Part 4: Vegas

I've talked to lots of people about where we went for our trip and the general consensus is the Vegas part makes sense as a getaway destination, but the Gettysburg/DC portion was a bit confusing for some people. After all, it's (admittedly) not where most people think of going for a 10th anniversary trip. A friend of mine at work summed it up nicely by saying that the fact that we went to places like Gettysburg and DC for an anniversary vacation just proves that we're nerds. Well, guilty as charged! (Another example of how "nerdy" we are - we've been watching the 2012 Olympic Games in London and all we can talk about is how much we want to go to England to see the castles.)

Well, however you look at it, the last leg of our trip was in fabulous Las Vegas and we certainly enjoyed our time there as well! Since we've been to Vegas many times before we didn't go crazy with the pictures - but I did get some pics of our hotel room because it was a "petite suite," which we have not done before.

Bathroom #1

Now that is a tub!!

Across the hall, bathroom #2

The shower - you can't tell but there's a seat along the wall so you don't even have to stand up while you shower!

The living area

Mark was really excited about the doors (because there were 2 of them).

Usually when we go to Vegas we stay somewhere cheap like the Stratosphere, but every other time we've gone we've driven so it hasn't mattered that we're on the very north end of the Strip. This time we stayed at Treasure Island, right in the middle of the Strip, so it was easier to walk to, say, the very large mall right across the street... actually there were 2 malls right across the street... and another one just a few blocks away too... It's kind of unfortunate that we were so close to 3 malls and we both love shopping. :) We didn't go too crazy though.

Vegas was nice because it was so much more relaxing. We didn't have to wake up early every morning so we could run around to see as much as we possibly could - if we wanted to sleep in until noon we could! We had a show planned for each evening, but that still gave us the whole day to do whatever we wanted. Our first day we went to the spa (yes I got Mark to go to a spa - he got a massage and I got a mani/pedi) and shopped and sat by the pool, then in the evening we saw Mystère by Cirque du Soleil. We saw this show a few years ago and it is still amazing. If you have never seen Cirque du Soleil - you need to. We were in the very front row, center section, which is the best way to see the show because the performers get right up close to you.


The next day we were able to squeeze in the Tournament of Kings at Excaliber. That was such a fun way to eat dinner. You're seated in different sections around the arena, each section representing a different country, such as France, Russia, Ireland, Hungary and so on. We were in Austria. They give you really good food, but no utensils, so you get to eat with your hands like they did in medieval times, and they teach you medieval table manners too - so you get to shout and slam your drink down and in general be as messy and noisy as you like. I had such a fun time! And you get to watch a show too, so all these knights on horses joust and have sword fights. That was really neat (and a nice change from an expensive restaurant).

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After that we walked across the street to the MGM Grand and saw KÀ. The second we walked into the theater our jaws dropped. Remember in the movie Return of the Jedi in the Ewok village, built around the treetops with narrow bridges connecting the walkways? Imagine something like that but darker and with torches everywhere. That was surrounding the entire inside of the theater. And there really wasn't a stage - you could see where a stage should be but instead there was a huge bottomless pit with fire flaring up out of it. We stopped to ask one of the ushers where our seats were (we knew we were in the front but we wanted to make sure of the section). He looked at our tickets and pointed to the fire pit. "You see that huge pit with the fire coming out of it? ...That's where you're sitting." But the seats were almost literally up against the edge of the pit. We walked a bit closer and asked another usher. "Have you heard the term 'front' and 'center'? 'Cause that would be you." Well, okay, if you say so! There was a low stone wall separating the audience from the pit and that stone wall was close enough that if we stretched out our feet at all we would be touching the wall. (If you want to see pictures of us in the theater again, they're in the Ten Years post.)

All I can say about the show was... WOW. Just... WOW. Epic. I think we watched the whole thing with our jaws in our laps. Quite a bit of the show was on the stone wall - and I already described how close we were to that. It was very different from Mystère - Mystère is a bit more of a traditional, light-hearted circus (if Cirque du Soleil can be described as "traditional"), whereas KÀ was more of an actual performance with a storyline to follow - but the set and the special effects were mind-blowing. Again... if you have never seen Cirque du Soleil, you really are missing out.

Our last day we spent at the pool some more and then went to a comedy show that night. Then the next day, Saturday, we came home.

We were gone for 10 days but at the end of it it felt like it just flew past unbelievably fast. Of course the best part of coming home was seeing Mira again. We picked her up from Bonnie, a family friend who had watched her the last couple days and she seemed a little confused at first but definitely happy to see us. And it was relieving to hear that she had done so well while we were gone. Bonnie kept saying how "easy" Mira had been to take care of. Absolutely no problems at all, and she had had a really fun time hanging out with my family too. So we got her home and it seemed to me that she looked a little pale and she was acting a little quieter and more cuddly than usual but I figured that was so be expected. After all, Mommy and Daddy had just been away for a really long time and who knows what she was thinking. I put her to bed at her regular time and unpacked and went to bed too.

