Vegas!

Thursday evening we headed to Denver to catch our plane to Vegas!!! My parents were at the Safari Club International sportsman show so we figured there was no better time to go. Collin's dad planned to go as well and then his sister and brother-in-law decided to come along for the party!

We got in around 7pm, waited in the longest cab line I've ever seen, and met up with my parents and A&A at our hotel, the Vdara. It was SOO good to see them after five months apart. :)

We had a drink at our hotel (right in the above picture!) and then went next door to Aria and had tapas for dinner at Julian Serrano. Obviously, tapas are small but dang...these were really small, not filling, and therefore definitely not up my dad's alley! But we enjoyed ourselves and walked to the Bellagio after dinner for some more drinks, of course. We stopped at Petrossian Bar, a little piano bar next to the amazing glass flower ceiling.

All hand blown/made by the same artist, whose name I forget!

Coincidentally, my friend from nursing school (Cati, pronounced 'cot-E') is currently living in Las Vegas so we planned to meet up for a drink...if only we would have left it at a drink....sigh...

Cati and her cousin met us at the Bellagio and after a few drinks my parents and A&A decided to call it a night, or at least head back towards their perspective hotels. Collin, my friends, and I planned to do it big on our first night in Vegas!!

And it turns out that by that, I mean we ended up at Treasures Gentlemen's Club and Steakhouse...I'm sure plenty of people go just for the steaks...

Yup, that whole place is filled with half naked women...and steaks.
I had to go to the bathroom right when we got there so I immediately attempted to take Collin off the market by making him hold my purse and then went to the restroom. It would have been nice if someone had warned me that the women's bathroom also doubled as the "dancer's" dressing room/break room. AWKWARD. "Excuse me ladies, just need to up-chuck my mini tapas dinner that clearly isn't doing its job to soak up the alcohol."
We hung out for a while, Cati and I were semi-recruited to change careers and become little "treasures", and a while later I realized that my ID was missing... that ended our night quickly. We got to our room and according to my memory, I found my ID in my other jeans and we went to bed. According to Collin's memory, I found my ID and then he picked me up off of the bathroom floor and put me in bed.

Either way I went to bed.

The next morning, after trying to wake up at least three times and moving very, very slowly and with lots of prodding, we finally made it to the SCI show which was at Mandalay Bay Hotel.

I was basically a zombie until I got a slice of pizza in me. Totally new person after that!

We spent the day walking around the show which is really too much to explain. It is bigger than you can possibly imagine. We were only on one floor the entire day and didn't even get to see everything.

That night Collin and I met my parents and a group of their friends at the Orchid Bar for a drink (not me!) before dinner. A&A, Collin's dad and Ruth went on a helicopter ride to see the night lights of Vegas! We planned to eat separately but ended up staying at the Orchid longer than expected so all eight of us met up and ate a late dinner.

We walked through a few of the hotels on the way and I took some pics of the asian gardens and chocolate dragon!

This entire dragon, the tree, and the flowers are all made out of chocolate!

The asian gardens.

I didn't have a sip of alcohol the entire day or night!

We didn't have a reservation anywhere and with 8 people + 2 friends we weren't sure where we'd be able to go. After checking a few places we were able to make a reservation at Lupo, an italian restaurant by Wolfgang Puck. It was delish! I had risotto with lobster, shrimp, mussels, and scallops. YUM!!

On Saturday, we went back to the SCI show for part of the day and hung out with my parents. That night Alli had made reservations for Joe's Seafood and Steakhouse for the eight of us plus two of my parents's other friends. Joe's is in Caesar's Palace and they're known for stone crabs!

We got there a little early and decided to get some happy hour oysters while we were waiting for my parents and their friends to arrive. YAY!! Finally. Some amazing, fresh oysters!

Joe's wouldn't seat us until everyone was there and of course my parents weren't able to get there until 20 after. But they didn't really give us a hard time like we expected and everything was great!

We got an appetizer of stone crabs which were delicious!

I also had stone crab bisque and a salad with lobster and shrimp on top...which I ate three bites of and passed around because my unforgiving dress wouldn't let me continue to stuff myself.

After Joes, we said our goodbyes to Collin's dad and Ruth since they were flying out early Sunday morning and the rest of us parted ways. A&A and Collin and I decided to gamble or at least watch other people gamble for a while. On our way, we stopped at a cigar bar, had some awesome mojitos, and people watched some more.

The only picture of the two of us...clearly I wasn't on top of the picture taking and certainly not the video taping.

Sunday was the Superbowl! We met my parents at New York New York to watch the first half and the half-time show. They had to get on the road at that point so Collin and I walked back to the Vdara and watched the rest of the game before we had to head to the airport to catch our flight home. 

We were exhausted to say the least! I never sleep on planes but this was a different story. I was out cold!

We got in around midnight and got to our place after 1am. We lugged our stuff up the stairs and passed out immediately!! I don't think I could ever handle more than a long weekend in Vegas, whew! 

We had a great time and it was SOO great to see my parents!!