Rollin' like the high-rollers

Here are just some of the highlights of our trip to LasVegas!

Matt headed straight to the golf course to meet up with the boys and I headed to the hotel, Bally's.

Breakfast with my Mom and sister Lisa, followed by a little shopping at the new Miracle Mile shops, which is right by the new Planet Hollywood Hotel, having it's grand opening that weekend! My sister and brother in law even saw John Stewart walking around on the strip (he was the MC for the big grand opening party!)

Everyone else arrived, and we had a fabulous lunch in a private room at a restaurant at the Venetian hotel. Our room overlooked the Plaza with other outside shops and restaurants. During one of the shows they were performing, one of the "opera stars" came up to our room and seranaded the crowd from our window. After a great meal, Matt's sister (our photographer for the weekend. . .ha! We were like celebs), headed down to get a shot of all of us at the windows and we all sang Happy Birthday to my brother and the whole plaza clapped after we were done!

We shopped some more, and took a gondola ride with some more fabulous singers serving as our "gondoliers"! We went to the Guggenheim Hermitage museum, then headed back to the hotel to get ready for our evening.

We had great seats for the new Cirque Du Soliel Show "Beatles LOVE". It was amazing. The music made it even better. During the Octopus' Garden song they had a huge white "canopy-like" drape that came over the whole crowd, then and the end it dramatically was swept down into the bottom of the stage!

After the show some went to eat (I seriously was just FULL all weekend!), and we hung around the RIO casino, until we headed over to the club at The Palms casino called Rain. (see my observations of Vegas at the end). P.S. We had a huge Hummer limo for our ride to the RIO. Oh my, we were a little crazy in there. . .even my mom! You basically had to crawl in, so everyone was doing this little dance down the aisle on their knees as they got to their seat!

We stayed up and played some games in my brothers suite and headed to bed around 2am, which by the way would mean that Matt and I were up for 24 hours straight! We were up at 4 am our time to leave our house by 4:45 for our flight from Omaha! Yikes. I haven't done that in a LONG time. I'm too old.

The next morning we had the BEST breakfast buffet. So, when in Vegas, make sure to catch the breakfast buffet at the Paris Hotel called "The Village". Can I just say homemade Crepes to order. mmmmmmm.

We met up at 11am and had a shuttle ride to the Las Vegas Temple for a session. It was wonderful to have everyone there.

We had the afternoon free, but who wants to sleep, seriously!, so we did more shopping at the Fashion Mall by the new amazing Wynn hotel. Most of it was window shopping, but they had some amazing stuff!

We hurried back to the hotel to change for our 7pm reservations at the Palm restaurant in Caesars Palace, another private room, and more amazing food. My brother ordered seafood platter appetizers (shrimp, oysters (I even liked them), and mini crab cakes). I had an amazing New York Strip steak and the best Key Lime Pie ever! Everyone overate and we had a great night, I even made up a "How well do you know Todd game", and we all shared memories of Todd.

We made it over to the "O" show just in time and it was amazing too. Most of it in the water. Fantastic!

We all stayed up and chatted and planned our next few "excuses" to get together activites for next year, and headed to bed late again!

Here are my observations of Vegas:

-I am getting old
-the music at Rain was officially too loud and I seriously thought I was having a heart attack everytime the bass hit
-I could still boogy down just like the "babies" that were there
-girls of Vegas. . .wear some clothes, darling!
-smut and boobs and scantilly clad women run that place
-can you can overindulgence and gluttony?
-we had a great time

I will say this. My brother is one of a kind. He is, as my brother in law Scott mentioned in his "memory" at the restaurant, a provider. He makes sure everyone is taken care of, and treated well. We rode limos, and ate (and ate) at the finest restaurants, and saw the best shows, in the best seats and even had chocolate covered strawberries waiting for us in our rooms when we arrived. Thanks for a fabulous weekend. Now, I will sleep.