Birthday in Las Vegas

Steve's brother, Jim, who lives in South Carolina called Steve Tuesday night to invite us to come to Las Vegas. He was having a work conference there and staying in a nice hotel and said we should come down. I'm not one to make last minute plans, but we thought about it for a couple hours and decided we should go! Wednesday afternoon I dropped the kids off at Steve's parents' house and then picked Steve up from work and then we headed to Las Vegas. We got there Wednesday night and checked into the room at the Palazzo where we met up with Jim. It's definitely the nicest hotel room I've ever stayed in! There were granite countertops, a seperate makeup vanity, a flat screen in the bathroom, 2 beds with another flatscreen, and a living area with a couch and yet a third flatscreen! The drapes were even controlled by a remote! There was a mini fridge filled with all sorts of stuff. Steve was joking that we could have something to "drink" and later we realized that the whole fridge is weight sensitive and computerized so that if you even jiggle anything in there it gets charged to your room! Jim called the front desk to see if there had been any charges and the lady said there had been several! OOPS! Luckily she said as long as we made sure everything was still there we wouldn't be charged.

Thursday we got to sleep in and it was Steve's birthday! We walked through the Wynn Hotel, the Venetian, Treasure Island, and the Bellagio. The Wynn had these huge umbrellas that would move up and down and a big waterfall along with these beautiful real flower arrangements hanging from trees.

At the Bellagio there were 900 pound pumpkins on display along with a talking tree that looked like it should be straight out of Lord of the Rings. There was also a miniature model of the outside of the hotel along with working fountains.

Jim was so nice and sent us to the Bellagio Buffet for lunch for Steve's birthday. There was pretty much everything you could imagine there from salads, soups, and breads, pizza, lamb to ribs, sushi to salmon, and about 20 desserts to choose from. Needless to say we didn't even have to eat dinner that night we were so full!

Jim also got us tickets to the Phantom of the Opera! It was at the Venetian. We were on the 8th row on the floor! The theater was amazing. It was built just for this show and had the "box seats" in the actual theater where the Phantom was supposed to sit along with all the fake life-size spectators. The huge chandelier was in the center of the theater above our heads and even fell down! At one point the Phantom was hanging by his arm from the chandelier over our heads. We also saw a man being hung (which looked real), lightning, fire, fireworks, the boat moving through the mist with huge moving candles everywhere. The actors' voices were amazing! It was a great show!

After the Phantom we went out on the strip to see the Treasure Island show that they do outside, but after waiting over 30 minutes they announced they weren't going to do it because of bad weather! Oh well. Earlier that day we waited for a while to see the Bellagio fountains come on and finally found out that there was a wedding going on so it had been postponed. Oh well, the Phantom of the Opera was WAY cooler!

Friday we got to sleep in again and then we started the drive back home. We stopped in St. George at IN N OUT burger for lunch. As we kept driving and passed through Nephi we saw a big dust cloud across our side of the freeway. We quickly realized a car had crashed and was upside down in the median. There were several cars already stopped. I tried to call 911 but it was busy and I did see several others on their cell phones. We kept driving and we could smell burning rubber when Steve says, "Well there's the problem!" We look over to the other side of the freeway and there is an old brown van going North in the Southbound lanes! He was driving right across from us going at least 60 miles an hour! My heart was beating so fast and I was just looking back thinking I was going to see him hit someone head on. Cars were swirving around him just in time to not get hit. We were flashing the oncoming cars with our headlights to try and get their attention. It was seriously the scariest thing ever! I bet we saw the guy in the van drive the wrong way on the freeway for at least 5 miles. We finally couldn't see him anymore and I hope that he didn't cause another wreck. Our hearts were just pounding forever afterwards.