It's a...

BOY!!!

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Vegas Birthday

This weekend, Erik and I headed down to Las Vegas for a concert...Erik's birthday present to himself. In all my 28 years, I've never been to a concert. You know...other than the occasional band/orchestra/choir/symphony type one. So I was super excited to be able to say I'd actually been to a real live concert. Of course, when we told anyone we were seeing Jack's Mannequin, we'd get very confused looks accompanied by a, "Who?" But that was ok.

We arrived in Vegas Friday morning about 10 am and headed to House of Blues to pick up our tickets. It was then that we realized the concert started at 5 pm...much earlier than we expected it would. So we didn't get as much time to wander the strip as we had hoped. But we still had a great time with stops in the Coke and M&Ms stores, lunch at the Harley Davidson Cafe, and several trips on the monorail. As a side note, each trip on the monorail required singing part of the following:




Our only real disappointment for the trip was not taking a real camera with us to the concert. We had totally planned on it, but House of Blues has a no camera policy. After a little internet research, we determined they're actually pretty strict about the policy with several people having their cameras confiscated. So we decided not to risk it. And we SO should have. Not only did people bring cameras, they didn't care AT ALL. I watched one guy get wanded before coming in, which included pulling a camera out of his pocket in front of the security guard and then putting it back in. We were able to get some pictures with Erik's phone, but they aren't great, and of course, I didn't think to get any of us actually at the concert. Major bummer, but at least the concert was good. Although we could have done without the opening band that opened for the opening bands. Had we known the actual good stuff wouldn't start until 6:30, we could have seen a few more sites.

Even though we didn't get good pictures at the concert, we did manage to snag a picture of what we're calling the Jack's Mannequin tour bus. Even though we have absolutely no proof of any kind, it made us feel sort of special...


We were going to head to the Shark Aquarium the next day, but it didn't open until later in the morning, and we didn't want to get home too terribly late, so we nixed that and headed to St. George for some outlet shopping. We decided we could have totally used another day of vacation, but it was still way fun and worth the long drive. Not to mention the GLORIOUS weather!

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Oh Deer...

Since Baby (I really need a nickname for this kid) will be needing a crib, we decided to convert Lily's toddler bed BACK into a crib and buy her a new bed rather than buy a new crib. So this weekend, we made the trek down to IKEA with the hopes of finding something wonderful to fill the need.

That was really only part of the reason, I suppose, since any excuse to head to IKEA is fine with me. (And of course there was a stop at In-n-Out Burger.) While we didn't find anything that just screamed ADORABLE! PLEASE BUY ME TODAY! for Lily's new room, we managed to bring home two end tables and another set of kids dishes. And all for 26 bucks. I *heart* IKEA. (Oh yeah...and we polished off three deserts in the IKEA Bistro. Mmmmmm...princess cake.)


But that isn't really the point of this post, so I'll get on with it...Since we were going to be down that way anyway, we decided to take Lily on another excursion to Cabela's to see the stuffed animals. The night before, as we were getting her ready for bed, we told her we'd be going to see the animals. I was naming some we'd see, like bears and fish, and she says:

And Alicia's White-tailed Deer?!?!?!?!?!?

For those not in the know, Alicia is Diego's sister who helps in his animal rescues.

Now I wasn't sure there would be a white-tailed deer, but I knew there were deer, so I just agreed that yes, there would be a while-tailed deer.

When we got to Cabela's we headed to the deer section where, SURPRISE! There was a white-tailed deer - several, in fact. We pointed them out, and I've never seen the kid so excited. We finally convinced her to walk around to see some other animals, including some mule deer. She kept wanting to go back to the white-tailed deer, so I pointed at the mule deer and said, Look: there's a deer. She looked at me with the most serious little face I have ever seen and says,

Mommy, that's NOT a white-tailed deer.

I think we might be in for quite the ride...

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