Week 12 - 2021

 Week 12 - 2021

It was a CRAZY week. Work was super busy and stressful with trying to catch up from being out for a week. By Friday night I was finally caught up and exhausted.

On Monday, Blake came home around 11am because he threw up in his humanities class. After eating a few crackers and laying down for 5 minutes he was up and running around. Glad it wasn't anything big. He got to hand out with Jeremy and I for 24 hours and back to school he went.  

I signed the kids up for swim lessons at Aqua-Tots Swim School. They will have their first lessons this Saturday. It will be nice to get Blake back in the pool and see what he remembers from last year. I'm debating having him do swim lessons three days a week during the summer just to help him improve. We are still not sure what we are going to have him do for summer camp. Being downtown we don't have too many options near us and I don't want him just hanging out at home all summer even though summer camps are expensive. Jeremy and I have talked about maybe doing specialty camps every other week or something like that. I know they have camps at the zoo, the science museum, and other similar places. The YMCA has one as well but they don't have field trips again this year but he did have fun last year when he went. 

Blake's school pictures were sent home this week. I am so impressed with how well they turned out. I don't think they could have turned out any better. 

We didn't do anything exciting this weekend. We cleaned out and organized the attic. It gets so hot in the summer that we tend to toss things around in the attic so it was nice to get it all down and reorganize it and decluttered a little. 

I also finally organized Jeremy's "cord" bin. He has had a cord bin for years where he stores any cord he finds or extra cords. It was so exciting to have it all organized now. 

I enjoyed watching the basketball games throughout the weekend. I'm the only one that seems to watch sports in the house but its fun to have something to look forward to. 

Week 11 - 2021

 Week 11 - 2021

We started the week with going to breakfast. Blake ordered a really cute mickey pancake which was huge and Kylie had a funny faced French toast. 

Right after breakfast we headed over to Circus Circus to take the kids to the adventure dome. We bought them wristbands and they went on every ride they were tall enough for. Jeremy and I decided to just watch them do the rides since they were able to do all the rides together. They had an absolute blast and we could have spent an entire day there. Originally the kids really wanted to go to the beach pool at the hotel but they forgot all about it once they started riding rides. There favorite rides were a spinning ride and an angry birds movie ride. 

Circus Circus Ride Video #2

Circus Circus Ride Video

We headed back to the hotel around 2pm and hurried and got changed for the pool. Kylie was SO excited to play in the sand and Blake was really excited for the wave pool. He is currently 47.5 inches tall which is .5 inches too short for the wave pool. Blake convinced Jeremy to go in the wave pool with him which he was able to play for a while but eventually was told he was too short by a lifeguard. The water was SO cold but he still loved it. Kylie played in the beach pool and made a few friends. The kids also made a sand castle together. We all went to the lazy river and froze to death. Blake was so cold when we got out that we had to all give him our towels. Kylie didn't seem bothered at all. One of her friends came over to our area and they played in the sand together. The pool area was SUPER intense with masks. If you weren't in the water you had to have a mask on. So when you were just sitting on a chair you had to have one on and as soon as we stepped out of the lazy river they handed you a mask. It was a little crazy. 

The pool closed at 5pm so we started getting cleaned up and ready and headed to the High Roller (Ferris wheel). We went to the venetian first and then headed to get in line. The line was SUPER long but it moved which makes it not feel as bad but it probably took over an hour to get on. Blake was scared to death but he was such a good sport. Kylie was bored because she said it was too slow. Kylie was full of tons of energy while we were on the Ferris wheel which made it stressful and not as enjoyable which was sad because it was super expensive. I think waiting in line so long was just too much for her. The view at the top was so cool though. We were able to get a few picture together. 

High Roller Video

After we went through a candy shop and then headed to the Bellagio to see the water show and then to the volcano show. The kids LOVED the water show and Kylie was scared of the volcano show. I think she was just too tired since it was almost 11pm (I think). We did a ton of walking so the kids were pretty wiped out. I forgot how long it takes to go from casino to casino. We promised the kids ice cream so after we got back to the car we headed to McDonalds. We got out of the parking garage and looked back and both kids were fast asleep. We still ordered them ice cream since I promised. They were hard to wake up once we arrived at the hotel but they did and they had some ice cream before falling asleep in their beds. It was another fun filled day! 

Our last full day started with going to the Mandalay Bay Aquarium. We had planned to go the day before but they sold out of tickets so I ordered tickets the day before. It was a really nice aquarium but wasn't very big. We were the last family to come at our time slot so we didn't have anyone behind us which was nice. We were pretty slowly and enjoyed each exhibit. We were able to get some really fun pictures. 

We debated what to do the rest of the day. The beach pool was closed and it was on the colder side so the pool was out. We also debating on going to the old strip but decided on going to the outlets. We grabbed a few pretzels and did tons of shopping. Blake and Jeremy found some pretty good deals. Blake scored some shoes for a killer deal. We decided he has the most shoes in the family. The kids also picked out a toy from the Disney store. After Kylie had her toy all she wanted to do was go back to our "temporary home" and play with it which is what we ended up doing. 

We had reservations at the Candy Factory restaurant which is a really cool restaurant that is really hard to get into it. I found it on a website and they sell colored burger slides and really cool sundaes and milkshakes. It's pretty expensive especially compared to what we typically spend so I think that made it more stressful. The kids LOVED the colored slides and each picked their favorite colors. Jeremy ordered a specialty burger and then we all shared a sundae. I don't think we would do it again because of the price but it was fun to do once. 

After dinner we walked over to the Wynn to look at the decorations. Then, we headed back to the room to relax. We didn't want to run too hard the last day. After a few hours Blake and Jeremy decided to go look for dessert for all of us. They ended up walking to the Bellagio to see the water show again and picked up NY Pizza and Hershey's cookies and brought it back to the hotel. I have no idea how Blake was able to walk that far after a full day of walking but he was so excited about it. 

The next morning Kylie and I walked to the Excalibur to get donuts for everyone. We waited in a long line and then found out you had to have cash. I had no cash with me. It was so sad to have to tell Kylie she couldn't have her green donut which she was so excited about because her favorite color is green. We walked back to our hotel and packed everything up and went on a search for donuts on our way home. We found nothing so Jeremy ran into a local grocery store and all they had were packs of donuts but they were still frozen. haha! Poor Kylie had to wait for it to thaw out on the dashboard and eventually didn't even want it anymore. For whatever reason she was not entertained by anything on the car ride. She finally fell asleep 15 minutes before we arrived home and slept through me unloading and cleaning the car. It would have been nice if she had fallen asleep an hour or so earlier. :) 

The rest of the week Blake and I hung out. Thursday we had a fun day out. We went to Uptown Jungle and then grabbed lunch at Chick-fil-a. 

Uptown Jungle Video

We didn't do anything big for St. Patrick's day but Kylie dressed up for school and then I made green eggs and green waffles. After two waffles the waffle maker broke. It was the thought that counts, right? I did make a green cake as well. Kylie LOVES green so she was super excited to have a day full of green so I told her if she was good at school then I would make her a bunch of green food for dinner. She loved it! 

Saturday we went to our first movie at the movie theater since COVID. We saw the new Disney move Raya and the Last Dragon. There was only six other people in the huge theater! We decked out on the snacks with a large popcorn, large soda, and parmesan garlic pretzel bites. I've learned that Kylie lasts longer if we have popcorn and snacks so it's worth it. The kids seemed to like the movie but I think it was a little above Kylie. She lasted the entire movie but was antsy at times. 

Jeremy and Blake also went on another super long bike ride. They biked to Tempe Marketplace and got pizza. 

Blake Bike Ride Video