The wild, wild, west...

Okay, so it wasn't so wild, but it was definitely exhausting.  We flew approx. 6,000 miles, drove 500 miles, and stayed in 5 hotels (plus at a friends house).  But I must say, even though it was exhausting, it was fun and super memorable.  We went for a total of 11 days including two travel days and got to see so much.

We started off in Las Vegas, Nevada.  Our plane landed in Vegas at 11:30 pm (that's 2:30 am our time)!  The kids both slept about 2.5 hours on the plane and I was super worried they would have trouble waking up, but boy was I wrong!  They both woke right up and were so excited.  By the time we got our luggage and picked up the rental car it was about 1:30 am (Vegas time) and they were still up.  We drove down the strip a bit and enjoyed the lights and then to our hotel.  By the time we checked in and were in our room it was 2:30 am (that's 5:30 am our time) and the kids were still awake and happy!  Unfortunately we were not happy with our hotel as it was smokey and knew we'd be checking out in the morning.  Luckily we found a fantastic hotel to move to for our next three nights in Vegas.  It was a suite and had a huge pool (with a beach) and a lazy river.

Here are the kids swimming in the pool:

While in Vegas we visit many of the hotels.  There was so much to see...  we saw The Venetian, MGM Grand (with Lions), The Mirage, Mandalay Bay, Circus Circus, Luxor, The Excaliber, Bellagio (and the dancing fountains), The Flamingo (with the Flamingos), New York New York, etc...  We also visited M&M World, Coke World, and a huge arcade.

And of course no visit is complete without a visit to the Las Vegas sign:

Also while we were in Vegas we visited Red Rock Canyon, it's about 20 minutes from the Las Vegas strip and really pretty.

After our stay in Vegas we headed toward The Grand Canyon.  On the drive to the canyon we went right over the Hoover Dam.

And here's a picture on top of the dam, we put the kids in different states, they thought it was pretty cool.  Juliana was in Nevada and Ty was in Arizona.

Then it was off to the Grand Canyon.  It took about 4 hours to drive there, but it was well worth it.  We also checked into hotel number 3 in Arizona.

They had the friendliest squirrels there too!

After the Canyon we drove towards California, we drove about 5 hours to Barstow and spent the night.  The next day we continued our drive to Los Angeles and arrived in Beverly Hills around 3:00 (and stayed at Hotel number 5).

After spending the night in Beverly Hills we spent the day in Venice Beach, where we watched people at the skate park and walked the boardwalk and then played on the playscape at the beach.

Finally we were headed for our final destination of the trip.  We visited our very close friends, Rod, Susan, and Kayli.  The kids were all so excited to see each other and immediately ran upstairs to play.  Steve consumed many, many Taco's from our favorite Mexican place, Albert Taco.  We spent time at the park with them and then at a children's museum, it was the perfect end to a great (and busy) vacation.

Kayli's cousins spent the day with us as well.