there were a lot of different times to keep track of.
Here's Veronica looking out the porch in the morning.
Brandon went to the store and picked up groceries for our meals for the day. When he came back he made breakfast burritos. The apartment came with pots and pans and lots of dishes so it was easy to cook everything.
Our original plan for this day had been to drive back an hour north of Las Vegas to Valley of Fire State Park. But after all the driving we'd done the day before we realized that NO ONE wanted to get back into the car. Instead I said, "We drove all this way and spent all this money for this resort. We might as well stay here and enjoy it."
So after breakfast we cleaned up we went over to the resorts game room. Brandon taught the kids how to play pool. Charlotte and Lydia showed off their MAD foosball skills that they honed when they were in daycare.
Then we went back to the game room and hung out on the couch for a little bit.
Here's Lydia playing pool.
After an hour or so I dried off and went to the apartment to get the food for lunch. I brought it down to the pool and then picked up BBQ tools from the front office. Lydia helped me get the BBQ grill going and we cooked hot dogs.
It was so much fun to cook the hot dogs right by the pool. I kept wondering what we'd be doing if we'd stayed in Twin Falls. Certainly not this.
I called to everyone to get out of the water so we could have lunch. Here's everyone enjoying lunch. 
Then it was back into the water for more fun.
There'd been other family's at the pool throughout the morning. But for a while we were the only ones at the pool. Brandon and I both got in the water and played with the kids.
We played Sharks and Minnows, Captain Potato Chip, and Marco Polo. This was one of my favorite parts of the whole vacation.
I think in total we were at the pool for 3 hours, but it also could have been 4. The kids could have probably spent another 2 hours at the pool, but I wanted us all to have some down time before our adventures that evening. So we left the pool and went back to the apartment. Brandon went to take a nap in the bedroom. The kids all started out watching TV in separate rooms.
Derrick and Veronica couldn't agree on what to watch. So I suggested they watch Sabrina. Charlotte and Lydia came out too and all four of them watched the last several episodes of Season 1. I took a short nap and then started making dinner.
Brandon had bought everything for taco salad so I took care of getting that ready. When he woke up he was so surprised that I'd made dinner. I was like, "you've been making every meal and picking up the slack for me for weeks while I've been in my awful class. The least I can do is help out with meals on your vacation."
We had dinner on the patio because we could.
After dinner we headed to the Las Vegas strip.
Brandon and I took the kids to the strip in December of 2013. We'd driven from Texas to Utah for Christmas and were going to Arizona to visit Brandon's brother before going back to Texas. We stopped in Las Vegas for the night on our trip between Utah and Arizona.
On that trip we'd taken the kids to the Strip to see the Fountains at the Bellagio and the Mirage Volcano. Veronica had been 3 months old and was strapped to my chest. Derrick was not even 2 and had been in the umbrella stroller. Charlotte and Lydia were a little over 3 and had held onto both my hands.
That trip to the strip had felt slightly on the mis-guided side, but had actually worked out really well. So I wasn't worried about taking the kids, now aged 11, 11, almost 10, and 8 onto the strip. Also I'd heard that the card flippers weren't as prevalent as in the past. I'd even talked to another mom at the pool who had taken her kids to Fremont Street and she said it was fine. That was very surprising to hear so I was kind of curious to see the strip.
Our resort was about 2 miles west of the Luxor. (That's the casino shaped like a pyramid.) Brandon said it was really weird to see a Pyramid in his rear view mirror when he drove to buy groceries that morning. Brandon had no interest in driving near or on the strip so we decided to just drive over to the parking lot for the Luxor and walk north from there.
This set us up for a super long walk on the strip, but walking the strip was basically the only "Vegas" thing we had planned for this trip. So I was just fine with a long walk. Plus the kids have been on plenty of long hikes in the past. This would be like a long, flat hike with LOTS of interesting scenery along the way.
Our goal for the night was to make it to the Mirage for one of the hourly volcano shows. This was over 2.5 miles away.
The kids started out with lots of enthusiasm. They were so excited to walk through the Luxor. It's also pyramid shaped inside the casino so that was cool to the kids.
We left the Luxor and the kids were walking super quick. We had to keep passing people because the kids had so much energy.
From the Luxor we walked to the Excalibur. The first time I went to Vegas was in high school on the trip to Disneyland with the band/orchestra/choir. Our busses had dropped us off at the Excalibur and then we'd basically been turned loose on the strip. So in my mind the Excalibur is the proper beginning place to explore the strip.
We had to walk through the casino floor to get from the side entrance to the front door so the kids got to see slot machines for the first time. They were like, "what's all this?"
From Excalibur we walked on a pedestrian bridge to New York New York. This is when things started to get really busy. Most of the kids were a little overwhelmed. Charlotte kept saying, "I'm not a big city girl. I'm just from Idaho." Lydia was observing a lot, but not saying much. Veronica wanted to stay close to me. And Derrick. Well Derrick was in one of his chipper, social moods. I think his daily life is so chaotic in his brain anyway that Las Vegas didn't really affect him in any different way. He LOVED looking at everything. He said hi to so many people - including the half naked show girls. And he was always excited to see the next cool building.
1. The escalator up to the 4th floor stopped working while we were riding on it. That wasn't a big deal because we walked up the rest of the way, but while we were getting a penny from the penny presser machine upstairs a guy came to fix the escalator. He took the cover off the top and then FELL into the big open space. He landed hard on his leg. He acted like it didn't hurt and hurried to push the reset button that would get the escalator running again. I was like, "umm did we just witness a safety violation. Do I need to fill out paperwork?" Brandon later said he was 1 second away from pulling the guy out of the machinery if it started up again. The kids were all like, "What????" So yeah, no of us will forget that trip to M&M world.
