Birthday in Vegas

On the Strip: Kim, Emily, Tarja, me, Sanni, Jo, Kim, Andrea

(Excuse the picture quality, just a simple camera for this post)

Our family barely arrived home from cousin Christina's wedding in Vegas and just a few days later I was back on a plane to celebrate my oldest sister, Tarja's, 40th birthday! She decided that she needed to celebrate this milestone in style- girl style! The group of girls included all of us sisters, sister-in-law, and some of Tarja's closest friends.

Trying on Cirque de Soleil hats after the show

 Since Sanni and I live just minutes from each other, we decided to fly together. We wanted to spend as much time with Tarja as possible so we flew to her home in California to take the rode trip with her to Vegas. Just a few hours before our flight out of Portland, we received an email saying that our flight is delayed two hours. No big deal, right? Well, this made us miss our connecting flight which means we would not be able to fly in that evening. With a lot of phone calls to the airlines and figuring out how to make this work, we eventually had to settle on flying into Los Angeles airport instead of Burbank. Although these two airports are not terrible far from each other in distance, the traffic is the issue. This ended up being a big deal because now our sister had to pick us up at midnight and our drive to her house in Simi Valley ended up being a two hour trip due to construction traffic and a detour off the freeway onto a winding road. On top of it all, I was already feeling sick (yes, again) and with the winding roads I ended up throwing up in the car. Thank goodness my sister is always prepared and had a gallon size ziploc bag to contain it. I felt so bad. Here it was 1:30 am and she has to go out of her way to pick us up and I'm throwing up while she's driving. Happy birthday sis!

Luckily a good nights rest made me 100% the next day. We drove to Las Vegas and checked in at New York New York Hotel. Everyone else was already there so we decided to go out to dinner at Brand Restaurant at the Venetian Hotel. The food was VERY good, and fancy. While we were there we spotted a little dance club that was playing 80's music so we got some dancing in there until early a.m.

We started the morning with a run along the strip, Kim Fortuna's idea. The sidewalks were nicely vacant for us to jog our way soaking up some sun and sights. Our girls weekend agenda took us to Ravella Spa at the Hilton. This was my first time at a spa and took advantage of something I've never had done before- a facial. It was so relaxing that I started to nod off and woke to my sudden snorting. We also got pampered with a bento box lunch and a variety of soothing luxuries like robes, the sauna and steam room, whirlpools, and the outdoor pool. Some of the other gals took advantage of a massage and pedicure, but I already can get a great deal on massages at the office Paul works at.

That evening we had to do the popular "all-you-can-eat Vegas buffet". So what made a Vegas buffet different than others? You could choose Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Southern, etc. all in the same buffet. One of my favorites was a custom made salad bar that they make right in front of you! They also had a slew of desserts. I tried a few but still preferred the ice-cream. I still didn't get my money's worth.$Yikes$

Now that our bellies were beyond full, I had to unbutton my pants to watch "Cirque de Soleil" Mystere show. It was similar to one I've seen before- always captivating!

We ended the night with more dancing, this time at a Latin club until we sweated the night away. On our way back to our hotel we happened upon Michael Jackson performing on a bar!

Vegas was so fun! I could have easily spent a few more days there with my sisters!

My flight home was by myself this time with a layover in Salt Lake City. I've had the worst luck with flights on this trip. My expected 3 1/2 hour layover turned into a 10 hour layover! After feeling sorry for myself and crying like a baby, I decided to suck it up and do something. I found a free shuttle that takes you to Temple Square.

 

Assembly Hall

"Dollhouse" view of the temple

It was so nice to tour the grounds and museums again since my last visit when we lived here over eight years ago. There was a lot of stuff I had never seen before, and without kids I could actually take time to read some of our church history. I even went on a tour with a non-member couple and the sister missionaries leading the tour invited me to share my testimony with them. I think this beats sitting at the airport for hours!

The flowers are always so perfectly manicured.

So really my horribly long layover turned into an unexpected good experience....oh, and they gave everyone a $200 voucher for this flight! I've never done a girls trip before. All of us sisters decided we need to make sure to do this more often...at least when each of us turns 40!