It's April and I'm back!

First of all, Happy April Fools! I didn't do anything tricky to my boys today. I had plans and ideas but...just didn't have time to implement. Besides Keith is in Vancouver working this week so it's not quite the same tricking someone who isn't here. Next year though, look out! Max's kindergarten teacher hid their shoes at school today. Each kid has a cubby where they keep their indoor shoes. When they get to class, the first thing they do is put their indoor shoes on. Well there was only one shoe in each cubby. So they all had to do a little hunt throughout the classroom to find their missing shoe. Max thought this was hysterical and it has been the topic of conversation around here all afternoon. :-)

So obviously, I'm back blogging again. Since we were going away for Spring Break, I decided to impose a blogging vacation for the rest of March. Good thing because I've been so busy getting back into the routine of life since we got back here that I didn't have had time anyway.

Our vacation was wonderful! Sunshine, warm breezes, flipflops, summer clothes, hot weather, fresh picked strawberries and the ocean...what's not to like?! We spent a week in Southern California. Flew in and out of Las Vegas because we got a much better deal on flights and a car rental from there. Enough to make it worth our while to drive the 4-5 hours to and from LV to SoCal.

My camera was being finicky and on top of that I left one of my memory cards in Vancouver so I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I would normally. But not to worry, there's still more then enough for me to go through and edit and put in an album.

I'll be posting photo's throughout the next few days so there will be lots for you to see if you keep checking back.

Tuesday evening, March 17
We were all packed up and ready to head out by the time Keith got home from work. We drove over to Vancouver and stayed at the condo for a couple of days. Keith was working at the jobsite during the day. Max and I did some shopping, met up with friends (Michelle and girls, Juli), dropped off a wack of clothes that Max has outgrown at a consignment store, got a pedicure and spent an entire afternoon at Go Bananas when it was too rainy to do anything else outdoors.

Thursday, March 19
We flew out of Vancouver headed to Las Vegas at 7:30pm. We arrived shortly after 10:00pm. Welcome to the world of waiting and lineups. First for luggage. Then for the shuttle over to the car rental centre. Next we waited to get our rental car. Then it was off to our hotel where we waited in a long line to check in. I think it was after 2:00am by the time we got into our hotel room. And by that time both Keith and I were wide awake and Max was insisting he wasn't tired yet. (He fell asleep within seconds of hitting the pillow though!) We stayed at the Excalibur. When we checked in they gave us a free upgrade to a newly renovated room in tower 2 which had a view of the strip. The first two photos were taken from our room...nighttime and daytime views.

Friday, March 20
We got up around 9:00am and went over to the Rainforest Cafe at the MGM Grand for breakfast. Then we came back and checked out of the hotel (which involved waiting in more lineups!) and I waited with our stuff while Keith took Max down to the kids arcade area to play a few games. Max won two stuffies (a seal and a fish) and then we were ready to head out. We drove down the strip which is very entertaining and headed out to the Hoover Dam. Last year we just drove over it, we didn't have time to take a tour. Keith really wanted to check it out so we made sure that was the first item on our list of things to see and do. There was quite a traffic jam to get there as every car is stopped and inspected before allowed to cross. We didn't mind. It was so nice and warm and sunny, we just opened up our car windows as we inched along and soaked it all in! :-)

After the Hoover Dam tour we hopped back into our car and headed out for the wide open road. We arrived in San Diego, CA later that night around 10:00pm. We stayed at The Doubletree Inn for the next 3 nights. We booked the hotel using Priceline. Have you ever done that? It's the first time for us and we were a bit leery about it all but it worked out fabulous! Their chocolate chip cookies are so YUMMY! Freshly baked waiting for you at check-in. Can't go wrong! :-) Getting back to Priceline and Hotwire...we'll definately be using them in the future. If you don't have a specific hotel in mind, just a specific location/area and star rating then we think it's the way to go. We ended up paying only 1/3 of the going rate for that room had we booked directly with them online. The cons are when you book the hotel it goes on your credit card immediately and is non-refundable so you won't get a refund in the case of an emergency. And you don't know what hotel you're staying at until you actually have paid for it. But like I said, you do have some control, because you state what area you want and the star rating you want.

Well that's the end of the first day of vacation. Not alot of relaxing downtime at this point. Which became a bit of a recurring theme...