2. The other memorable thing was the elevator ride down. These little country kids thought a 4 story glass elevator was so fun. They even rode it twice.
The east side of the strip from M&M world up to the Venician isn't the most fancy part of town. It's not exactly a rough area, but it wasn't fancy. It's the only section where we saw card flippers, but they left us alone because we had kids with us.
I didn't take a lot of pictures because I was busy encouraging the kids who were gradually losing energy. But here's a random picture I took as the evening got darker.
We FINALLY made it to the Venetian and went inside so the kids could see the Grande Canal Shops.
We were all pretty happy when we found a few benches. We'd walked 2 and half miles and all of us had very sore feet.
We walked around the canal a little bit and then went to find a bathroom.
At this point it was 7:46. The Mirage Volcano which was across Las Vegas Boulevard was scheduled to erupt at 8:00. This was one of the main things we'd come to Vegas to see, but we weren't sure where we should view it from. There was a pretty good spot from a balcony at the Venetian that could work. But if we hurried we could probably be across the street in time.
We decided to make a run for it over to the Mirage. All six of us took off on a quick walk to a sky bridge that would take us across Las Vegas Boulevard. Then we rode an elevator down to street level. And finally we rushed the half block back to the front of the Volcano at the Mirage. We'd MADE it.
Here we are waiting. You can see Veronica was still having a hard time.
The next show started at 8:45. This time it was set to Your Song by Elton John. We loved watching it.
Let's pause and talk about how much I love this fountain. The first time I saw it was when I was 15 years old. I had no idea it was in Vegas until my friends and I walked by it on that choir/band/orchestra trip. I was mesmerized by it. The next time I saw it was when I was 24 when Brandon and I went to Vegas on our second anniversary trip. The next time was when I was 28 on that trip with the kids. And this was the 4th time. Because I've seen it so few times it's something of a touchstone for me every time I see it. Viewing the fountain is a way to remember who I was at each of the ages when I saw it.
I took a video of the volcano erupting, but there are much better versions on Youtube. Here's one.
The video doe NOT show you how hot the flames were. Even though we were standing away from the fence we could feel the heat from the flames. Derrick thought the volcano was amazing and was completely mesmerized. He thought it was a little loud, but he kept watching it.
Charlotte and Lydia thought it was cool too. They vaguely remembered it from when they were three.
Veronica was completely scared. She's been telling us that the flames hurt her sunburn. But I think she was really scared of the volcano. I'm not sure I'd been very clear that this was a fake volcano. Veronica was crying during the eruption and Brandon had to hold her to keep her calm.
I love this picture of how happy Brandon is watching the volcano.
Aside from Veronica's freak out most of us were rejuvenated by watching the Volcano eruption. Also we were excited that now we were on the way back to the car.
We started the walk down to the Bellagio. We made it there at 8:26 and watched the 8:30 show from the far north section of the pool. The music was the vocal part of the "Good the Bad and the Ugly" theme. The kids loved it.
When that show ended we found a little viewing area near the middle and settled in to wait 15 minutes for the next show.
Brandon took this picture of me and the kids while we were waiting.
When it was over we were all happy that we'd stayed for that show. Then we started walking back to the car. Veronica was in a better mood and that was a good thing because we still had at least a half hour walk to make it back to the car.
There were several people dressed up like movie characters walking around taking money for pictures. Derrick had been saying hi to ever single one of them. Somebody dressed like the clown from It walked by and said, "Hey There!" to Veronica. It scared Veronica and for a second I worried that would be the end of Veronica making it through the night, but she just laughed it off. Thank goodness.
As we walked away from the fountain the song, "Don't Stop Me Now" from Queen was playing on over the speakers. It was so fun to hear that up beat song playing.
Veronica wasn't super sad anymore, but she was tired. The whole way back to the car she was complaining about her feet and her legs. When I pointed out the Cosmopolitan Building next the Bellagio and told the kids, "That's where we parked when we came here when you were babies." She said, "WHY didn't we park there this time?"
We stopped for a little bit at this cool water fountain on the North side of New York New York. Veronica was so tired she didn't even want to walk over to feel it.
There were a few fun things on the way back. The Excalibur had a super long moving sidewalk that took us into the building. The kids loved riding on that.
When we were crossing the street from the Excalibur to the Luxor I told Veronica, "You're doing great! You're going to make it! Just keep going!" A middle aged man in front of me said, "Oh thanks that's what I needed to hear." His wife and his friends laughed and so did I.
We made it to the Luxor and we were quite a different group of people than we'd been 3 and a half hours earlier. The kids were walking slow. Everyone was super tired. We weren't in awe of the building anymore. We just wanted to use the bathroom and then walk out to the parking lot.
When we made it to the car I was so happy that I'd thought to stash a box of nutty bars in there before we left the apartment. Those nutty bars were just what we needed to perk us up for the drive back.
We'd parked in the parking lot a little before 6:00 PM. We made it back to the car a little bit before 10:00. (11:00 mountain time.) The parking lot charged $12 for parking that was under 4 hours. We'd missed that by about 5 minutes. So we had to pay $15. But it was worth it for not having to drive on the strip at all.
We made it back to the hotel and the kids immediately changed into pajamas and got in bed. They were so tired. Here's Charlotte and Lydia in their bed. They are pretending to be asleep in this picture. But I went in there a few minutes later to grab something and they were fast asleep.
I made sure to wash everyone clothes (especially mine because I'd been the one sitting on the sidewalk.) It was so nice to have a washer and dryer in our unit. A few months ago, when we were camping in Yellowstone, doing laundry had been a major part of the trip. This time it was barely an inconvenience.
Brandon and I took showers and watched a little bit of TV, but we were pretty tired too so we didn't stay up too late.
Soon we were snuggled up in our bed and sleeping too.
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