

On October 29th 2005, Chris and I said our vows and sealed our love with a kiss. (Well and that piece of paper signed by the county clerk's office) Life has been awesome. Fast forward a year or so.... Bailey Taylor has joined our family. Now we begin the challenges of raising 2 kids who are 6 years apart. Ready or not... Here we go!!


Bailey two years ago (6/06)

Bailey had the greatest time in 'big sand box' as she called it.
I was actually disappointed in the place, I really thought it would be a 'WORLD' of M&M's... I guess I expected more of an amusement park type of attraction there rather than just a store full of gadgets and random candies. We bought a few things for the kids while we were in the store though.
After that we walked down to the Hawaiian Marketplace and bought a few things. It's an outdoor vending floor where you can set up a kiosk and sell whatever. Most tourists are willing to pay $25 for a t-shirt you'll only wear to sleep. So this is where you'd provide the city of Las Vegas with their stash of cash. As I walked around to see what I can buy at this market, Chris found a walk-up bar where he bought a 50 oz hurricane of Pina Colata. Well I don't know if it was 50 oz but it sure looked like it!

And after that... things were just a bit of a blur really. lol. We went down to the Venetian and walked around the shops. Really wanted to do the gondela ride, but the line was like Disneyland long so we decided against it. Although it would probably be really romantic... but with all those people just looking at us riding in a plastic boat down a manmade river inside a casino under a fake sky... is kinda weird.
This piece of art work is called "Fiori de Como". These 2,000 blown glass flowers were individually hand made by Dale Chihuly. World famous glass sculptor who has his work displayed all over museums, schools, hotels, and exhibits everywhere. I am especially impressed by this because I love multi-colored art work like this. My bridal bouquet was made from individual seed beads of all different colors. This in a small scale would have been a perfect representation of our wedding.
We also visited the Bellagio's Conservatory Gardens. A small area inside the hotel where they have exhibits of the season's florals. It is absolutely brilliant and breathtaking. Right now the display is called "Spring Celebration"

Our room was on the 19th floor and at the end of the hall way, so it took 20 minutes to get down to the casino no matter what.
Ok so we got in really late Thursday night and by the time we checked in and got settled it was already 10pm. We didn't want to waste any time so we took off to have somewhat of a dinner. We just walked across the street to the NY and ate at first restaurant that looked decent. Some random Italian place on the bottom floor of the hotel. The server was obviously at the end of his shift plus the fact that he's probably been waiting tables all his life made him a little quick with us. He literally dropped our calamari on the table and started walking away before we blinked.
While we sat and ate our dinner it hit me ... I'm tired as hell. Chris wanted to go check out other things, but I really wanted to hit the hay. We had to get up to take the tour to Hoover in the morning anyway.
Friday morning we woke up really early... too damn early for being on vacation! 6:45am to be in the lobby for the tour bus to pick us up by 7:45.
So Hoover Dam is only about a half hour away from the strip, makes for a nice short bus ride.
We took the half day tour as supposed to their 8 hour tour with the visit to the chocolate factory since we only had a couple of days in Vegas, we didn't want to spend a whole day away from the strip, which was where we really wanted to be.
We paid $3 more to take the tour down to see the Hydroelectric generators inside the dam itself. It was very cool to see something that was built in the 1930's worked 365 days a year all this time. I appreciated it and was more impressed with it since my area of work relates to the inner workings of this structure. The generators for this dam is 700 times the size of anything we work on. What's even more amazing is that the 7 of 8 working units are super quiet. We walked into the chambers and you can hear the tour guide speak to the group without using an amplified system.
Then we went down one more floor to experience the tunnel and the diversion pipelines which takes the water from the lake through the generators and then out the other side to the river. You can feel the water thundering through the pipe as you stand there listening to the tour guide. It's also very cold under there... they said it was probably 500 feet down from the top of the dam or where the road was. Walking along the tunnel you can see water damage and where the leaks were. Pretty scary since all you can think of is having all that water in the lake come bursting through the walls while we're in the tunnel.
After the tour down stairs we went up to walk along the top of the dam. There are a bunch of monuments and things to see for historical values. It's an amazing engineering marvel to build such a massive structure for its time.
In the movie "Fools Rush In" there was a line on the road separating the state of Nevada and Arizona but apparently when we got there, it wasn't there! Although there was a plaque that designated the split so ... good enough for me! Chris and I walked into the state of Arizona and then we turned around. Now I can say that I was in AZ for 5 minutes!
This is Chris standing on the top of the dam facing Lake Mead. Look at that water line... it's receded over the past 10 years or so. A disturbing pattern with all reservoirs and dams around here really.
We found someone nice to take a picture of us on the top of the dam. Proof that I was actually there too!!
This picture was taken from the top of the dam on the other side of the street. Standing on the ledge looking down was quite scary, good thing we didn't have vertigo!
A few years back, say 1999. I met someone who I eventually had Reese with, who took me to the state of Minnesota to start a new life together. On a whim. There was where I gave birth to Reese and realized that I had to do some growing up really fast. Becoming an adult in a hurry in a place where I knew no one and nothing about life and not to mention doing it with someone who's extremely selfish... was extremely difficult to say the least.