At about 1 AM that night Mark heard her crying and when he went in to check on her she was covered in vomit. Poor baby! So into the tub she went and into the washing machine her clothes and linens went. Poor little thing, she looked so sad. I had a really hard time getting her back to sleep again but finally by about 3 or 4 she had fallen back asleep. The whole next day, Sunday, all she wanted to do was snuggle with me. Mark actually got his feelings hurt because he wanted to snuggle with her too but every time he tried to pick her up she screamed until I held her. I guess when you're that age only Mommy will fix everything - until they figure out Daddy is just as good. But obviously this was one of those times only Mommy would do. Not that I minded, of course. I was just so worried about her. We got some Pedialyte and I had her drinking that all day and she kept it all down. By the next day she was back to her happy, silly self.

So I don't know what was up but I was so glad she was feeling better.

Thursday I went back to work. I was not ready for that to happen - and of course that week we were overwhelmed with patients, and my very first night back my patient was dead within 30 minutes of the shift starting. Not really what I had had in mind. That night (Thursday) Mark also took Mira up to a friend's cabin in the mountains so I was also worried because they would be out of cell phone range and I hadn't even been back home a week and Mira was going to be going away - but Mark really wanted the bonding time. And it's not like I'd be able to spend much time with her anyway since I'd be in between shifts and sleeping all weekend.

So I came back to an empty house Friday, went back to work that night, and at about 5 AM Mark called me at work. First of all, a call from anybody at 5 AM can never be a good thing. Second of all, a call from Mark at 5 AM while I'm at work could only mean one thing. Apparently Thursday night at the cabin Mira had been acting gaggy but nothing happened. Friday day she started to have massive watery diarrhea so he brought her home early (obviously not getting back until after I'd left for work) but otherwise she'd been acting relatively okay. The reason he was calling was she had just thrown up again and he had her in the bathtub wondering if he needed to bring her into the ER. My first mommy instinct was to say yes, but I managed (with great difficulty) to turn off Mommy Brain and turn on PICU RN Brain so I could think objectively. I told him to try to give her some water of Pedialyte to drink and I was close enough to the end of my shift I could take a look at her when I got home. But of course call me if anything happens. He said okay. Not even an hour later he called back to say Mira had thrown up again. Now of course all I wanted to do was ditch my patient and speed home - or else tell Mark to bring her in to the ER downstairs - but again I just said there wasn't a whole lot the ER could really do unless she was massively dehydrated and she probably wasn't yet so I'd take a look when I got home.

It's a lot harder to concentrate on your job when your brain is at home with your baby but I managed to get through my shift and speed home - and when I got there Mark and Mira were both fast asleep in bed. And Mira looked okay - she wasn't mottled, her color was good, her breathing was fine... Okay. I quietly got into bed without waking either one. Mira didn't wake up until 10 AM and I got up at 12 to see how she was looking. She hadn't had any more vomiting but still lots of watery diarrhea. Mark had gone out and bought 2 big jugs of Pedialyte and she was chugging down sippy cup after sippy cup of it. I was tempted to call in sick because I still had to go back to work again but Mark said Mira was fine and since she wasn't getting worse there wouldn't be a lot for me to do. (Secretly I think he wanted to have a chance to take care of Mira - isn't he such a great dad?) So back to work I went and by that evening the diarrhea had tapered off and still no vomiting. Whew. And ever since then she's been fine again. I have no idea what that was all about - but no harm done. Now of course her schedule is all off because that's what happens when you're a baby and you get sick and you get used to sleeping in bed with Mommy and Daddy - but that will fix itself too. I'm just glad she's feeling better.

So there's our trip! The three of us will be going on another trip in a few weeks to Jacksonville again to visit my grandparents (who, I imagine, are just beside themselves with excitement to see Mira again). I do not anticipate as easy of a plane flight this time with Mira being 18 months old so for that reason we got overnight flights so I can feel justified in drugging her with Benadryl. I'm sure everyone on the plane will thank us for that. Of course every time I worry about how she'll do with something she ends up doing great... But I don't want to take chances with this. Four+ hours is a long time for a toddler confined to a small space. So look for pictures of that in the near future.

As far as adding pictures from the trip to the blog... We've hit a bit of a snag. Apparently I've used up the 1 GB of free storage for pictures that I get for the blog. I'm having some trouble believing I really uploaded 1 GB of photos in just over a year but it appears that I have. (It seems that pictures from my phone are a small enough file size they don't count towards this limit, but that doesn't solve the problem because the pictures from the trip were not on my phone and apparently are a very large file size. Damn those 16 megapixels and the fabulously high-quality pictures they render.) I've been trying to free up a little more storage by deleting videos that were uploaded through Blogger and re-uploading them via YouTube but that is time consuming and all in all doesn't seem to be helping very much. Plus, the fact remains that I'm going to continue to upload lots of pictures to the blog in the future. I think the only possible way around this is to start a new blog - but I really don't want to do that. So, the end result is probably going to be that I'll have to start paying $30/year so I can upgrade my photo storage to 25 GB. That certainly shouldn't run out anytime soon but it seems really quite crappy that I'm going to have to pay that much to have a blog. I still don't understand why there can't just be a one-time fee to buy online storage space instead of paying per year, plus I'm bugged that this is the only way I can upload photos to the blog. I'm going to do some investigating before I commit to paying for the blog but just so everyone knows that's why there's going to be a bit of a delay. Also if anyone has any insight on ways around this please let me know.

