a weekend in sin city.

for christmas, my parents bought tickets for traysen and me, along with our four oldest nieces and nephews, to see the phantom of the opera at the venetian in las vegas this weekend.  when tyler and cori beagley heard we were going, they decided to come along... and thus started the amazing road trip.

our adventure started out on friday night at about six with tyler, cori, traysen and i crammed into the beagley's car, headed down to vegas. after lots of hilarious conversations and loud singing sessions, we got to cedar city at about 10 and decided to stop by and see zach and alex wall and grab some food.

 pizza hut in cedar.

briefly reunited with my bestfriend (:

we were going to stay the night in cedar instead of going on to nevada, but zach had a tiny living room, so we decided to head to mesquite and get a hotel instead.  on the way there, cori found a room at this place called desert palms for $40.  figuring this would be the best hotel we would get that evening, we drove there... holy ghetto. tyler decided we would get shanked if we stayed there, so we went on a quest and finally found a room at the virgin river for $35, which was surprisingly decent.  we went to straight to bed, woke up at 8 the next morning, and headed on to vegas.

our first stop was buffalo wild wings for lunch, which happens to be an obsession of tyler and traysen's. the three of them loaded themselves down with all sorts of wings, while i, being the non-meat eater that i am, had some queso fries. i was seriously shocked by the amount of wings they consumed.

i seriously never thought we'd see the end of that pile.

(i ate one wing. haha)

after b-dubs, we headed over to the gun store because tyler wanted to shoot some manly guns. while he was in the range shooting an AK-47 at a picture of osama, we sat on a bench... forever. traysen got hit on by a dear little australian girl and cori and i bought matching gun necklaces to protect ourselves on the shady streets. haha traysen also bought a combat stick thing for no good reason, and afterward wouldn't stop pretending to hit me with it in the back seat on our way to our next destination. soooo fun.

waiting for ty to shoot some guns

after our gun store adventure, we were planning on heading over to walk the strip because i had never done it before, but it took a lot longer than expected to shoot, so we had to go meet my parents at the condo. we then got ready in our nicest clothes and headed over to the venetian to watch the opera.  we almost didn't make it because of insane traffic and confusing hallways, but we finally made it with ten minutes to spare.

 

 the whole family after phantom (:

 tyler, cori, traysen, and i.

i can't name the number times traysen and i have been thought to be married to each other. awkward.

 my adorable nieces. (:

so basically, phantom was amazing!!!

words can't even describe... it seriously blew my mind. the set was sooo amazing. i got chills on mulitiple accounts.  if i lived in vegas... i would be there every night. i would strongly suggest everyone go see it.

after the play, we headed back to b-dubs for dinner... that's how much traysen loves it. i had a honey bbq chicken salad that was kinda good... i only ate a couple bites though. after b-dubs, i was ready to head to the strip for my first experience, but everyone was tired and decided to head home to bed instead. so basically, that was yet another vegas trip where i have yet to experience the real side of vegas. coooool.

the next morning, after a brief visit to the hot tubs, we headed to a random ward to go to church and then began our long journey back to orem.  i slept most of the way and it seemed to go by a lot faster than the trip down.  i really wish we could have had more time in vegas, but i will be taking another trip down there again soon. guaranteed.

thank you mom and dad, for the tickets and the vegas trip!

perfect weekend! (: