Year of Vacations - Vegas part 1

This year we have the pleasure of going on three vacations. The first one was a trip to Vegas two weeks ago. In August we will be going to the D.C./Maryland area for Tyler's (Zach's brother) wedding. The last one we will go on will be our yearly trip to Sedona the first weekend in December.

Vacation Number One: Las Vegas...part 1
Why did we go to Vegas? We have never been on a family vacation with just the three of us and Lori & Justin had such a great time there on their honeymoon and there are lots of free things to do there. My parents were super awesome and let us use their timeshare so that we didn't have to pay for a hotel. I think Madie really liked that because it meant she could still have her oatmeal in the mornings and it had this:

and this:

The pool was heated but it was still on the cold side, especially since it was windy and the sun had set behind the buildings. So she mostly played in the spa. She liked touching the water as it came down the rocks. These pictures were from Monday. Yep, the day we got there she wanted to play in the pool (it was right outside our room). She liked it so much that it was the first thing she asked for on Tuesday morning. She asked to play in the pool multiple times each day.

I thought this was a cute picture.

What is she looking at?

The waterfall at the Mirage. This kid LOVES water. Every time we passed by water we had to stop and look (and touch if possible). We went to the Venetian on Tuesday morning to do the gondola ride, but it wasn't open yet. So we went across the street to the Mirage to see the white tigers and the dolphins, but it wasn't open yet either, so we walked back across the street to the Venetian to do the gondola ride and on the way took this picture.

Inside the Palazzo (which is connected to the Venetian) they had an interesting art display.

We finally made it on to the gondola ride, which was something I had wanted to do. Totally NOT worth it! It cost $32 for the three of us (and that's with Madie being free) and it was probably only a 10 minute ride. Although Madie would have liked it to be shorter...or to have been able to walk around the boat. I'm glad that we did it, but we probably won't ever do it again.

Madie enjoyed all the stairs inside the Venetian.

More water...there was lots of water in Vegas.

This was at lunch on Tuesday. There were several older ladies sitting near us and they kept looking Madie and smiling as we were there. We got lots of comments every where we went on how cute she is. I'd have to agree!

This was on the ceiling and one of the walls at the restaurant we ate at. Zach had to take a picture because it is exactly like a wall he designed last semester!

After lunch we finally got to see the Secret Garden & Dolphin Habitat. This was definitely worth the money (about $30 for the three of us...again Madie was free)! The Secret Garden would have been more exciting if any of the animals had been doing anything. I wonder if it was because it was right after lunch time so they were all sleepy? We did get to see one of the tigers in action. It was actually pretty cute because we were standing at one end of the cage where it had been jumping up onto the tree and as we started to walk away toward the other end of the cage the tiger jumped down and it was as if it was following us. It came right up to the edge so Madie could see it really well. 

But most of the animals looked like this the whole time:

And then there were the dolphins. Madie LOVED the dolphins! Since the whole place is based on research and learning there aren't any scheduled performances like at Sea World. However, we got to see them feed the dolphins and got to see them playing with a ball, which Madie thought was hilarious.

It was really neat there. They had three separate pools that the dolphins were in and there were two or three dolphins in each. There was also an underwater viewing area and it was worth the $30 just to watch Madie down there. She would run from window to window (luckily it wasn't very crowded at the time), ask where the whale went (she calls dolphins whales) and then squeal when she's see one. I think were were down there for a good 20 minutes.   

After the underwater viewing we went back up to watch them some more. Seeing how excited Madie got watching the "whales" was the highlight of our trip!

After that we went back to the hotel for some rest time and some pool time. Then we went back to the strip to eat dinner. We ate at a Mexican place inside NYNY called Gonzalez & Gonzalez. It was pretty good. Zach liked it. I ordered a fish taco (which I had never had before) and didn't like it. The salsa was too hot but if I took it off then it just tasted like fish. So I ate the shredded beef burrito off of Madie's plate and it was delicious!
I'll try to get part two of our trip posted tomorrow.