Viva Las Vegas!

 Last month we went on a trip- just Ben and I- for the weekend to Las Vegas to celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary. We hired a fantastic babysitter who is waiting to go on a mission for our church to stay with the kids. This is the first time since August of 2009 we have been without the kids. I wasn't nervous to leave them, but Oh... it was a lot of work to get ready to leave. I made freezer meals, organized their outfits, arranged play dates to give the sitter a break, coordinated car pools, made emergency lists and notes of our schedules... and of course cleaned the house from top to bottom to prepare. It was well worth it. The kids had a blast with the sitter and she reported that Afton cried only once the entire time we were gone and the boys were great. She asked us how we had such great kids... which made me give a big sigh on relief that they were on good behavior while we were gone.  Anyway, our trip was great.

We decided we didn't want to stay on the Strip, so we booked a resort in Summerlin, which is west Las Vegas,  at Red Rock Canyon Resort. It was a great place to stay. 

Saturday we went to Hoover Dam... I highly recommend the full tour. It was so awesome! I don't have an engineering brain and I was amazed at what they could do in 1935 when they made the dam. 

One of the most amazing things to me was that the hydro powered turbines that they put in have not been replaced and are still working, they only have updated the electrical system to connect it to the power grid. We took the full tour and got to see the turbines, go in the tunnels that they put inside the structure of the dam for workers and for maintenance and it was just really cool to be in the middle of the dam. 

Here is the only picture that we have of us together for the weekend. We are at a vent in one of the tunnels to allow air flow through the dam. 

 This is a picture of the dam from the vent that I took with my camera sticking out of the vent. 

The turbines on the Nevada side... sorry, boring pictures.

 This is a view from the highway that was built across the canyon to bypass the dam. There is a sidewalk along the highway. It was kind of freaky being that high in between a rail and a cement wall with a huge drop off  on one side and zooming cars on the other. The shadow in the picture is a shadow of the highway bridge.

 After our tour, we went to the Strip. I've been there before and Ben lived in Vegas for a year, so we already had low expectations for our experience there.  We went to the botanical gardens at the Bellagio, I remember them being a lot bigger, they had a display for the Chinese New Year, saw a fountain show, walked for a while hoping to find something worth our time to look at.... and then decided  an hour of our lives was enough time to waste there so we headed back to the hotel. There was a movie theatre at the resort, so we decided to see the movie Lincoln. We walked in the theater and a girl yelled, "Hey Mona! Ben!" I froze and thought, 'Who in the world knows us here?" She came up to us and started talking.  It was dark, my brain is going a million miles an hour and I'm not quite sure when in the conversation I realized who it was, but I tried to not act completely clueless and carry on the conversation.  The movie was starting and we decided we would meet up for dinner after the show. We sat in our seats Ben said, 'What's her name?" So I was glad that I wasn't the only one who was totally caught off guard. It was our friend Janae who we knew in Austin before we got married. She married while we were there and then moved to Colorado. We haven't seen her since or kept in good contact. What a small world. What are the chances of us being  in Vegas, the same weekend at the same theatre?  Anyway, we went to the Cheesecake factory afterwards and it was such a fun treat to be with old friends. I should have taken a picture with them, but we were both using our cameras and phones to show each other pictures of our kids. It made me smile. Here we both were a having weekend away from the kiddos and our kids were the topic of conversation most of the time. We laughed as it was almost midnight and we both admitted that our usual bedtime was before 10 p.m. It's great to be in good company.

On Sunday we went to church with Ben's aunt, Mary Ann, who lives in Henderson. We then had lunch with her and her daughter. It was another treat, and again, we should have taken a picture, but she was looking through our camera of pictures of the kids and wanted all the updates. 

Monday morning we went to Red Rock Canyon. I had planned on going hiking, but the weather was cold. It was in the 20's... which was a bummer of our trip. Vegas was in a cold snap and by the next weekend was fore casted to be in the 60's again, but while we were there  it was cold. Anyway, we drove in the canyon  and stopped and looked at the sights. It was Okay, being from Utah, I've seen amazing canyons and natural structures, but this was pretty cool to see anyway. 

We then went shopping at the outlets and flew home. When we walked in the house, our kids greeted us with shooting toy guns. Maybe they didn't think the weekend was as great as we did, although I know they had a blast with the baby sitter and asked for her over and over to come again. 

We have been married eight years and it is amazing to me how time has flown. We laugh that we are on kid number four, parents with responsibilities, have a real job, a house and yard to maintain and everything else that real adults have to do.  It is fun to reminisce about our single days where we could do whatever we wanted whenever we wanted to but we wouldn't trade our lives for anything. I know I said this last year, but I have often thought about this piece of advice that I received from my Seminary teacher in high school. He said that you should never marry someone just because you are in love with them. I thought it was very odd when I heard it, but the longer I am married, the more I understand it. A good marriage is based on so much more than love. It is honestly, trust, respect, admiration, consideration, patience, forgiveness, thoughtfulness, doing something for someone that you don't want to do but you know it will help them or make them happy. It is worrying about someone else and what they are going through. It is being best friends. It is teamwork with a common goal to become more together than you would or ever could do on your own. In our experience, it is always worth it and the benefits far outweigh any cost or personal inconvenience.  Love is a byproduct of the experiences we share together, the good and the hard ones. Happy eighth anniversary to us and looking forward to forever more!

Yep, we pretty much look exactly the same as we did eight years ago. :)