On the way to Las Vegas we passed through Barstow, which is near where Lance and his family currently live at Fort Irwin. We met them at a Dairy Queen and enjoyed a meal with them. The cousins had fun seeing each other again.
While in Las Vegas we stayed at a timeshare we own at the Grandview resort about 10 miles south of the Strip. Our primary reason for going to Las Vegas was because we were invited to stay at the timeshare free of charge, and we wanted to find a way to sell or rent the timeshare since we hardly ever used it. It was a purchase we made around 11 years ago while we were at an investors conference in Las Vegas. Over the years it hasn't turned out to be the money saver for vacations we thought it would be, so we were hoping to find some options on how to sell or rent it. Instead, we found that in the time since we had bought it they have new options on how to use it along with new benefits. So we upgraded the timeshare in a way that makes it more versatile to use and easier to get our money's worth out of it.
Our accommodations at the resort was a two bedroom suite where each "bedroom" had its own kitchen, bathroom, and living room. It was a great amount of space for our family to use as a home base during our vacation. Cameron's birthday was Saturday, March 31st, on the day we drove out to Las Vegas. One of his presents was a 2000 piece Star Wars puzzle that we worked on together as a family while we hanged out and rested in the suite.
Monday was the day we set aside for visiting the Strip and doing our sight-seeing in Las Vegas. I didn't remember much from my previous trip, and it was a lot of fun walking around and having the kids see all of the impressive signage and lights. We parked at the Fashion Mall (we had gotten a tip from the resort that it had lots of free parking) and started with walking up to Circus Circus where there are lots of arcade and carnival type games under a big circular tent with regularly scheduled circus-type acts in the middle. Later we walked down the Strip to see some of the other famous sites like the fountains in front of the Bellagio, the volcano show in front of the Mirage, and the architecture inside the Paris. The kids got tired from walking, but I think they still enjoyed the cool sights, and we topped the night off with shakes near the fashion mall.
We drove home on Tuesday. It's an eight hour drive and I find that I do pretty well with a drive like that I can stay awake if I have enough snacks and drinks/milkshakes, my music playlist, and occasional bad drivers to get mad at. Waylon doesn't like long car rides and cried a lot on the way home, at least until we played He-man for him on Netflix and he shut right up and went to sleep.
The kids enjoyed being home to play games and play with friends for the rest of the week. Cameron had friends over on Thursday to watch Jumanji to celebrate his birthday. I enjoyed spending the time working on the new theater room we are converting from one of our bedrooms. I have designed the new theater with the same decor as the one in our old house, so I cut and stapled tracks to the walls in preparing for attaching fabric to them.
The Sunday before we all went back to school and work was special because I got to ordain Cameron to receive the Aaronic Priesthood.
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