Mesquite

I finally got my trip to Mesquite!  I've wanted a massage for awhile and Kyle finally took me.  It also helped that there was a car show going on the same weekend.  Friday night we got there kinda late so we didn't get to see any cars.  We did walk around the casinos tho but decided we should go to bed early since our massages were early Saturday morning.  This first picture is of me friday night.  Kyle was messing around with the camera and took some funny ones of himself but I'm sure he would kill me if they made it on the blog. So you ahve to settle for my pics.

 These next pictures are of some of the cars there. I have no clue what they are but they were cool looking.

 The picture below is a car that has cowboy boots are the interior.  They lined the door and the back of the seats and yes that is toilet seat for the seat.  The gear shift was a shotgun too.  It was a pretty cool looking car.

 We took the trailer and stayed in their RV park.  It was pretty nice.  It was really nice to be able to bring the dogs too.  As you can tell the picture below is me and the dogs.  The weather was perfect!  We took the dogs for a walk atleast 5 times a day.  They loved it!  I would totally go down and stay in the RV park again.  It did help to have the car show there so we had something to do during the day since the pools were closed.

 Kyle at the burn out competition.

 This is the car that won the burn out competition.  It was the kids dads car.

Overall the weekend was awesome!  The massages were awesome and we were able to sit in the pool and sauna and have a nice relaxing morning.  The car show was alot of fun.  It was the best show I've ever been too.  The cars filled up the parking lot at the Casablanca and the Oasis.  Thank you Kyle for taking me to Mesquite!!!!

PB Cups

Now I know this picture does not do the justice these homemade peanut butter cups deserve but I had to put them on here.  I LOVE peanut butter cups and when I found a recipe in the Taste of Home magazine I was stoked! I have to admit they weren't as great as I was hoping but they still were good.  I'm going to make them again and use a different recipe.  They are pretty easy and super yummy!

Closet Project

My closet has always been a mess especially since I buy shoes, hats, and scarves that I don't need.  Kyle was tired of my stuff tumbling on to his side. So he built me some shelves to put my shoes on, shelves in the nook to put my sweatshirts and other stuff in, and a place to put my scarves.  So the first picture is how my closet looked before.

 All my winter shoes.  My flip flops are in the shoe boxes.

 The after picture!

I LOVE my closet now.  My shoes are organized and I finally have a shelf to put my suitcase and everything on.  It still looks like a mess but it really is so much better!  THANK YOU KYLE!!!

Christmas

This year for Christmas Kyle and I went home to my parents place.  We loaded up the dogs and braved the weather.  It was foggy the whole way but we finally made it.  Only my brother Jason and his family were goin to be there for Christmas this year.  My younger brother Brian and his family went to his in-laws and my sister wasn't coming home until later that week.  Needless to say we had a great time.  We had our fabulous shrimp dinner that I look forward to every Christmas and then on Saturday my sister-in-law made a turkey that was so yummy!  Christmas has to be my favorite holiday for the fact that you are surrounded by family and awesome food!

 A tradition we have at our house is to make sugar cookies.  My mom and I made the cookies and then my nieces and nephew came over and helped decorate them.  It is always a good time.  We sure did miss our other half of cousins.

 Kyle always surprises me with a gift and I never have anything for him.  So this year we told ourselves like every other year we weren't going to get eachother anything.  But I didn't listen.  I was so excited that I was getting Kyle a gift.  I got him a spot light since the one he had didn't work anymore.  So I had my sister pick up the gift and give it to my parents and they wrapped the gift.  Kyle had no clue.

 Here he is after opening the gift. He was surprised that he had a gift to open and that it was a spotlight. He also got a toy motorcycle cuz he has been looking at them on KSL and wanting one really bad.  I thought it was funny.

 Here are my brothers kids opening all their gifts.  It was so fun to watch how surprised they were with all the gifts.  They sure were spoiled.

 Cameron was so fun to watch.  He loved everything he got.  It sure made me want to have kids.

 Here is Kaden opening his last gift that he had no clue as to what it was.  It was a tiny tiny box that took him forever to open.  When he finally opened it his face was priceless.  It was a key to something.  We all chased after him as he was looking for the present that went with the key.  He finally darted down stairs and found his......

