Exhile Island

Oh-dear-God! Yep - it's in there. for good. no getting it out. This is more than an amazing feat than you can imagine!!
"A night in the box" that's the future ;)
One shot in and they made it. Jack it up, some paint & wall-paper - a little plumbing & we have "Exhile Island"!!
Yep. It's in. . . . .

Santa Came!

When we got home Christmas eve, rather morning (about 12:20AM) - Santa had already been to our house. The kids were pumped! They opened their stockings, played for awhile and finally crashed about 2AM!

Swimmin' with the Sharks

Well, not exactly . . . . at the Golden Nugget they have a special cylinder aquarium that houses sharks in the middle of their pool with a slide shooting through the middle.
While I was packing up the last AM, JB took the kids for a walk. They found this treasure and hurried back to convince me that it was a good idea to swim in the "heated" pool. So we ate breakfast, hit on a Keno, then went to find JB a swimsuit so that he could join the kids (I was not getting in - we needed a photographer of course)
The kids promised no crying about how cold it was going to be, because it was "warm". Notice the clothing prior to swimming - this is appropriate clothing for this time of year :)
They loved it! They did the slide twice and no time was wasted wading around. Their video going down the slide will be on YouTube - see the link for our channel at the bottom of our blog.

Mirage Volcano & Fremont St Experience

Our last evening was spent watching the volcano explode @ the Mirage, then back downtown for the Fremont experience, dinner & Keno.
The video of the volcano will be on YouTube.

mmmmm - chocolate & pin ball

On the way back to Vegas, we stopped off at Ethel M's chocolate factory. We did the short tour and had a few samples. Very yummy!
Then we went back to the pin ball hall of fame - we got to play some of the games again that we really liked and played some that we didn't have time to the 1st night. There were quite a few good and very fun games.
Then back to the strip to go to see the 3-D M&M movie and to back to the Bellagio to see the Christmas exhibit.

Lake Mead, Hoover Dam & the Colorado River

The water was significantly down. JB saw on a graph at the visitor center that it's about 60 feet low. You can really see it in the panoramic pics here.

Hoover Dam

We got up early and drove over to Hoover Dam. It was only about 45 minutes. We got there before any crowds (which was very nice). It was a bit chilly, but beautiful and amazing. They are in the process of building a bridge across the river to reduce traffic on the dam. That's an engineering marvel! You can see the span of it behind the pic of me, Raven & Luke. There was a monument to the fallen workers while building the dam & also one from the dedication of how the stars & planets were aligned the day of the dedication. See link on the side for more info :)

Day 3 con't - on the Strip

When approaching the Bellagio for the water fountain show - we ran into Mr & Mrs Clause. They were quite the character pair. They were taking pics with folks & Mrs Clause told Raven that she looks different when she's normally sees her asleep :)
We made our way up & down a few blocks of the strip. Took the kids to see an afternoon show - Popovich Comedy Pet Theater @ Planet Hollywood. The up in the Stratosphere Tower (no rides on the very top for us though). I was a nice clear evening. We got up there at sun set and had a really nice evening.
The night ended with bowling downtown @ Jillian's Neonopolis. (It was included in our Power Pass). We ate dinner there, then back to the hotel to crash!

Wax Museum

Here are some of the good pics from Madame Tusseu's:
We have many, many more - you can check out the web album for more entertaining pics :)

Day 3 - 2nd of Power Pass

This was on Saturday. We really enjoyed ourselves this day. We walked down the strip and the kids got to see NYNY, Paris, the Flamingo and much more. Luke was too short for the roller coaster @ NYNY & Speed at the Shara (Raven was tall enough, but since Luke was not she decided not to ride). A part of our pass was Madame Tusseu's Wax Museum - some looked more real than others, but it was totally amazing.