Vegas

Our three days in Vegas was a ball. A lot of what made it so much fun was the fabulous hotel room, with its huge sunken living room and massive bathroom. You have to understand that I live in a little 100 year old house, and it would take knocking down a couple walls in my house to get a space as wide open as this room. The kids could jump from bed, to bed, to the half wall behind the couch, to the couch, to the big stuffed coffee table, and still not be at the window at the far end. I know this from experience. Just being in the room was a new treat for them. I have quite a few pictures of them dancing around the bathroom, too.



So not only is the hotel amazing because of the room, but then there's the pool.
Any pool will do for Thing 1 and 2, they don’t care too much as long as they can get wet. This one was nice in that it was new and clean and pretty cool, but not as neat as it could have been as we walked by three nice pools with decks on either end that would have been perfect for two little girls to splash around in 1 ½ feet deep water if it hadn’t have been full of lawn chairs for people to sunbathe on. We had to go to the 3.3 foot deep pool, over Thing 2’s head and just reaching Thing 1’s neck. But they were thrilled to spend the better part of a day there. My plan was to take them there the last day of our trip while Jeff did his conference stuff, but by then we had some sunburn going on from the previous day, so I let them play in the fabulous hotel room until around 4:30. They really enjoyed even that time at the pool, as it was on a Monday, less crowded, and so we got to hang out on one of the shallow decks a little more.



We took them to a Cirque du Soleil show, Mystere, and they quite liked that. Thing 1 REALLY liked it, Thing 2 got tired at the end but enjoyed most of it. There was lots of slapstick humor to keep their interest, and lots of fancy costumes with feathers flipping around. Neat stuff.

We had a lot of fun just walking around the corridors between the Palazzo and the Venetian. The girls met the Duchess of Venice, and saw statues of the Blue Men.






Sunday night in Vegas we gave the kids the choice between the King’s jousting tournament and Dinner at the Excalibur ($65 a plate) or the Kung Fu Panda movie. They chose the panda. It all turned out for the best, probably, despite the fact that they would have really enjoyed the dinner and joust, I think, because Thing 2 fell asleep on the hike down to the movie theater, being piggybacked on my back. She woke up about 20 minutes before the movie ended.

So this is our first official day of summer, sleeping in and hanging out until noon in our pajamas. Kristin and her friend are staying with us tonight, so I’ve got to get the toyroom and TV room picked up, but I’m probably going to rather give up on the rest of the house, seeing as how I haven’t even got started on it and it’s now pushing 2 pm and we’re STILL in our pajamas. I did clean the guest bathroom, though, so that’s something. The dining room table doubles as my office space, unfortunately and I just don’t have anywhere to put some of that stuff without losing it, and it’s stuff that needs to be dealt with.
Sigh.

School's out for summer

We were in the car the other day and someone pulled up next to us with some antenna decorations on. I’ve seen plenty of foamy black balls with Mickey Mouse ears, but this one also had a white Mouse glove under that, a pair of red Mickey Mouse shorts under that, and the yellow Mickey Mouse shoes under that, all in a row on the antenna. I told Thing 1 to look out her window to see it and she said, “It’s a Mickey Mouse-ka-bob!”

She had her last day of Kindergarten yesterday, and I’m not sure she’s ready for 1st Grade.

This is Thing 1 with her Kindergarten teacher, sitting on the lap of the aide. It was a wonderful environment, I really liked both the teacher and the aide.



We made the mistake of telling her she’d be going for the full day next year, and she naturally thought that meant from breakfast until bedtime. While it’s not QUITE that long, it still seems like a long time to me and I’m really going to miss my girl. Thing 2 starts Kindergarten in the fall, and I think she’s going to love it. She already knows the teacher, and the room… and I’m really going to enjoy taking the two of them to the same school instead of traipsing up to the university on the odd days.

They had the end of year carnival at the elementary school yesterday and it was wonderful. We thought they might get rained out, but it turned out gorgeous, long sleeve weather, but still very nice. The girls had a great time, and I really enjoyed another chat with the playground moms.




This has been the nicest little group of people who stand outside Mrs. McDonald’s class after it’s over and chat. We are all planning on getting together this summer, and I would be perfectly happy to continue this but I’m afraid everyone will get busy with 1st grade stuff and we just won’t have the time to stand and chat for an hour after school like we do now. Too bad, this has been one of the highlights of my life. And I’m not sure it will be the same in Thing 2’s class. There was just the nicest group of moms in Thing 1’s classmates.

The final party for Thing 2’s preschool was today, and it was nice too, though certainly quieter than the major event that was the elementary school party. Every event, though, Thing 2 informs me was The Best Day of Her Life…