The Big 21!

July 21. Wake up. Get all excited that tommorow is my birthday. Get dressed. Shower. Text Hillary because today is HER birthday. Brush teeth. Floss.

Heck, I don't remember the rest of the details. All I know, is that I had a freakin awesome birthday!

It was monday and I got stuck with working the night shift so that I could have another day off in the week. I wasn't too thrilled. (After all, I was working with Dan... haha) However, the night actually went by pretty fast; By the time 10 o'clock rolled around though, I was ready to go! I loaded my bags, picked up Brett from work and we were on the road!

For all you Gilmore Girls fans out there, you will totally love this! I have grown up with them, so of course I had to steal their brilliant plan for Rory's 21rst birthday bash. Of course I couldn't make it all the way to Atlantic City, but we thought Vegas (and Mesquite!) were a good compromise. After all, we were due for a little vacation anyway.

So we drove our little butts down to Mesquite where we checked in at the Oasis. We got there almost an hour before midnight Nevada time, so first things first, we decided to check in to our room. It was a muggy 102 degrees outside, so when the keys for our first room didn't work and we had to haul our stuff to the lobby and then back to a different room, I wasn't too thrilled. Ugh. I thought the manager who helped me sure took the easy way out. But once we got to our room, I was glad our keys hadn't worked!! We got lucky and ended up with a remodeled room, which was way freakin nice! A lot better than the first room we were almost stuck with...

After getting things settled in, we decided to scope out the casino. My heart sank when the whole section of blackjack tables at one end of the casino were empty... I thought we were going to have to rush to the Virgin River, and we only had 10 1/2 minutes til midnight!!!! Crap! But, finally we walked around a bit more and found a $2 table for me to gamble away my life savings... The chinese/japanese ?? dealer was kind of a retard. She kept speaking some language that definitely was not english, so for the first ten minutes I had no idea what was going on. And I kept losing! Ugh. That does not go well with me. Finally we got a new dealer who was still chinese/japanese ?? but he at least spoke english to us and was cool. I finally started winning some back, and decided to quit while I was ahead (or at least not losing anymore...) I played 21 as I turned 21, and I felt like a freakin bamf doing it. Haha. Of course since I hadn't gambled with 21 dollars quite yet, I had to play with a few more on the slot machines (which I also lost at). I am just not a born gambler! Or maybe my magic 21 luck decided not to show up.

At the end of the night, this is where we crashed. Not bad for 25 bucks, eh?

So we woke up the next morning, drove down to Vegas and spent the whole day shopping. When we were finished I was about ready to DIE! However, we attained our goal of purchasing our "lucky" 21 items! When we finally arrived at the Rio, I was dissppointed in our "suite". Apparently last time when we were "upgraded" I guess we REALLY were, because the room we got this time was like a Circus exploded. Oh, well. It served its purpose.

What a lovely room. :-P


The rest of the night seemed to get worse from there.... After checking in, we wanted to swim to cool off and the nicest pool was closed. What a bummer. And the ghetto one that was open, closed a half hour later. Lame! What hotel does that? So we scooted over to the Coke store, where we bought the sweetest "coke can" cups and of course our traditional bottles of Coke. And this time, we even got to meet the Coca Cola bear! AWESOME!


From there we had to pop into the M&M store and play around for a bit. It was packed as usual!



He looks like he is trying to suck up and tell her she is so gorgeous. In reality, he just wants a piece! Har, har har.

So many colors.... So little time.....





This purse was made of M&M wrappers!!! So freakin sweet! Except for the fact that it was over 100 bucks!


After all our childish fun, we didn't have time to ride the Gondolas at the Venitian as planned, so we tried to see the Pirate show at Treasure Island. Well lets just say the view we got was not worth the 30 minutes it took to find a parking spot, and circle our way through the entire hotel. Not that it mattered, because the days of the cool sinking ships are over! Now the show is just a bunch of hookers dancing around for some extra cash. Cool to some, maybe, but not to me. Dinner at the end of our night, finally made things better!! We made it to the Cheesecake Factory for my real birthday dinner which was AMAZING! By the time we were done there, I was ready for bed!!!

I don't think we had ever noticed this big Trojan Horse in Caesar's Palace. It was huge! Haha.



Well, that is my big 21 in a nutshell. Not everything went according to plan, but overall it was a fun birthday. And of course Brett surprised me with concert tickets to a show up in Salt Lake in a few weeks because he's awesome like that. Well, currently we are in the process of moving, which is why it's taken so long to post anything. July was so full for us! We had a dentist appointment every week, job hunt/interviews up north, my birthday in Vegas, two family reunions, a trip to Zion, etc. SO fun, but SO busy! As soon as we get things settled in up north, I'm sure we will have a lot more to talk about. Til then, peace out!