las vegas 2012

my mom requested a week off from babysitting, so we have given her this past week off.  since our hopes of a couples gambling trip couldn't get off the ground, we settled for a family getaway. 

on monday afternoon, we drove to bellingham and hopped a flight to las vegas!  this is now gabe's 3rd trip to vegas, and probably his last until he's 21 and can treat US instead :-)  i know ppl think we're crazy for taking him when we enjoy gambling so much, but for us, it's a "relatively inexpensive" trip (depending on how much is won/lost). i'm a social gambler, so unless i have my partner-in-crime with me, then it just isn't as fun...so lucky chris got to play games in the evening, while gabe and i caught our zzz's.

i had hoped for a sunny getaway, but somehow the vancouver clouds followed us to vegas, and we had rainshowers and cloud for 2/3 days.  fortunately the sun isn't required for retail therapy :-)  all 3 of us came out of the shopping excursion with some new duds (and a new handbag for me!).

in all my trips to vegas i have never been to fremont street, so we started at the golden nugget and walked around.  having been there now, i can say i don't need to go back.  while the bon jovi light show was great, there wasn't much else that appealed to me.  the restaurants are hit and miss (we tried to get into an italian restaurant at the nugget, but it was a 45-60 minute wait), so after randomly exploring other hotels, we ended up at the 4 queens in a divey spot (see below re: food).

while the weather wasn't the greatest, that didn't stop us from hitting the pool!  we had booked the mgm for the pool and "lazy river", but once gabe saw the river/waterfalls, he decided it was just too loud for him.  so we stuck to the regular pool for 3 days.  after 4 weeks of swim lessons, gabe's on the verge of failing.  i did a lot of prep with him prior to the lessons starting and he was doing really well, but the teacher/structure of class setting isn't to his liking, so he refuses to partake. in vegas, gabe still wasn't keen on actually "swimming", but by day 3, he was back to his old self and jumping into the pool without my help.  he even accidentally submerged himself a few times...and i would have to fetch him out of his sputtering predicament.  to my surprise he wasn't scared or traumatized by it all, and kept on "dancing" in the water.  the sun finally appeared on wednesday afternoon, and we got our tan on :-)  we were happy to get a late check-out on thursday, and hit the pool again before our flight home. 

lastly, the food...the past 2 trips with gabe, we've made the trip out to nobu for the chef's choice menu. unfortunately things weren't panning out so well for us. gabe's patience was non-existent, and his eating was dodgy at best. so rather than sit through a 2 hour dinner of food that gabe probably wouldn't even touch, we opted for easy meals.  even at outback steakhouse, gabe refused to eat his cheeseburger and fries because there was pepper on the fries.  fortunately for us, the mgm breakfast buffet was to his liking - french toast and pancakes with syrup, grapes, and soft serve ice cream! he also enjoyed the aria buffet - california roll, pepperoni pizza (without the pepperoni), vanilla gelato. 

that's about the extent of our trip...it was a short 3 nighter, and because we made the pool a priority for gabe, we didn't do any hotel-hopping, or shopping at caesars for that matter :(...just right down to the important business at hand :-)  hopefully one of these days we'll have a getaway without gabe!