Vegas Baby!

February 18, 2016

Vegas Baby!

January 15-17, 2016

Another tournament weekend. We are down in Las Vegas this weekend with the whole family for a soccer tournament for Calvin. It feels like I was just here last weekend. Wait…I was! ;) Calvin is playing on a SECOND soccer team. Yes, that’s right. We are that crazy! It has actually been a great experience for him to get more playing time on a team that is a year older but has less pressure even though it is still very competitive and has a lot of great players. He has enjoyed it. A few of his teammates from Brett’s team are here too so that makes it even more fun. They played in the Silver bracket and ended up taking first place and winning their division! (U14 Silver) We decided to make it more than just a soccer weekend and took the whole family down with us this time. It was MLK weekend so we had an extra day to play. We came down a few hours early and saw a fun “family-friendly” magic show on the strip before checking into our hotel and heading to Calvin’s first game. We ended the first night at Hash-House-a-go-go. Adam has been telling us about this place for years and we knew we HAD to go when we were in Vegas. It lived up to the hype. It was seriously one of the yummiest (and largest) meals I’ve ever had. The portions were outrageously large, and the food was heavy, rich, saucy comfort food. But it was a new take on some old-fashioned classics and the atmosphere was a lot of fun. We brought Jett and Cutter with us while Adam stayed at Jillian’s game so we had 7 kids at the restaurant. A nice, older man came up to us near the end of dinner and told us how impressed he was with how well-behaved our kids were. That seriously made my day! I was so proud of my kids. J

Between games on Saturday we left the boys with Adam and took the girls to the Venetian to walk around and gawk at the fancy shops. We shared a gelato and strolled along the Grand Canal, pretending to be in Venice.

After the evening game on Saturday we headed to our Cirque du Soleil show “Mystere.” We had pretty amazing seats and the acrobatics were impressive. Mikey fell asleep about half –way through (the show didn’t start until 9:30pm) but the rest of the kids stayed awake and watched the show wide-eyed. The stunts were incredible. The outfits were a little skimpy (it is Vegas I guess) but overall I felt like it was more about the acrobatics than the outfits. Hopefully 13-year old Calvin felt the same way.

Sunday we met the Vance’s for church in Henderson and then stopped by the Las Vegas temple to walk around and eat our picnic lunch before driving out to the Hoover Dam. The Hoover Dam was a highlight actually. No one really wanted to go but I forced them. I told them it was important to see something accomplished on such a large scale and to see how you can apply science and math to real life. It is also inspiring to see what mankind can accomplish when we work together. I know it’s not one of the wonders of the world or anything but it is still pretty cool to see this giant man-made dam that can harness the power of a mighty river. Unfortunately we didn’t have time to do the “dam tour.” ;)

We drove back and met the Tillmans, Whitings and the Vance’s at the Wirhtlin’s home in Henderson for Sunday dinner. It was fun to see old friends from Harvest Hills. We talked about old times and made plans to go to Lake Powell this summer. I can’t wait!

Calvin’s second game on Monday went late and we didn’t leave Las Vegas until after 5pm Vegas time. Which meant we didn’t pull into our house in Highland until nearly midnight, making it a long day at the end of a long weekend. I think the kids actually enjoyed our little Vegas getaway.