Las Vegas

Josh had a work conference in Las Vegas in which spouses were supposed to attend. I was excited at the idea, until I found out that I was on my own during the day...what in the world was I supposed to do by MYSELF during the day in Las Vegas? Now I know a few of you are thinking about all of the wonderful things you would do by yourself...but I am a wimp and I just kept picturing myself getting mugged, or worse...like being drugged and waking up to find out that I had lost a kidney to the black market. (I was very traumatized by that story, has anyone else heard that one?) So needless to say I stressed about this trip.

We headed out on Sunday and got to Las Vegas only to stand in line for a taxi that was bout 30 minutes long...seriously? We finally go to the Luxor where we were staying for the conference and Josh was a bit late for his meetings. He dropped me off in the hotel room and headed out. I sat there for about 2 seconds worried about being alone and then realized that I could do whatever I wanted! I had a great ole time for the rest of the afternoon just relaxing, reading and editing Palmer's baptism pictures. Maybe crazy, but I love to edit pictures. By the time Josh got back to pick me up for dinner I was very rested and relaxed (especially since I had stayed up way too late the night before working on the boys Halloween crayons and getting things ready for my sister to babysit the kids).

That night we ate at Craft Steakhouse inside the MGM Grand Hotel. It was all sorts of wonderful. They did a "family style" dinner in which we could try just about everything! I have never had so many tastes of wonderful food! I didn't get any pictures as I didn't want to embarrass Josh. Just know it was awesome! It was so fun to get dressed up and meet all of these great people, and they were great.

The next day I had the whole day to myself. I realized that I had the whole day to myself. I slept in (I haven't slept past 8 in years...I think I got to 8:20, big day for me). I went and worked out for an hour! An hour people, I could never do that now! Then I got ready, read some, edited more pictures and decided that I could handle going out of my hotel into "Sin City" by myself....So I did. I sort of had to talk myself into it. I decided to go shopping at Planet Hollywood since that was one of my favorite places the last time I went to Vegas (for Miss America). It wasn't very close to our hotel and I got a tour of the entire strip...very interesting :)

I needed to buy some black heels for the outfit I was wearing for the conference dinner that night as I had forgotten mine and so I headed to my very favorite shoe store, Aldo. I really needed black, but instead I bought...
red... If I was in Salt Lake I would probably have bought black (and added to my huge collection of black heels...) but in Vegas I was feeling a little reckless and the red heels were bought. I LOVE them (as does Josh :)

I have to admit I had the best time, I shopped, walked around at my own leisure, ate soft pretzels and Gelato for lunch and just took the whole thing in going very SLOWLY (although I have to admit that I was so worried about being by myself on the way there I probably set some sort of record for how fast I walked there). I started feeling a lot better about being on my own, and had a great day! I headed back to the hotel when I was done and I didn't even speed walk! I just took it all in slowly. It was a big step for me. It started to drizzle a bit, which only added to the enjoyment of my walk :)

That night we were taken to Sirio for dinner. It was Italian food, which is my favorite and was wonderful. I tried truffles for the first time (Eastern hemisphere mushrooms, And they were SO GOOD! That night we went to see and Las Vegas show and ended up seeing "Penn and Teller," which was...okay...not my favorite. Once again, no pictures...sad.
The last day I was by myself for just a few hours in the morning. I decided to go to the Titanic Artifact Exhibit that was at the Luxor. I have seen this before when it came to Salt Lake, but it was so interesting I decided to go again. Of course you can't take pictures so these two are all I got.
This exhibit is always so sobering and sad to me. It was so interesting. I can't watch the movie "Titanic" because it traumatizes me. It is just such a tragedy, but the artifacts were very cool to see. It is amazing to think how far below the surface of the ocean they are and that people were actually able to get some of them back. It is definitely worth seeing.
After his conference finished up I was able to spend the rest of the day with Josh. Our flight that night didn't leave until late (but not late enough to go to another show) so we had plenty of time to be together. This is some of the Egyptian stuff in our hotel lobby.
We decided to go and check out some of the casinos that I haven't been in. This was my third time to Vegas and I really hadn't seen that much, so it was fun to get a little more of a tour.


I always love the Bellagio. It has the neatest stuff in it's gardens. This time they were decorated (splendidly I might add) for autumn. This was really the only part of Vegas that I saw that I thought I would like to show my kids. The tree talked and was so cool!


We then headed for Caesar's Palace. I love all of the details of these hotels.

