Water Park Fun

Vegas has a lot of parks and many of them have these amazing water features/splash pads that help us last a little longer at the park when its already 90 degrees...where I'm trying to wear them out...at 9am in the morning....that's not too soon to think about nap time, is it?

Excuse the blurriness of some of these.  I'm still playing with the settings on my camera and I wanted to get the water moving in the photos.  My shutter speed was a little slow for my acrobats.

There isn't much to say about the photos.  They speak for themselves.

A Night on the Town

Grammy and Grandpa came through town this weekend and stayed with us on the first stop of their road trip.  The girls were so excited to see them, and even stared out the bedroom window waiting for them to drive up on Saturday afternoon...they wouldn't have had to wait so long had I given my in-laws correct directions to our home.  But that is another story...

They got the girls a new toy-an inflatable jumpy for inside!  Its the perfect size and the girls love it.  It gets used daily and they are constantly trying out new gymnastic skills.

What a grin!

 The slide makes for great flipping!

 

Sunday we went to the pool (no dunking of Juliet-she had a great time!) then after naps headed down to the Strip.  We wanted to do some kid friendly things and that included seeing the lions at the MGM during feeding time.  I looked online for feeding times and we were there at the right time, but it never happened.  We still enjoyed looking at them, and people watching of course.  Its Vegas-the best place to people watch.

So pretty!  

As far as the humane aspect of it, the recording that comes on over the loud speaker says the lions don't live in the habitat, rather they are only in the cage for 5 1/2 hours a day, and come only once over a 2 week period.  They get a bath with baby shampoo before being put on display....so do these lions.

Lion #1

Lion #2

Grandpa planting a seed for future professions.

 

 I was also hoping to show the girls the Wizard of Oz get-up I remember being at the MGM when I used to come to Vegas with my parents, but learned that was demolished about 14 years ago.  Bummer!  

We were now on the hunt for dinner and luckily I saw a sign for Rainforest Cafe...perfect!!!  I was worried we'd be searching all night for something kid friendly and it was right under our noses.  It was the first time we'd been to one.  

A magician came to the table (wanting a tip of course).  I wasn't quick enough to catch his trick on camera, but here you can see how he puts one red ball in Ava's hand. 

You can see it between her middle and ring finger.

And after some "abra cadabra"....

Multiple balls seemed to come from her hand.  Pretty cool! 

 Kylie's trick involved a silver cup and balls---they shouldn't have fit in the cup but they did.

I loved how he involved the girls in his tricks.

We enjoyed a delish meal (even the veggies were fresh), complete with Juliet being extremely upset when they took her plate away when it had a few french fries left on it.  We were busy doing the check and cleaning up and she was eating peacefully and at some point, the waiter came and thought she was done.  It took us a second to figure out what she was crying about.  It was so sad!  I promised her a treat (we had plans to get some anyway) so she felt better.

We walked outside and the freak show really began!

This man was dancing.  It was gross, but of course I took a picture.  His tip jar was shockingly quite full!

Spiderman was there too.  Grammy was trying to get the girls to get in the picture with her-they wanted no part in it.

Superman...again no luck with the girls, except the grown ones walking around town.

We had no idea who/what these people were.

Captain Jack Sparrow.  Ava did give him a high 5!

They did pose with Buzz and Woody....Juliet still wanted no part in it. 

 We also saw Elmo and Sponge Bob as well as Elvis and Marilyn Monroe, but ran out of dollar bills for tips so we kept on moving.

Now it was treat time!!! 

Good ol' M&M world.  This place was pure chaos and these little bags cost Grandpa $25. 

Nah, they weren't excited one bit.

We then made the decision (by we I mean me) to walk to the Bellagio to see the water show.  The Strip properties look a lot closer than they really are, as pointed out by the cab driver who took us back to the MGM when we were done sight seeing.

It was warm and there was a lot of complaining but the candy made up for it when we finally got there.

I barely caught Juliet actually watching the show.  The majority of the time her hand was in the M&M bag.

