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.

Starbucks refreshers

So, while waiting for Dave to pay at target when we were on vacation I saw the Starbucks refreshers in the via packs. All ready to go home with me!!!

The refreshers drinks? Best thing Starbucks has come out with. Low calories, (I usually prefer frappuchinos over hot drinks, so for me, way lower calories!) still has the jolt of caffeine every mom needs, and tastes good!

So of course I bought some. Even after texting my Starbucks obsessed friend to see if we had them in Canada, I still only bought one pack of each. I have no idea why. Also, I didn't make them until I got home so I couldn't realize they actually taste just as good as in the store and I needed to stock up.

So, I mixed it up. I did the lime first, because as much as I love berry the lime refresher drew me in. Now, there is apple in the lime one. I had no idea that was the flavor I was tasting. That was the thing about the mix at home packs, it wasn't as limey as at the stores. I assume it's because I didn't have fresh lime to cut up and put in there. You can really taste the apple, and it's good!!!

Today I mixed the berry hibiscus one up. I really can't compare it to in store because like I said, I just couldn't stop ordering the lime ones and I haven't had a berry one in at least 6 months. But, it was just as good as the lime.

The bonus of these drinks? They don't taste like gross aspartame. I love adding some flavor to my water, but if I drink too much the aspartame gives me a headache and all I can taste is that stuff. I know this stuff isn't a water enhancer, but damn I think all the flavor packs in my cupboard are going to find a new home.



P.s. I was not compensated for this review. Before people think I just wrote this because I was paid. Nope. But hey, if Starbucks wants to send me some more I would be very happy. Especially since you know, Canada isn't as blessed to get them in the stores. :(

I have a problem.

With my baby.

And the fact that she is not a baby.

I'm not sure why I'm having a bit of hard time dealing with that.

I keep thinking, she's still too young to do ____ She can't eat that, only tiny baby bites!

Take the puree train forever!

Nope. Not any more.

I mean. she's kind of running around the house. And when she babbles. There is definitely meaning behind it. I watch her and I'm trying to follow along with her. ah ah ah! ah's!!!

But, back to the food. She managed goldfish on the trip, she's even been managing biting pieces off things (like the pizza crust Austin left at the edge of the table, because oh yeah, she can reach the table now too.) And I've had an omg, no more baby food, no more bottles (ha, I can only hope that's soon) and no more babying the toddler. Yes, toddler.

 

Now I'm off to go cry in the corner.

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.