Quarter of a Century

February 21st was my 25th birthday and since it was on Sunday we celebrated it on Saturday. Chris was so cute, he woke up early and made me Swedish pancakes (my favorite) with strawberries and whip cream.
For my birthday present I wanted a new bedspread so we drove up to Salt Lake and I went to this cute little boutique called the Quilt Shop. If you haven't been you should! They had the cutest quilts, duvets, shames, throw pillows, everything you could think of! I had been looking at quilt stores for awhile and never found anything I loved, but we found some great stuff here.

Side story... Earlier that week Jaclyn and I were in Salt Lake at a flower shop, and while driving through the back parking lot we saw that their dumpster was full of fresh flowers! They were perfectly fine so without anyone looking we went dumpster diving and pulled out more then 10 dozen roses and hydrangeas! Then went back to her house and striped and cleaned all the flowers then she put together two beautiful arrangements for my birthday party.



Here are all the flowers we found and just some of the leaves and petals we striped!






Jaclyn is so talented!






Back to Saturday....after the Quilt shop Chris and I went back home and decorated and got all the treats ready for the party.









Then later that night we went to Tempanyaki for dinner. It's a Japanese steakhouse where they make the meal right in front of you. It was so awesome and the food was delicious.









Afterward we met up with a bunch of our friends at Fat Cats to bowl and play pool. We all had a really fun time! And I beat Chris both games, sorry babe!












I don't know what Chris is doing in this picture....



Next we all went back to our place to have cake and ice cream and watch the Olympics! It was a really good birthday and I'm glad I could celebrate it with all my friends.









Thanks everyone for the past 25 years and a great birthday!

Viva Las Vegas!

This valentines day Chris and I decided very short notice to take a trip to Vegas! Mike and Barb we're down there for a work convention and said we could stay with them. Since we wouldn't have to pay for a room we thought it would be a great inexpensive trip. But we were kinda wrong about that because on the last night we got a ticket! It's a really long story, but in a nutshell... we didn't deserve the ticket at all! Chris was driving all of us back from dinner and there was a car accident that happened on the left side of the road. We saw a police officer on his way over to the accident, but he pulled over the driver in front of us instead of going to the accident, so we tried to pull around them. The officer told us not to move, so to get out of the way of on-coming traffic we pulled the car back into the lane. He then walked over and got our license and registration! He told us to follow him. We ended up waiting in a parking lot for over 45 min while the officer investigated the car accident and THEN came over to give us a ticket for not listening to him! Which we thought we were trying to safely obey what he said! Need less to say we were all pretty mad and it kind of put a damper on the rest of the night. But we tried to get over it and have a good time anyways.



I've been to Vegas a few times before, but every time I go I'm amazed at how beautiful the buildings are and all the crazy nightlife!
Here are a bunch of spectators watching the Bellagio water show in front of the Eiffel Tower.



The Venetain is so beautiful, and you can go on a gondola ride that takes you right through the resort.






Inside the Plazzo



This huge pyramid is actually a hotel called the Luxor. It's where we stayed. It was so much fun. Although the elevator rides were interesting... We were on the 25th floor and the elevator doesn't go straight up like normal, it goes up tilted like the angle of the building, it was quite the ride.






Inside Caesar's Palace we met the Blue Man Group, Mike got really close to them. :)






This picture is of old Las Vegas. It's further down the strip then the newer Las Vegas. They've redone alot of it though. The white dome looking thing is actually a huge screen that plays lots of cool videos!



Walking down to "The Strip"






Taking in the nightlife






Inside the New York, New York












Recently they added a new resort called the Aria. Here is an overview shot of it. It is so beautiful. Chris and I walked through it. It had those cool tornado looking this in the picture below. It just had amazing architecture and didn't smell like smoke and dirty casino, but fresh paint and new wood. It was great!




Also while we were there we went to the Magic and Slate show, which are two huge conventions. Mike and Barb went to Vegas for this convention and they registered Chris and I so we could also go and see what it was like. There were so many people and merchandise! There are tons of booths set up selling clothes and accessories at cost to retailers. Since Mike and Barb now own the Katershop they were buying new products for the up coming spring/fall season.






Chris got to even help pick out new ties and suits that they'll soon be carrying in the store! It was a lot of fun.



My favorite resort is Paris, most specifically the Eiffel tower. I just love how beautiful it is, I can never take enough pictures of it. Chris can vouch for that :)









We participated in some of the night life. I'm helping this guy do a magic trick. Which was actually pretty cool, watch the video of it down further.



We even saw some famous people including Robert Pattinson and Johnny Depp! No, not really these were just impresonators. But we really did see Fat Joe, Flavor Flav, and Clyde "The Glide" Drexler who played for the Huston Rockets.



Chris had to get a Coke at the Coca-Cola store. It was a really cool store with lots of fun Coke products, we also went into the M&M store.





The Bellagio water show is another one of my favorite things to see while in Vegas.




We walked around A LOT! By the end of our two day trip my feet were killing me! But we saw some amazing things and had a good trip, so I guess it was a good trade off.






Thanks Mike and Barb for letting us crash your party and stay with you guys. We had a lot of fun and we're glad we could come...even with getting that $190 ticket.