Las Vegas

For whatever reason, Thursday has become a day to reflect on your past by digging up old pictures and tagging yourself and others in them on facebook, hashtagging #tbt. Since I was so lazy about blogging this summer, I am going to get into this and post of pictures of our roadtrip. 

Starting with Las Vegas. 

We got into Vegas in time for supper Tuesday night, driving all day from Colorado. The next morning, Ann-Julie, Randy, and David took us to the Natural History Museum. It was so perfect for the kids! They loved seeing all the animals and dinosaurs and the Egyptian exhibit. We all had a great time!

They had a dress up area, where the kids could dress up like dinosaurs

And they had nests of eggs that the kid dinosaurs could sit on while they were dressed up as dinosaurs. How fun is that?

Elsie and Baby Beluga

A very blue fish

These dinosaurs actually moved and roared. Thrilling!

One ugly dino

Some little dinosaurs raiding bigger dinosaurs nest of eggs

Orianna, Lillian, and David being King Tut-ish

We went down to the strip for a quick drive through

This was 9 at night and the strip was packed. That is the Bellagio water show in the background.

I loved this couple. They were older and so sterotypically touristy. 

The next day, we got lucky and had a cloudy day, which is pretty rare for Vegas. But it meant that it only got into the 80s, so we could play outside! They have these cool water sprinkler parks, which the kids loved. (Yes, farmers in California are letting their crops die from lack of water, while my kids cavort around wasting water.) 

It was a pretty cool park! Watery palms, sprinkling ground, water tunnel-ish things....

Elsie was so leary of the water for some reason. Ann-Jule finally coaxed her into the red tubes and then she mostly loved it. Elsie likes things to be fairly controlled and orderly, so the tubes randomly squirting water at her was not up her alley.

Gilbert with gusto.

They have these huge shade things so the playground equipment doesn't get too hot. Things you never think about in Northern New York.

Some pretty cool slides

And cement blocks to climb on. 

Stairway up to the slides

Gilbert and Randy were buds

Lily at the front of Nana and Papa's house

Gilbert helping Nana with the hummingbird feeders

Ann-Julie decorating up a cake for the June birthdays

Elsie, Orianna, and David all were celebrated. It was a yummy ice cream cake!

Itty bitty hummingbird baby

Talking after dinner

All of us, except Ann-Julie, who was taking the picture.

The morning we left, we went to a buffet at one of the casinos. 

Stone coming out of Vegas. It is about a nine hour drive from Vegas to Colorado, so we were on the road most of the day.

It is always so weird to see rocks jutting up at an angle, with all these striations. It looks like they are about to fall backward or something. But they never do. Fall backward that is. If there were no striations, it would just be a rocky mountain, but when you see lines, it makes it that much more obvious. 

See these mesas are orderly and polite and run lines parallel to the ground. No riotous crookedness about them. 

Wild donkeys. Or at least they appear to have no owner. 

See? Isn't it just weird? It looks like they are getting ready to take off for the moon or something. 

Or depicting the sinking of the Titanic.

A little gas station in Utah had a little play area for kids. Hooray! I bought Gilbert a slingshot, fashioned like a deer here and I am pretty sure it was left here. 

Coming into Colorado! In time for the sunset....

Grand Mesa.

And then some tired/happy kids with their very happy Papa!