Lem's 30th Birthday

Lem and I enjoyed a mini-vacation getaway to Vegas to celebrate his 30th birthday a little early. We left Anchorage on Friday night, and then returned home Tuesday night. The girls stayed with Nanny and Papa for their first, semi-long stretch away from mom and dad and of course, faired remarkably well and probably missed us a lot less than we missed them! We did get to talk with them on the phone, send them texts (especially with pics of sites they’d enjoyed and would recognize from Vegas) and we also skyped one morning from the hotel. Traveling without kids was such a change from what we’ve become accustomed to. Just getting out of the car, checked in, through security and on the plane was such a delightfully easy relief! No unloading car seats, and tons of luggage, juggling a double stroller, bagging car seats, unloading and folding the stroller at security, reloading the stroller, re-unloading to get on the plane…what a difference! Not to mention the actually flights- we had free reign of the computer, we could watch whatever we wanted, and read and talk, and SLEEP…all uninterrupted! After getting off the plane we grabbed some delicious (and cheap!) fresh fruit for breakfast and go right to outlet shopping. Yes, my husband really does love me that much! We had a scrumptious lunch at Olive Garden, took a much needed nap and got ourselves ready for some Aces on the road hockey. After a tiny mix-up with our tickets we joined a few hundred other blue clad, cowbell ringing Aces fans in section 118 at Orleans Arena. It was so fun to watch our home team boys play on the road and to be surrounded with plenty of Aces fans not afraid to proudly show their support. Our section was by far louder than the Vegas fans and it didn’t hurt that the Aces won 5-1. Lem tried his hand at a little more video poker this visit and came out another $9 ahead or something like that. We enjoyed eating at some fun places and had some tasty drinks too. We spent some time exploring the Paris Hotel and had lunch there. We also had a frozen hot chocolate at Serendipity, made famous by the movie of the same name (one of our all-time favorites.) For Lem’s official birthday dinner date we ate a cute Italian place, in the courtyard area around the big fountains at Caesar’s Palace. We walked from Caesar’s to the Bellagio and spent some time checking out their amazing gardens. The flowers and displays were totally different than when we were there this summer and they had live butterflies in some of the greenhouse displays. We did lots more shopping including a super successful Gap Outlet experience which involved the outlet store prices, combined with crazy sale prices and then combined with a 30% off coupon-score! We also spent one morning at the Titanic exhibit which was super cool. It includes replicas of areas of the ship, items recovered from the site and even a huge piece of the side of the ship itself. We of course, made a few stops at Sonic for some yumminess. The weather didn’t exactly cooperate and give us much in the way of sunshine or warm temperature which was little bit of a bummer, but the freedom to go, stay, eat, and sleep when and where we wanted was sure a fun change of pace for us. We also celebrated Lem’s birthday a week later, on his actual birthday. Several of his students made him a happy birthday banner and a few brought in treats for their classes. Ella and I took him lunch, and one of his colleagues bought fancy cupcakes for us all. Sycely just happened to have that day assigned as her day to bring snack, so Lem was able to go over and share snack with her class and see her do “author’s chair.”

That evening we ordered up some Moose’s Tooth pizza and had a shared celebration with Jesse, (Lem’s twin cousin) his fiancée Rachel, Nanny and Papa, Ian and Kathryn (fresh off their honeymoon in Spain). We had cake and opened presents, celebrating the start of their 4th decade.