Part 3: Museums, Capitol, & Family

Luckily we got most of our outside walking excursions done the first couple days so after that we could be inside more. Thank goodness - neither Mark nor I were in the mood to feel like we were about to pass out from heat exhaustion again! Sunday July 8th was our museum day. It was incredibly crowded so we didn't spend as much time lingering at exhibits as much as we normally would have but hey, we were still learning and seeing neat things and (perhaps more importantly) we were inside!!

First we went to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. When we went to get tickets we were told we would have to wait about 45 minutes to get in, unless we were active/retired military, firefighter or police. Well whataya know - Mark whipped out his badge and we got in right away. I knew that would come in handy at some point! I'd been to the Holocaust Museum before and it was just as dark and depressing as I remembered. This is not a feel-good museum. You leave feeling kind of nauseated and depressed about humanity in general, but I feel that it's still important to know this stuff.

Next we went to the National Air and Space Museum. Again, swarming with people, but still fun.

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*I took a sideways panoramic shot to get these rockets in the picture. Except for the distortion I think this is a cool shot.

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*Inside the cockpit of a Boeing 747

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*The Wright brothers' plane

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Our next stop was going to be the Capitol but as we were walking around to the entrance we saw that it closed to visitors in about 3 minutes. So we decided we would come back the next day for that but since it was starting to storm we ducked into the nearest museum, which happened to be the Botanical Gardens. I'm not much of a plant person - I often say I have a "black thumb" because I swear any plant I try to take care of dies - but this place was neat. There were lots of different plant habitats to wander through, such as desert, jungle, a room for medicinal plants, and even an entire room of orchids!

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We finally had to leave because they kicked us out for closing but that worked out well anyway because we had plans for a family dinner. We all met at a Japanese restaurant. Here are some pictures of my family. Everybody had such a good time visiting and catching up!

Fran on the left, Bobbi on the right

L to R: Alan, Cheryl (Gary's Wife), and Gary (Alan's son), and me

And Jim

Mark having some fun after his cocktail

Monday July 9th was a lot cooler outside so even though we still had some walking to do outside it was so much more tolerable. Our first stop was the House of the Temple, which is the headquarters for the Scottish Rite. Obviously this was more for Mark than for me but I just loved the architecture. The outside was modeled after the Mausoleum of Mauselos, one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world.

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The "Throne Room" as I call it.

*His Supreme Masterfulness

All you have to do to get your own Pillar of Charity is donate at lease $1 million to the House of the Temple. Let me get out my checkbook...

Next we went back into the center of DC and went to the Capitol. Mark had been inside before and he kept saying how different the process is now. 9/11 really changed how things are done. We had to dump all the water out of the Camel-back, put everything through x-ray machines and they still pawed through our bags. It was like going through security at the airport. We did a tour but I'll admit it was a bit disappointing. We only got to see a few rooms and we were almost literally packed shoulder-to-shoulder with other tour groups and we hardly had time to see anything at all before they were herding us into the next room. Then when we were done we couldn't go back to see things we wanted to look at some more. As I said, a bit of a let down but oh well. It was still neat to see.

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The memorial for Ulysses Grant

The rest of the day we spent in the Natural History Museum and a few parts of the American History Museum. I really wish we'd had more time, I could have spent days in those museums and still not have seen everything I wanted.

This is the Archives of the United States. So. Cool.

*We walked through what was essentially an outside museum of fine arts.

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Whoa!

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*The Hope Diamond

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Earrings that supposedly were worn by Marie Antionette

I'll take one of those, and one of those...

*Presidential dinnerware sets. I believe this belonged to the Clintons.

*The Obama dinnerware set.

*First Ladies' inaugural dresses.

*Mary Todd Lincoln's gown and silver tea set.

*An excavated shipwreck.

*George Washington's uniform. He really was tall, even by today's standards.

*Andrew Jackson's uniform from the War of 1812.

*Remember Union General Meade from the Gettysburg post? This is his horse. No, I'm not making this up. His horse was shot 8 times throughout the war and survived Meade, was put to stud, and finally had to be put down because he refused to die. You can't make this stuff up.

That was our last full day in DC. There was a Civil War Medicine museum up in Frederick that we wanted to see so that night we spent with Jim and Fran again. Since our flight didn't leave until evening on the 10th we had time the first part of the day to spend looking through the museum (but not before we tried out driving Jim's awesome motorcycle with a sidecar!).

Notice the "pedestrian slicer," as Jim calls it, that says "The Communist Plot." So tongue-in-cheek - we loved it!

It's quite a bit harder to drive with a sidecar.

After the museum Jim and Fran drove us to the airport and we were off to Vegas.

We had such a fun time out there! We're definitely thinking about another trip out there in a year or two to see more Civil War battlefields and re-enactments and museums. And of course it would be wonderful to spend more time with family.