It's been almost a month now since we dropped off the kids at Grandma's and headed to Vegas to meet up with some of our most favorite friends ever! We'd been scheming a reunion ever since the first of two sets of couple friends left KC in August of 2013. Then the other set left last January. But at the time, two of us were preggers, so we decided that in the fall of 2014, we'd meet up in Sin City.
Craig and I flew in late on a Thursday night, while the others arrived the day prior. It was actually cheaper to fly out of Wichita, which worked perfectly since Craig's mom graciously offered to watch our kids. (Thank you, Sharon!!) The six of us rented a two-bedroom suite at Mandalay Bay. Other than being at the end of the strip (which we knew) and having to take cabs everywhere, it was perfect. After landing at 10:30pm Vegas time (12:30 our time), we caught a cab to our hotel, quickly dropped off our luggage and changed our clothes, and headed back out to finally reunite with our friends! They were at Tao in the Venetian and it took us forever to find them in the overly-packed, techno music-playing club, but low and behold, we finally reunited and it was as if we had never been apart! We stayed out until - get this - about 2am (4am our time) and even caught a performance by none other than Nelly. If you even call it that...he "performed" about 2/3 of each of his four hits. Still a ton of fun though! Once we found our way back to Mandalay, we stopped for some crazy-expensive and pretty average late night (early morning) food and Ben may have tried to drink mustard. And let's not forget Mark putting the reminder in his phone so to not forget the momentous and hilarious attempt. By the time we went to bed, it was 4am (6am our time), which meant Craig and I were up for nearly 24 hours. Pair that with being in a time zone two hours behind ours and not being able to sleep past 7am and I definitely paid for it the rest of the trip!
It was the next morning when I realized I had packed plenty of contacts, but they were all for my right eye and none for my left. I don't even know how that happened... (I wear the dailies and had already thrown away the pair from the day prior.) So after freaking out for a few minutes, I tracked down a Lenscrafters on the strip and called my eye doctor in Olathe to ask them to fax my prescription. Luckily, I wear a pretty common prescription and Lenscrafters had them in stock. Craig and I spent the next couple of hours walking 2.5 miles to Lenscrafters. We definitely didn't realize how far it was. And 2.5 miles on the Vegas strip is really much more than that when you have to weave in and out of hotels and cross the street so often. The most fun part of our walk? Random strangers yelling "Go Royals!" every half block when they saw Craig's hat!
That afternoon was spent relaxing and lounging at the pool. Vegas weather in October happens to be pool-perfect. Not too hot, not too cold. It was nice - really nice! - to bask in the sun without having kids to worry about.
On Friday evening, we got dolled up for dinner at China Poblano in the swanky new Cosmopolitan Hotel. This was my absolute favorite meal of the trip because it combined two of my favorite type of foods. It sounds odd, but think Mexican meets Chinese! It was more of a tapas restaurant, so Craig and I shared four different small plates: When Pigs Fly (Chinese barbeque pork), Mongolian Beef Lettuce, Bistee Con Mole Amarillo y Hongos (grilled hanger steak), and Beijing Glass (cellophane noodles & cabbage with a bunch of other yumminess). Oh man, it's making my mouth water just thinking about this food. It was seriously amazing and probably less expensive than a lot of nice Vegas restaurants.
After dinner, we parted ways for awhile. Mark and Hollyn headed to a Cirque du Soleil show, Lauren and I to Planet Hollywood for Britney Spears, and Craig and Ben to a bar to watch the Royals in game 1 of the ALCS. (Don't worry, I had the game pulled up on my SportsCenter app while at Britney.) I was super excited to see Britney and I'm really glad we went, but let's just say this... Britney can't dance like she used to. And you know she's not actually singing. However, she still "performed" all of her hits through the years and we kept joking that if our high school selves would have known we'd see both Nelly and Britney Spears in Vegas in 2014 as a wife and mother of two, we would have never believed it!
We all met up later that evening, but I was pretty exhausted so after watching the Bellagio fountains for awhile, Craig and I headed back to our hotel.
The next day was much of the same thing. The guys wanted to watch some college football, so they headed to Mandalay's Sports Book, while we enjoyed some girl time at the pool. The Royals played that afternoon at 1:00, so we joined the guys to cheer on our team on the big screen. Dinner Saturday night was at an Italian restaurant - Sirio - in the Aria hotel. Good food, but the appetizer and Caesar salad were my faves by far. I'd go back just for that. After dinner, we walked around a little and eventually made our way back to the lounge at Mandalay. We were all pretty shot after a long few days, and since Mark and Hollyn had an early morning flight to catch, we laid low. We headed up to our suite around 11 and I dozed off as a few others played a pretty hilarious game of {adult version} Heads Up.
Since our flight wasn't until 4:30 Sunday afternoon and both other couples had morning flights, Craig and I had most of the day Sunday to ourselves. We hung out at the pool for as long as we could and checked out of our hotel room around noon. After dropping off our bags at concierge, we headed to lunch at Burger Bar, which was connected to our hotel. The burgers there were delish and Bloody Mary's were even better. 2:30 rolled around and it was finally time to head to the airport. We were ready to head home to our kiddos!
We had so much fun during our 2 1/2 day kid-free getaway to Vegas! (Though I will say, many of our conversations revolved around them...funny how that happens!) It was nice worrying about only ourselves for a few days, and even better seeing old friends! We're already scheming for our next trip (Nashville...Napa...Florida with kids...?) and I, for one, can't wait!
Thursday night @ Tao: Reunited and it feels so good!
Friday: Lounging at the pool
Friday night: Dinner at China Poblana & Britney!!
Saturday night: Dinner at Sirio
Sunday: Pool time with the hubs