We took refuge inside in the Bellagio and walked to the conservatory.

Her nose is no where close to this flower, but its still cute.

We walked under the pretty ceiling at reception, but no one really cared-we headed for the cab line and were glad to quickly be back at the van...that cab was the best $10 spent all night!

House Update

We were so close...in fact, we should be in the closing phase now, but alas, God has other plans for us.  The servicing company that Fannie Mae uses for its short sales (I have no idea what this means, but whatever) changed in the last few weeks (to IBM...yes the computer people...don't know how they get involved in short sales, but whatever), so when our paper work go to the very last stage, it wasn't recognized and therefore, we are basically starting over.  Not completely over, but darn close. We've been assured that our paperwork will be expedited and moved to the top of the list, but we'll see.  We were told our offer would be approved within 10 days, and that was back in April. We never really officially heard if it was accepted and here we are 4 months later.  BUT, I'm going to look at the positives:

~We live in the house for a very good "rental" price which is allowing us to save more money to use elsewhere...like to fix our polka dot lawn that Bailey has decorated with her urine.  She now gets to pee and poop in rocks.

~The girls want to share a room so now we have both a play room and guest room!  We found a super cute white twin over twin bunk bed with twin trundle online for a great price.  Yay for shopping!

 

~We're taking the chance and getting our household goods delivered next week. I can't camp in my own house for another who knows how many months, and my girls are getting bored with the 3 toys they have to play with. Its going to be Christmas for them and me!

~The owners, Randall and Kitty, are giving us a little more freedom to do things with the house.  On that note, I'm going to hopefully repaint the UGLY, margarine colored kitchen within the next week.  We didn't ask, but after realizing they don't know what color* their house is, I don't think they'll ever know.  And frankly, I'm greatly increasing the value of the house by covering up this horrid color.

*Randall and Kitty left us, no kidding, 2 dozen gallons of paint in the garage.  They were labeled, and as I found out yesterday while I painted over patch work** not all are labeled correctly.  It wasn't fun figuring out what paint goes where.  He admitted to us they like to paint and have put all sorts of colors on the walls. 

**I don't know how someone can live with giant white patches on their walls for 4 years (Randall admitted to this!!).  LAZY!!!!  He even had a graduation party for his teenage daughter the week before we moved in and let his company see it.  How embarrassing!!

 I'm looking forward to getting settled in, especially so we can eat dinner at the same table.  Yes, the short sale experience is anything but short and its annoying (we knew all this going into it) but in the long run, provided we eventually close and don't have to move on base, its a better choice.

And the Oscar goes to....

This past Saturday, we began our day with a traumatizing trip to the pool.  Dunking Juliet in the water does not rate anywhere at all on her "fun stuff to do with daddy" list, but hey, its cheaper (and EASIER) than taking everyone to swim lessons.  After about two dozen dunkings, she complained of her arm hurting.  She'd grab it and scream like she was in pain.  It didn't look hurt, so we kinda ignored her and chalked it up to her trying to distract us from dunking her in the pool even more.  Nothing had been done to her to hurt it, so Jonathan took her out of the pool and helped her calm down by walking around looking at the trees.  She sat on a lounge chair wrapped in a towel for a good 30 minutes more while the rest of us played in the water.  We went home to have lunch and get ready for naps and Juliet didn't want to eat and continued to cradle her limp little arm in her hand.  She laid on the couch, quietly watching Little Mermaid, holding onto her arm the whole time.  I kept trying to get her to eat and she didn't want anything, not even a treat!  She didn't want me to hold her (she has to have a good reason to decline me of this, which is hardly ever) nor did she want her blanket.  She would drag that sucker all over town if we let her and she constantly sneaks it down stairs when she knows she only is supposed to have it at naptime or bedtime, so I really thought something was wrong.  So we put her down for a nap in which she fought with crying (she NEVER does this-her blanket puts her in a trance and she falls asleep instantly) and we decided that if she woke up fussy from that, we'd take her to the ER.  Maybe she was just super tired from the pool and not eating, so lets see how sleep would heal her.

