Thursday, January 19, 2006

Vegas, Baby


Yay! I think I'm finally caught up on posts. On January 12th, I headed to Las Vegas to meet Jon and spend some time in Sin City to celebrate my birthday (January 16th for all you people who don't already have this on your Outlook calendar). We walked the strip until our legs ached, enjoyed a few of the best restaurants in Vegas, and lost a bunch of money playing slots and sampling overpriced cocktails.

On Friday we enjoyed lunch outside at Mon Ami Gabi at the Paris Las Vegas hotel. It was a beautiful day and the restaurant is right across the street from the beautiful Bellagio fountains (too bad they don't go off all day). That night we ate at a great restaurant called Drai's. It's in the basement of the Barbary Coast Casino (not the most modern place) but the food, decor, and service were awesome. The creme brule isn't too shabby either. After that we attended the late showing of Cirque du Soleil's "O". This is the show that is entirely performed in and around a pool of water in the stage. It can be made shallow enough such that the performers appear to walk on the water, but it is also deep enough for high divers to plunge in from the ceiling.

Our condo at the Flamingo was very nice. We can't wait to go back in the summer and spend some time at the huge pool and the convenient pool bar (both were closed for the winter). If you'd like to see the rest of our photos, you can view them here: share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8AZMmTdq4bNmSW. Oh, and any of you that want to teach us how to play craps, please do. We decided that those people looked like they were having the most fun of all the gamblers in Vegas, but man that's a confusing game!

Friday, January 06, 2006

"New" Addition

Ok, ok, so I'm still behind on the posts. It's tough to get caught up on all the great things that have been happened for us in 2005. In October, Jon and I trekked to Nebraska to pick out a new canine addition for our family. We left with a 10-week-old German Shepherd puppy and, after much discussion and my refusal to name the dog "Barnyard Stepstool", we named him Kona. While the name is not very German (somehow Claus just didn't fit him), the city of Kona was one of our favorite places on our Honeymoon.

Kona is now 5 months old and a whopping 66 pounds! He's very smart and well-behaved until one of the cats crosses his path. Then all bets are off. We're hoping one of these days he will lose interest in the felines, but it's not looking good for the kitties over the next few months.

Kona's latest adventure involved an 18-hour road trip to Austin, Texas to visit Jon's family for Christmas. The poor guy did remarkably well. Aside from the occasional look of "do I really have to get back in there?" after every stop, he took advantage of the time to catch up on sleep and build up all of his energy for when we arrived, thoroughly exhausted, in Austin. Thanks Kona.