Last weekend we had the chance to kinda get away as a family. Curt got a certificate last year for two free nights at one of several hotels on the strip. We chose Caesar’s Palace. The boys and I packed Friday morning and went after my doctor’s appointment. Unfortunately, I didn’t take into account Friday afternoon traffic. By the time we got to the hotel – an hour later- we were exhausted. The A/C is still out in my car and well, this picture pretty much describes how we all felt…
The room we got was really nice, facing the pools, all the way up on the 27th floor. The boys loved going in the elevator so much. Well after cooling off a bit, I still didn’t have the energy to take the boys down to swim before the pool closed, so we relaxed in the room and waited for daddy to get off work.
Andrew had fun hiding in the pillows
and of course jumping on the bed!
Dad finally got to the hotel and he brought us dinner and we watched a movie together.
The next morning, daddy had to go to a training so the boys and I went swimming.
Poor little Ben got cold pretty fast so we didn’t last too long. We went back up to the room and took a bath in the HUGE soaker tub instead.
Daddy’s class seemed to take forever so we just went exploring. We went down to the Forum shops and went to the big aquarium and saw all the fish. The boys were mesmerized watching the huge sting rays and then we stayed and watched the fountain show. Poor Ben almost had a heart attack. I didn’t know there was fire in the show and we happened to be super close. He freaked out the first couple times and then we kind of expected it.
Finally my husband was done with his training class and brought us some lunch that we ate in the room. We relaxed for a little bit and then headed out for a walk on the strip.
Our walk was….LONG. haha I didn’t realize how long it was going to be ahead of time, luckily I did wear ok walking shoes, not the best, but not flip flops. We walked down to the Sweet Factory, then continued on to the M&M’s store. The boys did pretty well. Andrew walked most of the way before needing to sit in the stroller (we only took a single stroller). At the M&M’s store we watched the little 10 minute video – I was grateful to sit down and cool off. Then we headed back. My husband used his running app to measure how far we went and just from the M&M store back to Caesar’s was 2 miles, which didn’t include all the walking we did through the Forum shops before that. So in total we estimated we walked 5 miles or so.
After the walk we went swimming. We got back so late we only had about 30 minutes in the pool. After we showered and went to dinner.
Here’s the bathroom (and my belly), it was HUUUGE!
Dinner was yummy (and expensive!), we stopped by the Forum shops one more time and I picked up a piece of cheesecake from Cheesecake Factory. Then we came back to the room, closed the blackout curtains, turned off the lights and the boys were asleep in no time – including my husband! haha. I sat in the dark eating my piece of cheesecake and watched some tv.
Overall it was fun. It doesn’t sound like we did a whole lot, but more than anything we spent time together as a family, talked lots on our huge walk, and just got away from the house.
I did learn several things:
1) don’t pack the morning of. I forgot my hairbrush, my powder makeup, shirts. Yeah I forgot to pack shirts somehow. So I had to stop at H&M to pick something out, rough I know.
2) Bring lots of snacks. Luckily I did think to do this. I got apples, bananas, string cheese, grapes, crackers, bagels, and some sweets. This helped us tremendously to keep the cost of this stay-cation down. No way was I going to pay $6 for a bagel for breakfast. The bummer was the fridge was full of mini-bar stuff and no room for the stuff I brought, luckily we didn’t need much kept cold.
3) Better walking shoes. I always forget how far apart everything is. Just from the car into the front desk alone was seriously like a mile! Tennis shoes next time. Might not be the cutest things, but for this preggo mommy, my feet would have been so much happier.
Anyway, there you go. Our little stay-cation summary.