My parents wanted to go down to Vegas on a family vacation this year, and they had it planned for December 27-30 since early this year. Well, Jamie decided to get married on the 28th, and we thought we wouldn't be able to make it to the trip. Well, it turns out, there was a vacancy during the week before, and my parents got a really good deal on a two-bedroom condo (instead of one-bedroom for the week after), so we were so excited to go. Since we had extra room, we could invite Joe's mom to come with us as well (we had been talking about going to Vegas to go to the Korean sauna for a while).
Well, Joe had the 22-28 off from work for the vacation/anniversary/wedding, but his company was actually acquired by another company on the 21st. So his "vacation" got extended indefinitely, and it was nice to have him home for the rest of the break. :D (Joe wants me to emphasize that the company was "successfully" acquired and that you need not worry about us. This is actually a good opportunity for us since he gets a month off to just focus on the GMAT full-time and also look at other job opportunities later on and still get paid -- as part of the severance -- to be home with us.)
Anyway, Joe, Joe's mom, Alden, Ellie, and I rode in our car, and the ride actually wasn't too bad. Ellie had fun riding in the back with grandma, and she did really well (except for the last 10 minutes before Vegas). She enjoyed eating snack and watching Pororo on the dvd player. Alden had a blast since he got to play on the nintendo ds with very little restrictions almost the whole way. I also put some primary songs on a CD and promised him a certain type of candy for each word he caught (like Jesus, Heavenly Father, etc.). Well, the "music game" didn't last very long, but I think it was a good try. We'll have to try it again on our next road trip. We made a few stops on the way, at Beaver, St. George (just for gas), and then all the way to Vegas (the kids were asleep majority of the time between St. George and Vegas). However, we had to pull over a few times to clean our windshield because it was snowing pretty badly and after that the salt on the road made it impossible to see anything out the car.
Once we got to Vegas, we headed straight to our condo. We got to relax and have dinner. After dinner, it was pretty cold and the kids were still sick, so swimming was out of question. My parents offered to babysit, so Joe and I went out on a mission to find me a Christmas present (I had already shopped for everyone else, and Joe, well, he had other things going on.. lol.). We went to the big outlet mall and made it through the whole outlet mall with 140 shops in less than an hour (we are not big shoppers), and the only stop we made was at Aeropostale, where I found another shirt for Joe, and luckily, I found a shirt that I liked that Joe agreed to wrap for me. :) We also made a stop at Carter's. Alden had been saying this whole time that Santa was going to bring "yellow monkey pajamas" for him, and I was unsuccessful in locating anything in Utah. We found the perfect one, but they didn't have one Al's size, so they called the other outlet on the North side (all the way across town) and put it on reserve for us. Well, since we were done with the outlet within an hour and still had plenty of time left until bedtime, we decided to drive up to the North mall. We picked up Al's pajamas, and finished looking around the North mall in less than 20 minutes (it was cold, and most of the stores, I had never heard of...) That night, Joe, Alden, and I shared the King size bed, and Ellie slept in her playpen. The bed was so comfortable and we all slept pretty well.
The next day, we went over to Mandalay Bay. We heard that they had sharks. Well, turns out, they had a full scale aquarium ($18 a person!), so only Joe and I decided to take the kids in, and my parents and Joe's mom stayed outside to wait for us. It was pretty small, compared to others we'd been to, but it was REALLY nice.. Each tank had its own theme and was decorated to look like the real sea (minus the pollution). Al and Ellie enjoyed looking at the fish, and we even got a free picture with Santa. The kids refused to sit on Santa's lap (or even get near him), so we got an awkward picture with Santa in the middle and all of us packed into a corner of the picture.
Touching sting rays
Al's favorite, jelly fish
Ellie trying to eat the candy from Santa
After Mandalay Bay, we met up with the rest of the crew (my brother and his wife, and Chloe and Dan, the exchange students) at Woo-Chae. Woo Chae is a Korean style all-you-can-eat barbecue, and we LOVED it. Joe and I really wanted to go for dinner since they were serving beef Kalbi at dinner, but my mom said it was out of her budget, so we went for lunch. It was still delicious and we stuffed ourselves with meat (yum).
After lunch, we headed over to the Korean sauna (imperial health spa). We had been to a few while we were in Korea, so we were excited to go again. Alden loved the pools (even though they were pretty hot) and kept saying "swimming." In the sauna part, they had several heated themed rooms, and one of them had several King-size "tubs" full of marbles made of mud clay. It was so nice to relax in there (even though it got pretty hot for the pregnant woman), and Alden and Ellie just LOVED playing with all the marbles. :D
After the sauna, we went over to the Korean market. It is a huge supermarket with small shops and a food court. Joe and I had dinner (beef Kalbi, of course, and black noodles), and we bought some stuff to take home with. (In retrospect, I should've shopped there more thoroughly than I did because I keep having cravings for these Korean foods that are pretty difficult to find here or are expensive to get). Joe also bought me some 팥빙수 (shaved ice with fruits and red bean paste).
The next day, we decided to go tour some of the hotels since Joe hadn't seen them before, and I also wanted to take Al to go see things. We went to the Bellagio gardens and missed the water fountain show by 10 minutes on the way out. We also headed to the Caesar's Palace because I remebered seeing a really big toy store there. Turns out, it was turned into a very weird style clothing shop, so I was really disappointed... Anyway, to make up for that, we found a McDonald's with a playplace. We were probably there for like an hour and a half, and Al had so much fun with big kids going on the slide and running around. For the rest of the day, we just came home to relax.
Bellagio garden
Found this on the way back from McDonald's
Next morning was Christmas, and we wanted to go to church at 9. So we woke up really early to open presents (we even took a Christmas tree there so we could put presents under it). Alden and Ellie were pretty tired, but they were stoked to open presents and find treats inside the stocking. The church was only about 40 minutes long, and we headed home after that. The kids didn't have any problems with the drive back, except for when Al asked to go poop. We had to tell him to hold it for a few minutes so we could find an exit (Beaver), and even then, all the convenient stores and even McDonald's were closed! We had to go to Travelodge and asked at the front desk if we could use the bathroom. Well, by then, it was already too late, and Al didn't have the urge to go anymore, so we drove straight home after that.
Our Christmas tree with presents
Al, showing off presents with his name on. He looks pretty tired..
Ellie, showing off the treats from the stocking
Opening presents
Our speedometer got stuck on the way home...
When we got home, we made a big dinner with ham and dumplings and had a big family dinner with Yeagi and Jonathan too. We opened presents and also got to talk to Yearim who's on her mission.
Opening presents at home. Al gathered up all the presents with his name on (he had been counting them everyday) and put them in this box. Then he got inside too.
The next day, we drove up to Bountiful to see Joe's family. We went to Joe's dad's house to open presents, and then went over to Joe's mom's for lunch. We had wonderful lunch (courtesy of the Korean store in Vegas) with 삼겹살 and 갈비. After presents, we went to visit Joe's grandpa at the rehab center where he was recovering from his hip surgery. Then we went back to Joe's dad's to spend more time with him since we only got to stay for a few minutes before lunch.
It was a really good Christmas, and we loved spending time with the family. Only if it involved less driving, it would've been just perfect! Ha ha.
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