This was a HUGE H&M. It was a really fun store!
Then we met Kenna, one of my favorite mission companions for lunch. She lives a bit outside Las Vegas. She was my MTC companion and then later we served together at University of Idaho/Washington State University as campus missionaries (they are only 7 miles apart). I had so much fun with her on my mission and she was just the same awesome girl now. We met at the Cheesecake Factory and caught up on each other's lives. I haven't really seen her for about 10 years, so it was so fun!

Oh the Lemon Raspberry cheesecake was so good! I felt a little snap happy with my camera, probably due to all of those good pictures I missed out on the days before :)
This guy reminded me of the people we saw in England in Covenant Gardens. They are all painted and dressed up and if you give them money they usually do something. I gave Josh some money to go and put in his little jar and he insisted we get a picture with him. It actually was pretty embarrassing because there was a huge crowd around him waiting to see if he would move (they stand really still and a lot of them don't seem to even blink!)

We did a bit more shopping here...really fun I must say ;)
We headed to the Venice which had been one of my favorite Hotels when Josh and I were in Vegas for Mrs. United States. Josh surprised me after the pageant was over with a huge date night. He took me to dinner at an amazing Italian Restaurant called Zeffirino in the Venetian and then took me to "Phantom of the Opera." It was such a lovely night.
We saw this waterfall that I thought we could put side by side with the last picture we took here.

Whoops! I thought Josh has been in it...oh well, now we have one with him in it :)

Our last thing we did for the night was to go and check out Serendipity. One of my favorite movies is "One Fine day" and I have always wanted to go back to New York and try Serendipity for their frozen hot chocolate (which they are eat in the movie). Imagine my delight when I saw they had one in Las Vegas!
It was a definite must (even though we were running pretty short on time)
I thought the whole place was decorate so cute!

And this stuff was pretty awesome.
We had to most wonderful time together and I have been feeling so spoiled with all of the trips we have been able to go on lately. I was actually ready to go back to real life after this was over, but we have some great memories of this place.

General Conference

I have always worried about my kids having high expectations for me. I try to mix things up when I do things so I don't have to top myself every year...This past General Conference we had to go a little smaller especially since Josh and I were headed to Las Vegas later on Sunday (not to mention I felt like last conference was fairly big, so we were going small) afternoon. In primary the boys got a bingo sheet and some Skittles to play with during conference so I didn't print out any packets or anything because I wanted them to do that.
I gave them our traditional apples and goldfish to snack on during the morning session of conference and I just couldn't think of anything fun to go with it all. I love that the boys look forward to General Conference like it is a holiday and they choose to stay with us during the second session on Sunday even though we have told them we only expect them to watch the first one. Well, I decided instead of buying some sort of crayon/colored pencil to go with our little conference kits, I was going to make them new crayons out of the old. See tutorial here. I made them Frankenstein heads in honor of it being October and all.
The boys thought they were pretty great and were as thrilled as anything with their little conference kits.


After we moved we decided that we didn't want to pay for cable anymore. We just never use it during the school year and then when the boys do use it (ie summer), it drives me crazy to have it on all day, not to mention those who aren't done with homework, piano, etc. try to get away with watching it instead of doing what they are supposed to do...okay long story to say we don't have cable anymore. We still have Netflix, but alas it will not be on our TV anymore as the prices were raised, I am cheap and we will now look forward to getting a few DVDs in the mail every now and again (the boys are dying for Halloween Town, their FAVORITE Halloween show)...I am getting side tracked...okay, well it hasn't been a problem to not have TV, we haven't even missed it! The boys are outside all day long and when they want to watch something, we put on a movie. I love it.

The only bad thing is that we can't watch Conference on it. A nice guy in our ward came over to help us figure it out, took one look at our TV and told us nevermind, our TV was too old and it couldn't be done. Our TV is 8 years old and by today's standards that is a dinosaur. The color is totally crazy as well. Most of the people on our TV have purple skin and green hair, random right? We usually aren't too picky, but that part is getting old. "Emma" just isn't the same when she looks like an oompa loompa.

Okay, more rambling. I really shouldn't write posts at night (and I am especially tired as Palmer's baptism was today and as usual I was a bit out of control and stayed up too late getting things ready. It was such a nice day though and I will post some pics in the future)...more rambling. Okay so anyway, Josh hooked up a projector to his computer and projected the internet onto the wall so we could watch Conference like a movie. It was so fun! I don't think I can ever go back. We now must use the projector every time. You can see it a bit in the picture above.


