What Happened in Vegas...

I just got back from a fantastic trip to Vegas. I have 7 girlfriends from high school who have all stayed in touch since graduation. Melissa is in Vegas this summer finishing her student teaching and we decided to head down to visit her. It was amazing that we all coordinated our schedules enough to be able to go. Everyone came, it was a blast, and I feel closer to all of them than ever! Here's a play by play of our trip.

We all met at Raquel's house on Thursday evening. Her parents were nice enough to let us borrow their suburban and Raquel was nice/brave enough to drive. And she did awesome driving I must say--even with the crazy Vegas traffic.

Gas prices and a huge gas tank had us a little bummed. But not for long!

So we hit the road with Raquel driving and me up front to help navigate. (Anyone who knows me and my navigation skills is probably laughing right now but I actually did okay with a little GPS help--thanks Erin!) One minor detail that made for some discomfort (but also a good story) is that the air conditioning in the suburban kept going out. Basically it didn't work when we were driving in the city anywhere so we were roasting in the 115* heat. We realized that people probably don't drive cars without air conditioning in Vegas. It was hot. We were sweaty.

Whitney's aunt was nice enough to let us stay at her house in St. George on Thursday night. She had a separate apartment where we all slept. It was so nice and gave us plenty of space and privacy to revert back to 8th grade slumber party giggling all night.

Friday morning we got up, we went to the temple and walked around, then we SHOPPED. Then we drove to Vegas. I navigated in Vegas (yeah believe it) and we found our hotel. It looked SO nice. But we couldn't check in for a few hours. So what did we do? We SHOPPED. I'm generally not a fan of shopping, but it was actually pretty fun with all the girls. When we finally could check in we were so relieved to be out of the heat and in the super nice room that Talisha had gotten for us. I decided to cool my air conditioning deprived feet off in the giant jetted tub and some of the girls joined me.

Friday night and Saturday we wandered around Vegas finding interesting things to entertain us. We were lucky enough to have a shuttle to and from the hotel so we didn't have to drive the hot car around anymore. We ate at the Cheesecake Factory Friday night, which was fantastic! We wandered around Casinos, saw the fountains, saw some female strippers on accident, watched a man get in trouble for public urination, got invited to dance-clubs, ate at the Rain Forest Cafe, saw Phantom of the Opera (which was AMAZING), saw what we suspect was a drug deal (a crazy woman in Arby's went and hung her purse on the light post in the parking lot and then came back inside...Erin is pointing at it in the picture), and Raquel even won some money gambling. To clarify Raquel's gambling story, her boss had given her $20 and told her to play roulette and bet $20 on red. She had the instructions written on a sticky note. So we wandered around this casino trying to figure out what a roulette table was and how to gamble. Finally, I realized what big idiots we looked like so I went and asked an intoxicated woman if she could help us. I said "we are supposed to gamble and we don't know how...can you help us?" She was really nice. She took us to the right place and helped Raquel place her bet. We must have been acting suspicious because the man at the table carded her. When he saw that her licsense said UTAH he realized why we were acting like we were so he let her go ahead. When the thing stopped spinning we all looked at the lady helping us and she told us we had won. So Raquel doubled her money and walked away to cash her chips. It was pretty funny. Here are some pictures of our adventure.

I'm sure we stood out like sore thumbs with our knee length shorts, one piece swimming suits, and shocked faces at some of the scenes we witnessed. But all of us Mormon-Utah girls survived the city of sin and had a blast! I am so grateful for the amazing friends I have. Thanks Raquel, Hali, Mallory, Whitney, Erin, Melissa, and Talisha for a fun weekend! I love you girls and can't wait to see you all again!