Trip to Vegas

Vegas is dear to my heart for one reason only: My sister and her family live there. My sister and I talk on the phone at least weekly and over the past few years I have often lamented, 'If only I had transportation to come visit!' It would break my heart to hear our children talking to each other on the phone, inviting each other to come and play. It was especially painful, because I have always had the time but not a vehicle in which to drive down there. Until now. A few weekends ago, we finally visited my sister and her fam in our new-to-us minivan. The trip down was more pleasant once I let go of the expectation that my kids would sleep since it was late at night. Even though my kids NEED their sleep, a trip is just too exciting to sleep through. I think Noah got about two hours of sleep that night. We arrived at almost midnight and Noah and his cousin Luke stayed up chatting the night away. I went in there for the third or fourth time at one am to tell them to 'GO TO SLEEP!' and then went to sleep myself. At four a.m., Noah came in our room, looking for the playroom. !!!!!!!!! What!!!!!!!!! And the next morning we were up bright and early because my awesome bro-in-law had agreed to do our whole family's dental work. It's amazing how fun dental work is when you are just grateful to finally be getting it done! I was really proud of little Amalie who had to bear through for quite awhile. She was a trooper and got to pick two prizes out of the treasure box.
That night we were blessed to meet up with Brad's parents who were in town for an Optometric Convention that they attend every year. We ate pizza and went swimming. So nice to be with family.
The rest of the weekend we just relaxed, organized, ran errands and just enjoyed being together. It was heavenly for me to spend time with my sister and her lovely family.

We even got to celebrate Abby's 4th birthday with yummy gourmet cupcakes!

And these are the only photos we have from the whole trip! We were having too much of a good time to stop and take pics.

P.S. The minivan worked perfectly! Horray for transportation blessings!