Well, she woke up about 2 hours later, screaming that her arm hurt so Jonathan took her to the base hospital.  By this time, I'm crying because she's hysterical and does not want to go "to the doctor" and I can't figure out what is wrong with her arm.  It continues to look limp, if she moves it at all she freaks out, but we know its not broken because she can move it around and will go back and forth between saying it hurts or it doesn't hurt, but her overall theme is the same-pain!!

Nothing!  Nothing was wrong with it!  While she was getting her vitals checked by the nurse, she gave Jonathan a high five.  Prior to this, she wouldn't even try to use her arm but now things were looking up and he felt like an idiot.  The doctor came in, looked at it and had her hang on his fingers and...nothing!!  He said there was no medical reason to do an X-Ray and that she was fine.  Juliet came home, as happy as a clam, back to her old self and continued to tell me "doctor fix my arm" and shake her head 'yes'.  The doc did say maybe she had "nurses elbow" which he explained that sometimes when the nurse stretches out an arm of a patient, whatever was messed up gets put back into place and by the time he sees patients, their arms are fine.  However, I doubt that was the case because Jonathan said she fought the nurse big time when she tried to put the little blood pressure/oxygen saturation sensor on her finger, so there was no 'snapping anything back into place' going on.

Look for Juliet on the big screen someday!  She's clearly an excellent actress and even had her momma fooled!

See how quickly she can turn on the tears...

Memorial Service Weekend

We drove up north again this past weekend to attend my grandpas memorial service in Carson City.  It was a celebration of his life, especially the last 20 or so years with his wife Linda.  My mom and aunt did quite well getting up in front of everyone sharing their childhood memories and after the service, there was a 21 gun salute and a flag presentation to Linda.  She let the grand kids each keep shells from the salute and we all ate lunch at her place after wards.  

Aunt Heather with Juliet and Gabriel.

My uncle Tom and Ava.  

Ava tells me "he's the funniest guy on the earth."  He's a goofy kid himself so my girls get along with him famously.

Mason-don't you just wanna eat his face off??

Gabriel...the ladies man!  He's so dang CUTE!!

My grandpa's great-grand kids.

After lunch, some of us decided to take the 30 minute drive up the mountain to south Lake Tahoe, and I'm so glad we did.  The weather was just awesome and the view was amazing.

I just love how the water color changes with the depth change.

Flower children.

Mason mowhawkin' it.  

Sunscreen makes for good hair gel, even after 4 washings with baby shampoo.

Starbucks loyalty right here!

Uncle Tom and Aunt Val at the lake.

Wading out in the lake.  

Ava did NOT stay dry (neither did Juliet, but that is because she thinks she can just pee in her pants when she sees shoreline even if she is NOT in a suit).

Our Family

Kylie~6, Juliet~almost 3, Ava~almost 5

My aunt and uncle, my cousins Michelle and Cheryl, and their men.

Me and my little sister.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After the lake, we met up with my parents to go to the local shooting range and fire our weapons.  My mom has my grandpa's 22 rifle and we have a 357 handgun.

Gun control talk.

Ava did not like the sound the guns made, so she had zero interest in shooting it.

Kylie wasn't strong enough to pull the trigger, so she became a little apprehensive.

But the rifle she had no problems using!

She even figured out how to pop out the shell and load in a new round.

She would have shot this all night!

My mom.

My dad.

My sister.

This is the gun we have under our bed for protection so I figured I should be somewhat familiar with it.  I shot it ONCE when we bought it a few years back.  I'm a chicken with the noise too, but it was fun shooting the VHS re-winder and juice cartons we found in the trash at the range.

We did manage to squeeze in some fun family time despite the reason for our trip.  My sister got to make the 7 hour drive with us and it was great having her along.  After one last family dinner together on Saturday night, we headed back home, and my parents followed to spend a few days with us in Vegas.

Comfy in the MV.

Every time she falls asleep in the car, her face is covered with hair.

Nap time is for (my) sissies.