Ry's Facial Hair and Las Vegas, NV

Ry's Burly Beard

 Ry's Mean Mustache

 Las Vegas, NV

 We were able to meet the Arthur's in Las Vegas for a quick vacation.  

 The hotel had a neat little room designated for little travelers.  The kids LOVED it in there and always wanted to go!

 They had a little activity every day in the afternoon.  They made cute crowns!

 We spent a couple days at the pool

 Asher has NO FEAR when it comes to the water!  He would run back and forth between the pool and hot tub.  

 These 3 plotting who knows what :)

 We went to the M&M factory.  Aiden thought it was pretty neat!

 We did lots of walking around.  The hotels are amazing!

 Asher getting his head stuck...

 Every time we passed a palm tree Aiden would say "look out for falling coconuts!" from Karate Kid

 We also got to go to The Tournament of Kings (sorry - no photography allowed).  Asher LOVED it!  He was clapping and cheering.  Aiden got into it when the Dragon Knight came out (we were on his team).  Grandma and Grandpa came - and to my surprise, Grandpa was getting really into it too!

 The kids favorite place we went was Circus Circus

 The kids got to see some neat little performances (acrobats, etc) and played a bunch of games.  We left with 3 stuffed animals and a water gun - not bad for a few quarters :)

 We ended with a trip to The Rainforest Cafe.  There was one in Tennessee that Aiden loved when he was Asher's age.  It was really fun!

 Yay for the drive home until....

We hit some snowy conditions.  We were DEAD STOPPED on the freeway outside of Flagstaff, AZ (30 minutes from our hotel) for OVER 5 HOURS!!!  (NOT an exaggeration).  I literally went through every stage of grief sitting in that car!  The gas light came on - stage one.  The DVD player died - stage two...on and on.  I had a major melt down (tears and all) and Ry kept telling me to pull myself together - he needed me to help with the kids haha We finally just turned around on the freeway and drove back to a little town on Route 66 (it's dark by now) and stayed at a hotel.  There was a man in the waiting room when I went to check in who asked how long we were waiting on the freeway.  I told him and he said "wow, we only made it 3 hours".  Apparently this freeway madness can't even make it onto the news because according to their road service driving conditions were "fair" - I'd hate to see severe!  They did close the freeways so we couldn't leave until later in the morning.  The rest of the drive was okay until we got to Taos (again - 30 minutes from our home) and IT STARTED SNOWING AGAIN!!  We were NOT going to stop for the night being so close to home, so we drove 5 miles an hour up the canyon to our home.  It took a good hour, but we made it!  The trip had to have something go wrong or it wouldn't be a vacation right??