Trip Day 4

Today Sucked. I am not going to sugar coat it. It sucked with a capital S.

I woke up feeling great, we got everyone ready for breakfast. The kids were getting antsy and I still had to pee. I told Dave to go ahead, I would catch up with them.

Suddenly I got the chills. I could barely grab toilet paper because I was shaking so hard. I tried so hard to get the chills to stop, but I just couldn't. Finally I made my way towards the window with the warm sun shining in on me while I wrapped myself in a fleece blanket. I sent Dave a text telling him not to wait for me. He came back to the room, bundled me up in bed, gave me some aleve and kept the kids out of the hotel room for me. I slept off and on all day. 

(Austin came back to the room for a nap and cuddled with me)

Ordered some of the most expensive room service I've ever had, but couldn't even finish it.

Gathered enough strength to go to the buffet for dinner. And had a few bites then felt sick. UGH.

We watched some TV in our room, and everyone went to bed. Of course because I had been sleeping all day I was awake, so I alternated between reading and people watching out our window.

 

 

Day 2 & 3 roadtrip

This morning, was way too early. Someone decided she wanted to wake up around midnight. That someone was Mackenzie. Dave and I put her in bed with us and she tossed and turned and cried.
And cried. We knew the hotel walls weren't very soundproof so we gave up around 4:30 and started getting ready for the day.

We were all ready to go by 5, which was just as breakfast was put out. Bonus! We ate breakfast and were on the road by 6.

My one thing about this trip, is I knew we would be eating a lot of fast food while driving. I also know that the States have a lot of fast food places we don't have in Canada. I wanted to try them out! I did not want to eat McDonalds for 3 weeks straight. No thank you. So today when we started to get hungry I started looking for new places to eat. We stopped about 12:30 for lunch and we tried out Jack in the Box. Dave got a burger and said it was nothing special. I got the chicken burger, thought maybe it could use more sauce but, I am very much a sauce person.

When planning our trip, my friend Sara offered for us to stay at her place one night. Since we were driving right through her town, we figured why not!

We had such a good night talking and chatting. It was great to visit and catch up since I haven't really spent time with her since highschool. We had a few drinks, and I could not figure out why they hit me so hard. We headed to bed about 10:30

(The amazing view from the guest room)

The next day (Day 3) I figured out why the drinks seemed to hit me so hard. It's because I was getting sick.

I woke up that morning with the chills. I had a sore throat for a few days, but I honestly thought that it was just because of me finishing my penicillin. I mean, there were so many germs going through the house before we left. I thought maybe I had caught yet another germ right at the end of taking the antibiotics, and the sore throat only came on after I had finished because the drugs didn't knock it all out. That's what I thought. That is until Dave decided to share with me that he has had a sore throat for a while and he wasn't feeling so well on day 1 of the trip.

I slept 90% of the drive from Orem Utah to Las Vegas.


But, the bit of time I was awake gave some amazing views. The red rock canyons, so pretty!

 

(we were in Arizona for a whole 25 minutes!)

 

 

Look closely in the background. It's Vegas baby!

 

We finally got into Vegas around 2pm and headed straight to the Mirage hotel to pick up our tickets to the Beatles Love, the Cirque De Soliel show. Then drive down the strip taking in the sights to our hotel, the Excalibur.

Get all settled in our hotel room, and yes, having fun while we were at it.... lol. I have a quick shower then we go wander around the hotel. Prior to the trip Dave and I have been playing MyVegas on facebook. We earned enough points (all free to play the games to earn the points!) for each of us to get an All Day Buffet pass.(Saved us $70!) We went to the MLife desk and picked up our vouchers. Since it wasn't a 24 hour buffet like I thought, but instead a full calendar day buffet, we just hit the food court in the upper level of the hotel. Ate, wandered, then Dave and I had to head back to our room to get ready for our show!!!

Get downstairs and hop in a cab and back to the Mirage we go. The show was amazing. Because of my sore throat I had ordered a fizzy pop drink as well as a bottle of water to drink. I figured I would drink all of it and then some. The show started.... and I didn't even touch my drink. I was just staring and singing and seat dancing a little bit. maybe... lol. I loved the show so much. And I would love to go back, because there is most of the time, so much going on that it's hard to see everything.

After the show, despite being soooo tired from being sick and not sleeping, I told Dave I really wanted to go for a Gondola ride. Off to the Venetian we go.  Funny story. lol. We spend some money in the Casino at the Mirage waiting for the Taxi lineup to die down a bit, finally go get in the line, make friends with some Prince loving ladies, get in a taxi, tell the driver we want to go to the Venetian. He informs us it was right across the street. Boy did I feel stupid.

We walk over to the Venetian, finally figure out where to go for the rides, only to find out they are closed for the night. Super sad face. I tell Dave that I am not walking anymore, I feel like my legs are going to give out. We hail a cab and get back to our hotel. We were in bed by 11pm. As we drove down the strip back to our hotel Dave took a whole bunch of pictures on his cell phone.