Last Conference we played a fun game where we had a whole bunch of bowls set up with candy in them. Each bowl had a word on it and when the boys heard that word they could go and get a piece of candy from the bowl. I liked it, but thought we would try this one this Conference. I got the idea here. You put a whole bunch of pennies in a container and post some words for the kids to listen for (same idea as the other one). Each time they hear the word they get a penny from the jar. After conference you have a store and the kids can buy things with the money they earned.

The boys loved it and were listening so well to conference. I love to hear them shushing each other. Usually it is Josh and I who are telling them all to be quiet.

These are the words that they had to listen for.

As we left for Las Vegas and didn't have time to do the store, we decided to keep the game running all week and while my little sister babysat them every time they were helpful or being a peacemaker they could earn a penny. My sister said they ate it up and were almost a little too helpful. They kept bugging her to let them help her :) It was a major success.

After I got home from Vegas I headed to the Target dollar section and stocked our store.

I put little prices on everything and they actually all got to buy at least one of each thing. I have also discovered that I really like those Jolly Rancher Sours. As I am the official Nelson Family Poison Checker I got to sample some from each of the boys' boxes (as you can tell, this is a very important job). They are good!
The boys all had about $1.50 to spend and it went a long way in our store. I think I need to up my prices :)
And I even provided a sack when they were done shopping. This is some serious service I tell you.
Another great conference.

DIY-Halloween Molded Crayons

For General Conference in years past I have traditionally given the boys something to draw/color with. We have a lot of crayons, markers and colored pencils this year, so I wasn't too keen on going and getting more. I decided that I would use the ones that we had and make new ones. Following this tutorial, I made these little Frankenstein heads for the boys to color with.
I made a double boiler using a pot of boiling water and an empty can. I used two different ones so I didn't have to stop and clean it out. I did one for the the green and blue, doing green first, and then I did one for the yellow, orange and red going in that order. It didn't matter if the colors mixed, it made the shades really cool. I actually didn't hold the can, I used tongs to hold it. The can and wax get pretty hot so be careful.

I sorted all of our old and broken crayons and put them into greens, blues, yellows, oranges and reds. It didn't matter what shade as it all mixed together and usually made a pretty cool color. I even added some whites to most of them (except to the reds because I didn't want pink). I used my Exacto knife and slit down the paper of each crayon and it peeled off pretty easily. Then I broke them up so they would melt faster and put them in my little can. Then I heated them for about 10 minutes. After they were good and melted I poured them into my candy molds.

You can use any chocolate, candy molds or even silicone molds (just make sure they aren't too deep. I tried some silicone molds and they were deep so my crayons just broke when coming out of the mold) so I went with my Frankenstein sucker molds. I just barley poured enough wax in to fill to the top. A little bit went down into the stick part, but I just cut that off.
After pouring the hot wax in the molds I put them in the freezer for about 15 minutes. I thought they turned out pretty festive.

I did two different batches of the green and the colors turned out different each time. I thought it was fun to see what the color would be based on how I mixed the shades.





I just stuck them in a baggie and tied it with a bow. The boys thought it was really fun and a fun thing to color with. Obviously not for "fine art" as there are no points on these crayons. They are more "scribble crayons." Who doesn't like scribbling? :)
I think the next time I make these I will let the boys help. They are so fun!

Palmer's Baptism Pictures

Palmer is getting baptized on Saturday. It is a big deal around here, not only because it is a very special thing that Palmer is doing, but because he is our first child to be baptized. We bought him a new suit and I took his baptism pictures last Saturday. Here are a few from his baptism photoshoot.

Friday Night Football Game

For our family Friday Night Activity, we went with some friends to the local high school football game. Palmer's church teacher's son is the quarterback and he was so excited to watch him in action.

Josh's love of all things football has definitely spread to our kids.  They all love it including McKay, who calls it "bootball".  McKay was clapping along with the rest of the crowd.  They boys ended the night playing their own football game on a grassy area.
There were a lot of blonde boys running around I'll tell you that. It was so fun.

I brought all sorts of things to keep McKay occupied and he kept throwing them all! The poor kids sitting in front of us got nailed a few times. Luckily they were really nice about it.

While we were watching the high school game, Josh was following the USU/BYU game on his phone...Utah State was up the whole game and then lost with 15 seconds to go.  I'll tell you it was a heartbreak.  Good thing the rest of the night was fun!