 Motorcycle.  Boy was he surprised!  We all were.  Those kids had an awesome Christmas!

 Rylee and my mom.  I had a great time hanging out with these two.  It sure was hard to leave to come back home.  All of us kids went in on a gift for my parents and bought them a GPS.  This is my mom holding it up.  She wouldn't even wait for my dad to show up to open it.  She can't wait for anything!  It was fun watching her open the gift tho.  I guess my brother Jason had talked her out of buying one earlier since we decided to get them one.

My grandma and me.  I love my grandma.  On saturday she came and hung out with the family.  She had a couple of boxes that had letters and pictures in them and it was fun to go through them with her and hear some stories.  She is a neat lady and I'm so thankful for the chances I get to see her.

Temple Lights

This past weekend Kyle and I went to Salt Lake City to meet my family and go see the Temple Lights.  My brother Brian and Becca weren't able to make it, but everyone else did.  We all met up to eat at Chuck-a-rama which was crazy busy.  Then we headed off to where my sister was staying to be able to get on the Trax system and ride for free =)  When we were all together it was funny cuz us girls all had our coats on that my parents bought us from their Alaska cruise.  So we had to get a picture together of us in our awesome coats!

 We went up to the Joseph Smith Building to the top and looked down on the Temple and the lights.

Obviously this is Kyle and I in front of the lights.  It was so pretty there.  It was amazing all the trees with the lights on them.  My sister-in-law said she read in an article that they start putting the lights on the trees in October.  I'm not sure when they start taking them down but it takes them till March to finish it.  I can't imagine putting them up.  The colors were so pretty!  My favorite ones were the red ones.

Thank you family for being able to drive out to SLC just to see the lights with us.  We had so much fun hanging out with you all and it was even more special since it was Tracy's birthday!  Thanks again for going!!!!

Living Aquarium

After visiting the Temple Lights Kyle and I decided we would go to the Living Aquarium on Saturday.  It was pretty cool.  I liked it alot more than the one in Vegas.  We went over to the Pengiun area first.  They were so much fun to watch.  There were acouple pengiuns that were so interactive with the crowd.  The one would dive into the water and swim around like he had a ton of caffiene in his system.  He would swim fast in the water and then jump out of the water onto the land. He got to the point were he would almost run into the wall cuz he was going so fast in and out of the water.

 This is the one that was going crazy in the water.  He would stop infront of us and hang out for alittle bit and then go back to swimming like crazy.  If we ever go back I think we will do the pengiun experience and get to see the penguins upclose.

 This picture shows an eel and they had it hooked up to this christmas tree.  When it was stunning it's prey the electricity in the water would light up the christmas tree.  It was pretty cool to watch.

 This aligator was just sitting there staring at all the people going by.  It was kinda creepy.

 This tortoise was HUGE!  It also had a bag glued to its backside.  They said she had been attacked by a shark and then hit by a boat so they glued a bag that has weights in it to keep her from floating to the top.

 They had acouple areas of jellyfish.  One of them were these jellyfish that were upside down.  Their tenticles were floating to the top.  The other one looked like the ones we see on TV all the time.  Just floating around.  The picture of these jellyfish are clear and they had a light hooked up that changed them from blue to red to purple and back to blue.  They were neat to look at it.

 We got to watch them feed this octapus.  They put a plastic treasure chest in the water with food in it and the octapus grabbed it and tried to get the food out.

The seahorses were fun to watch too.  They had a bunch of tanks with these guys in them.  The first one had the biggest ones in it which is the first picture.  I didn't realized they have a fin on their back that moves them around and then they use their tail to hold onto the grass and hang out.  The last picture is of the tank that had the tiniest seahorses ever!  They were so cute!  They had to be the size of a dime or smaller. 

  It was really amazing all the animals, fish, and whatnots that were there.  They had a bunch of fish, frongs, and other things that are native to Utah too.  For the price it is a neat place! I recommend it!

