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It was a short trip, but we took enough pictures that I thought it deserved it’s own blog post.  We drove down to Vegas to visit my sister Barb and her wife, Athena.  We had a short amount of time to spend together, but we had a really great time and look forward to future trips.

These first pictures are from the car ride there.  It takes about 5 hours to drive from here.

 

At some point, Nicole decided that she was suppose to hold on to this handle.

They love finding Goldbug in the Richard Scarry books.

Nicole discovered the hanger hook and thought it was for hanging her water bottle.  She has such interesting ideas.

After our Ohio adventure, we found that everything went smoother if I sat in a middle seat next to Nicole.  Isaac really likes riding up front with his Dad.

The youngest three helped Aunt Barbara make cookies soon after we arrived.
That evening, we went to Container Park in downtown Vegas.  The park and shopping area are made out of shipping containers.  There’s a giant praying mantis that shoots balls of fire into the sky at the entrance.  Here’s my amateur shot of it shooting fire: Nicole was afraid of the mantis so we sat and watched it for a little while until she felt comfortable enough with it to walk by it and into the park.  (Most of the pictures that follow were taken by Athena.  She is a talented photographer.)I’ll be glad when Nicole’s hair fully grows out of the terrible haircut she gave herself! Isaac spent most of his time building with these foam blocks.  He even impressed one of the security guards with his creations. She said she thought he’d be an engineer when he grows up.

My obviously lower quality pictures, I’m almost embarrassed to show them next to Athena’s awesome pictures, but I included them to show you what Isaac built: Next we drove down to the Bellagio to see the fountain show: Inside the Bellagio, there was this room filled with flowers that was quite fragrant.

There was also the world’s tallest Chocolate fountain.  We don’t have a great picture of the whole thing, but it goes into the ceiling.

The next morning Zach took Isaac and Charlotte on an adventure to see Hoover Dam.  This is from inside the dam:

It’s family tradition to spit over the edge when we visit a dam, so here’s picture proof that the tradition continues. See that bridge off in the distance?  The next picture is taken from that bridge.

Then Zach took Isaac and Charlotte to try Middle Eastern food:

The kids have all been interested in rocks and gems since we got them a rock tumbler a few months ago.  Zach took them to a rock and gem store to look around.  The kids each bought some rocks.  Here is a picture of them next to the world’s largest quartz sphere.

The little ones went with Barb, Athena, and I to a park then we had lunch and then a bubble bath.

When everyone was back together, the children dressed up and Barb and Athena made them a little tea party with Italian sodas to drink.

Athena took a bunch of super cute pictures while they drank their sodas.  Here are some of my favorites:
Barb and Athena gave Isaac this crazy straw building kit.  Isaac built this straw and then needed 3 sodas to try it out.

Zach also dressed up (it may be fairly obvious after looking at all the great pictures Athena took, but the rest of the pictures are ones that I took):

Trying out a new game with their dad:

That evening we went to Centennial park.  The kids loved the park but they especially loved having their dad chase them and play with them all through the park.  I should have taken some pictures.  The kids were having so much fun with Zach that other children started trying to get him to chase them as well.  Here are the few pictures Zach took at the park:

Nicole doesn’t always do well sleeping with the other kids.  She likes it all the way dark to sleep and she often sings or talks loudly until she falls asleep.  Barb made her a little bed in a closet.  She loved it and called it her “special little room”  Our last morning in Vegas we had creative pancakes.  They were inspired by Grandpa Cochran’s Oreo cookie pancakes from last month.  

We drove home after breakfast.

Thomas threw up all over himself an hour away from home.  I didn’t take a picture of that.  I think he was just car sick because as soon as he came home he played outside and ran around without further incident.