Vegas, Baby!

In our pre-Michaela days, Mike and I often went to Las Vegas to celebrate his birthday. Vegas is pretty in December – lots of Christmas lights and other festive stuff in the various casinos – and it’s usually relatively empty. It’s also COLD! We decided to take a trip this year, and it was one of our most fun times yet, though it was very different than our kid-free trips.

We stayed in a one-bedroom suite in the MGM Signature. It was really spacious and had a strip view. Michaela slept on a pull-out couch in the living room (she was so excited about her “cool” bed!) and we had a full kitchen in addition to our bedroom and two bathrooms. With that as our home base, we established a routine of eating a leisurely breakfast in the room for the four mornings we were there before going out to have adventures.

Michaela had been to Las Vegas before, but it’s been a couple of years, so she enjoyed seeing the casinos and learning more about the concept of gambling (“people play games and mostly lose their money”). I didn’t do any gambling, and Mike did only the tiniest bit on our last night in town. Instead, we concentrated on doing family-friendly things like KISS mini golf at the Rio, visiting the Ethel M Chocolate Factory (and it’s cool Christmas lights display int he adjacent cactus garden), hitting the National Atomic Testing Museum (I wasn’t that impressed, but Mike liked it), and walking our feet off along the strip. We event went to a magic show because Michaela is fascinated by magic!

We kept Michaela out late–one night we were out past midnight–and she was a champ. She slept until 9:30 one morning!

We went to Red Rock National Park and stopped at an awesome (delicious food, only $8.99 per person when joining the player’s club) buffet at a nearby casino.

My favorite thing we saw was the Neon Museum, which was really well done and super cool to see at night.

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Mike said it was like being in Cleveland, in that we didn’t do a lot of typical “Vegas” stuff, but it was a great trip. We all came back relaxed and with fun memories, which is a win in my book!