Vegas, Baby!

Last weekend I went to Vegas for the first time in about 4 years. It was great fun :-) I'll post pictures when I get some. Not used to having a camera yet, so I'm afraid it spent the whole trip in my bag and never got used, poor little thing. Anyways, we left Friday morning. There were 7 of us in all, 4 in our car that left that morning, and another 3 that came down later. Our car consisted of me, Kristi (owner of the car) and her friends Ryan and Scotty that both came in from different states for this shindig. Ryan from Georgia, and Scotty from Rexburg, Idaho. The car ride was fairly uneventful, pretty much just getting to know each other as the only one any of us knew was Kristi. But we all got along very well and it wasn't long before we were doing what we do best, making fun of each other. The 3 that came down later were Kristi's younger brother Bryan, his girlfriend Denhi, and another friend, Rome, that all attend BYU. We didn't really hang out with the younger 3 much, so mostly it was just the 4 of us that drove down together.

We stayed at the Wyndham. Its a very nice timeshare condo place just off the strip. The best part was the pool area was open all night long! Since its still 95 degrees at 4 in the morning, I utilized this both nights we were there. Not a lot of sleeping going on in Vegas. The first night we got settled in, chilled at the pool for a while, then decided to go check out the nightlife on the strip. As we were deciding where to go for dinner, we found some guys passing out free admittance to a bunch of the clubs. We were skeptical about this as the clubs on the strip tend to be expensive, but it turned out to be the real deal. Well, for me and Kristi, anyway. The guys had to pay $30. We went to Jet at Ceasar's Palace. It was very, very crowded. But the music was good and we had a great time, even though it was $6 for a tiny bottle of water. The 2 of us that stayed longer ended up getting lost and wandering around Vegas for about an hour or so before we finally found our way to our hotel. Neither of us knew how much it would cost for a cab, and didn't have much cash between us. Walking is not fun after a night of dancing, and I thought I had it bad in heels. But Scotty had it worse, his foot was bleeding where his shoe was rubbing against his heel by the time we got back to the room. Ouch. To celebrate our not getting mugged, we went swimming before bed and crashed the party of a couple who were probably hoping to have the pool and hot tub to themselves for some private time. Heeheehee, bonus!!!

The second day we slept in, and spent more time in the pool. It was too hot to do anything else, really. That evening we all went to the Boston/Styx concert. It rocked!! Styx was first. Those are some energetic old dudes. They were all over the stage and having a great time. Boston was not quite as hyper, but still a good show. I was wondering how they were going to pull it of since their lead singer commited suicide last year. But according to Kristi's little brother, they found their new guy on youtube singing in a Boston tribute band. He sounds JUST LIKE the other guy! I was blown away. A couple of their songs went on a couple minutes longer than they probably should have, but overall still a great show. My ears were ringing for the rest of the night. Temporary deafness is always the sign of a good night, right? We tried to make it back to the strip in time to ride the roller coaster at the New York New York, but missed it by 5 minutes. Silly thing closes at midnight. Scotty had never been to Vegas before and was determined to do some gambling, so we hung out and watched him lose his money for a while. There had been much teasing between the boys and girls about trying to pick up on people while in Vegas. We had been very supportive of the boys' goal to talk to as many girls as possible, and had even scouted out some good targets for them a couple times. They were pretty smooth and did pretty well. But as soon as some hot Australian guys came over to talk to Kristi and I, the boys suddenly decided its time to gamble somewhere else. Punks!! Guys and their fragile little egos. . .

So after another 4 A.M. swim we hit the sack and slept in. I was sharing a room with Bryan's girlfriend, Denhi. Denhi is half Spanish and therefore, very excited that Spain's soccer team was in the Euro finals. We were the first two up, but after our hooting and hollering while watching the game in our room, it wasn't long before everyone else was awake. It was between Spain and Germany, and as I didn't really have a preferrance, I jumped on the Spain bandwagon. They were the underdogs, but won anyway. Yay! After that we hung out for a little while longer, then packed up and reluctantly headed home. There's talk of another Vegas trip in a couple of months, but we shall see if it actually happens. I was a total water-drinking slacker the whole weekend. I believe I dehydrated myself too much and it caught up with me last night, I haven't been feeling too great today. So I've been drinking lots of water, now I'm going to sleep and hopefully will be all better tomorrow.