We are back!

Home sweet home. I have a lot of writing to do! And a LOT of pictures. Stay tuned!!!

The trip

So, I had great plans to blog about the trip as we go. Then I didn't get online, then no wifi, then, then, then. I just bought a notebook and I'm going I have to blog everything when we are done the trip.

Epic road trip, day 1

Well day 1 is finished. My kids were amazing! I was seriously worried but we didn't start to get the whining and hate of the car until the last 45 min or so. We brought Austin's Nintendo DS, my DS, and Stephanie brought hers. Austin was so excited. We played the multiplayer Mario kart for oh about 1.5 hrs. I made up little lunch boxes for all 3 of the 'kids' and also had a gift bag for each day with books and stuff to entertain them. I didn't even have to bust out our day 1 bags! Austin was content with the lunch box!

Border crossing was super quick. No lineup, no other cars, just a few transport trucks waiting to cross. It's so funny though, being from Ontario and crossing usually into Buffalo from Niagara Falls, this border crossing was so different. I mean, there are signs and lights and big huge security gates. Not so much here. When we cross into the states in Ontario, there is a big "welcome to the US" sign today there was nothing. Again, the lack of vehicles.... A small lineup in Ontario is a wait of less then 20 min. So weird.

But, we did break the van. Lol. About 15 min before we reached the hotel a duck like bird (it really didn't look like a duck but that's about the size it was) flew out onto the road. I let out a little scream involuntarily as we hit it. The thump! oh man. It then went under the van and we kept going. As we were driving down the road I had visions of the front of our van covered in blood and guts. Thankfully when we checked at the hotel we had a few feathers and a broken van. It cracked a piece of the grill and broke off some of the smaller grill pieces. Stupid bird.

We got in the hotel room and of course Mackenzie fell asleep about 15 min before we got to the hotel and woke up, so she wasn't ready for bed, we ended up doing 2 full laps around the hotel trying to tire her out. I had to put her in the playpen and just let her babble to herself for a while with all the lights off. Eventually she fell asleep. It's now 11pm and everyone is drifted off to sleep around me. Off to catch up on some sleep for day 2!!!

Planning planning planning!

We are going to Califonia!

We have a wedding coming up. For a friend I have known all my life. (No really, Our parents were friends before we were born, and we have been friends ever since) She's having a destination wedding in California! Since I am a bridesmaid in the wedding obviously we were going.

The way Dave's work schedule works, he is flown to and from work, but only on his scheduled days. If he needs extra time off, he can take the entire 2 weeks off or pay for his own flight back up to work. So, he has his scheduled week off, his 2 weeks of work off, then another scheduled week off. So, 4 weeks off.

The wedding fell in the middle of his work weeks, so we just figured, hey, if we have 4 weeks off we may as well do Disneyland while we are right there. (the wedding is just outside San Diego) So...... We are making the trip a big huge shebang. Our current plan is to be gone for 19 days. 19 days on the road. Yes, we might be insane.

There is a lot of planning involved in pretty much taking 3 vacations and putting them into 1. I mean, if we have to drive right through Las Vegas, Why not spend a few days there, right? So we have our Vegas vacation, our Wedding Vacation, and our Disney vacation. I mean, where do you even start?

Well, you have to start with somewhere to stay. The bride rented a vacation house near the wedding. Asked us if we wanted to stay there as well. One thing down. Then, I looked into Vegas hotels. Holy smokes. So many options and places! I found a cheap price on one hotel. I booked it, and yay!!! But then I heard from many many people that the hotel has gone downhill and it wouldn't be a very good idea. So, we cancelled it. back to the drawing board. Found another one, stalled on booking, prices went up, I kicked myself. lol. But, it's been booked. Finally we have Disney. In Walt Disney World there are all sorts of hotel choices on the resort. I grew up with Disneyworld being the place to go. I knew nothing about Disneyland. They have 3 hotel options. And yeah, they're pretty expensive. But they have good neighbour hotels there. So we booked into a good neighbour hotel with a pretty cool water park attached.

So yay for somewhere to stay. Then we also had to look at airfare. Yeah, it's expensive. Plus, we're being super awesome and bringing our babysitter to watch the kids during the wedding, the bachelor/bachelorette parties, any other wedding activities, etc. So by the time we bought 4 full priced air fares... it gets expensive. So we're driving. If we drive straight through, it only takes 29 hours. So we needed a few more places to stay. We had to figure out how much we were going to drive each day, where we were going to stay.

It has been a long planning process but we are now in the home stretch. We are driving for 2 days, doing 2 days in vegas, 6 days in the vacation house, a random night we still have no idea where we are staying, then 6 days at Disneyland and drive back home. Stay tuned for a trip recap, because I'm sure there will be quite a few of them and they are going to be awesome.