ALIENS

 The day after thanksgiving most people go shopping.  Well since we didn't have anything we needed to go shopping for we decided to take a road trip.  We went out west to find the town of Rachel NV.  We had been out this way  before but hadn't gone all the way to Rachel.  So we packed up the dogs and took some hot chocolate and went to find us some aliens.  The town of Rachel is right on the northern border of Area 51.  Their claim to fame is they have spotted aliens in the sky.  Now we really did know we wouldn't find any aliens so when we got there and there weren't any we weren't that disappointed.  But when we looked the town up on google earth it showed an entire city block with the picure of the KFC guy on it, we were disappointed to find out it wasn't there still.  Oh well it got us out of the house seeing new sites. =)

This is the sign outside of the Little A'Le'Inn.  It is the only store in the town.  Kinda sad they had to attach the space ship to a tow truck in order for it to fly. =)  I was surprised by how many people lived there.

These 2 pictures are of the signs on the border of Area 51.  They have security camera's on the mountains and people with trucks waiting to catch you going over the line.  The first offensive is $600!!! Don't worry we didn't find out by experience.  We got a map back in Rachel that said that.  The whole place made me nervous and I really had to talk Kyle into not going over the line =)

After we visited the border of Area 51 we went on a search for old gold mines.  We found 2.  We only made it to one and it was HUGE!  You could probably drive your truck or car into them.  They went on for miles but I was cold and alittle scared so we didn't go too far in.  We did make it to a the elevator in one of them.  Kyle said he could see to the bottom cuz of the water in the bottom and it looked like it was about 50 stories to the bottom.  It also went way up high too.  We just might have to go back there and check it all out.  They had electricy set up for them but we didn't dare turn it on.

After we had played around those gold mines we took off for Delamare.  We have been to this place numerous times and walked in all of the gold mines there.  This is a picture of one of the buildings still up.  There are alot of buildings still there but this is the most complete one.  We only stayed here for a few minutes cuz we were running out of gas.  After we got gas in Caliente we took off for Delamue Ranch to see some deer.  We had been told they congregated here and really didn't expect to see very many but we were surprised!  There were tons!  We saw a good looking buck and tons of other people checking out the deer.  We got there pretty late so we couldn't take any pictures and couldn't see the deer very well.  We will have to take another trip out there. 

Over all we had a pretty good Thanksgiving. We got to spend it with Kyles family this year. We had dinner on thursday and on saturday we ate with Kyle's step dad's family. The food was good and the company was great. 

Vegas Attractions

This is outside our hotel window.  We were ready to go home by this point.  It had been a very long and exciting weekend.

I've always wanted to have my picture taken by the Las Vegas sign.  Kyle finally made this come true.  We got so many things done on my list to do's in Vegas.  I'll be sad when I have everything checked off. (Ok I will never let that list stop cuz there is so much to do there!!)

MGM lions.  They had 3 lion cubs out playing. I've never seen so many there before.

SHARK REEF at MANDALAY BAY CASINO

I've always wanted to go to the Shark Reef and we got to this weekend.  Which was cool cuz that is also how we found out we could buy tickets to the preconcert for Nickelback.  This place was really neat. I do have to say it is over priced but I am glad we went.  It is worth it to go atleast once.  They have a huge tank filled with sharks and in one place there is a see thru tube you walk through and the sharks are swimming over and under you and next to you.  It was fun to see all the wierd fish that are out there in the oceans.  I loved the octupus.  It was all about climbing all over the place.  The sting rays were cool to touch too.  Made my hand stink but they felt cool.  I loved the jelly fish.  They were hard to get a picture of but we finally got a few good ones.  They had tons of different kinds of fish.  They had one tank that had pirahna's and there was one that had these huge fish in there.  I couldn't believe they got that big!  The first thing you come across is an alligator.  It is crazy how big they are too!

On sunday before we came home we decided to go over to the New York New York casino and ride their rollercoaster.  We bought the all day scream pass.  We rode the coaster 5 times in a row!!!  We would have kept riding it but we both got bumped around pretty good on the last ride and figured it was time to stop.  We rode in the very front, the very back, the middle and everywhere in between.  We both love rollercoasters and recommend this one to everyone!  It is one of my favorite coasters. Even going 5 times in a row it still made me scared when it would go straight down.  Yes I'm just like my mother and scream my lungs out =)

Over all we had the best weekend ever in Vegas.  Had we made it to the pool that would have made it even better.  Hooters Casino has a pretty fun pool.  Plus it is so close to the strip and cheap.  Thank you Kyle for an AWESOME WEEKEND!!!!