11th ANNIVERSARY - 2012

Today is a sick day for me. Who get's bronchitis in the summer? Seriously.....having a cold in the summer is a total oxymoron! Anyway, since I have a little extra time on my hands I thought I would cross some things off my to do list. One of these things is to blog our anniversary trip to Vegas. Um, yeah, our anniversary was back in February. Sigh. Oh well!

The Bubs and I try to take turns planning our anniversary extravaganzas. Sometimes we'll do it together, but a lot of times we alternate years. Because this was my year I started to look at different options the latter part of 2011. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do until I received an email about some upcoming Broadway musicals that were coming to Utah. The Bubs and I are both music nuts. It doesn't matter if it's concerts, musicals, the symphony, we just love to go! It got me to thinking about musicals I still wanted to see and Phantom of the Opera was right at the top. I knew the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas had built a theater specifically for Phantom, so after looking at the prices, I knew where our anniversary trip was going to be. Now, normally I'm not a Vegas person. I mean, c'mon, if you don't drink or gamble Vegas isn't exactly the funnest place. Plus there are only so many times you can walk the strip. AND it's super dirty. But, I am SO glad we went. We ended up having so much fun! We left early Tuesday morning and got in a couple of hours before the show started. We were going to stay at the Venetian, but decided to go across the street to the Mirage as the rooms were a lot cheaper. After getting all fancied up, we headed to the show. They don't allow you to take pics in the theater (which by the was is AMAZING) so this is the best we could before we got chastised!

On our way over to the Venetian

The show was AMAZING. Couple of things I would have done different. We were on the front row so we didn't get to see some things the other patrons did. The Phantom came out of the chandelier (which is in the middle of theater) a couple of times and we didn't know. Also, the chandelier crashing which was pretty cool. One nice thing is that a couple of times the actors would come down onto the main floor and sing. One of the times they were right in front of us.

The next day we bummed around Vegas for a bit and went to the wax museum. I've never been to one before and although it was kinda creepy, we had a blast walking through it. I also got to marry George Clooney and feel up Bradley Cooper. Win win,right?

My dress was obviously off the rack. It was also little too big, but I wasn't planning on getting married again. But, he was there, I was there, it was just pure magic!

This pic was for my little brother, Steve. Growing up we used to call him Stevie Wonder so I cracked up when I saw the wax Stevie Wonder. Of course I had to take a pic of the two of us!

I don't know how Obama can sit there and smile. Obviously there was a state of emergency that required the use of the "red phone!"

There are seriously so many other pictures I could post of us in the wax museum, but then it would REALLY be picture overload! After the museum we headed out to the streets of Vegas which can be entertainment in itself. Every time we go to Vegas there seems to be more and more street performers. It reminds me of San Francisco which I love. Plus, it's free entertainment, right?

I swear this Hello Kitty was a guy. First off, it had to be the tallest Hello Kitty I have EVER seen. Plus it had some pretty sweet break dance moves. I know girls can break dance, but the way it moved you just knew it had to be a guy.

A little shopping. LOVE the M & M factory!

When we were checking out of the Mirage we noticed the different shows that were being held at the hotel. One of them was Love - a tribute to the Beatles by Cirque du Soleil. I've always wanted to see a Cirque du Soleil show and the Bubs LOVES the Beatles (me, not so much) so I thought, why the heck not? The tickets were kind of pricey (especially as we were getting them last minute) but worth EVERY penny. We had so much stinkin' fun and LOVED the show. We both said that while we thought Phantom was amazing, we thought Love was even better. They were huge sticklers about not taking pictures in the theater, so we didn't get anything good.

After Love we headed back up to St. George, Utah where we bummed around for a couple of days and then headed back home. All in all it was a GREAT trip. The weather was perfect - not super warm, but warm enough where you could wear shorts. The shows were awesome and amazingly enough, Vegas was not super crowded. You could actually walk on the strip without running into people. Imagine that! Love ya Bubbies and thanks for going on so many great adventures with me - including the biggest one of all that started 11 years ago!