A Very Vegas Valentines

My parents came down to visit us and the grandparents on Valentine's Day. After Chad's last class we packed up our things and headed down to Vegas. Unfortunately we haven't really met anyone in our ward yet :( so our plan to have one of our awesome new friends let our dog out while we were gone was kinda thrown off by our lack of any kind of friends... So, we needed a new plan. We have an enclosed little patio out back and thought we would just let Rukia stay out there and set her up with some blankets in her cage as a dog house, of course with the heated blanket! We even have a fake grass rug thing out there that she could use for a potty. Nice plan huh? We were quite satisfied with our solution until we found out it was supposed to rain/snow the whole time we were gone. Bah! Now what? Well.... next best idea... barricade her in the kitchen! We set up some blankets for her, drug the rug inside hoping she'd potty there and gave her all her toys. We didn't feed her or give her much water the day before and didn't leave her with any either! I know, we're awful! We blocked off the rest of the house with our couch and bike, she's terrified of the bike so we thought it would do the trick. More on that to come...

We picked them up and headed back to our hotel at El Cortez. From there we all went to see the craziness at Freemont Street. We saw the awesome light show above the street that we'd heard so much about, it was awesome! There were men in leopard costumes, a man playing the sax, and men in bikinis and stripper shoes. We have pictures of two out of those three, I'll let you guess which one we didn't get ;)



We went out later that night and took a ton of pictures of Vegas all lit up. The next morning the grandparents told us all about their wild adventures in Vegas. They definitely had a good time getting into free shows and seeing all that Vegas is known for (wink, wink)! Who knew I had such wild grandparents!




The next morning the grandparents taught Chad and I how to play the slot machines. With some direction, their money and a little luck I was a big winner!!!! Well... I was in the positive, $17.04 baby! Woot! Never mind that to get that we put $15 in. I'm way too cheap to gamble. I'd rather go shopping :)


Chad and I headed back home Wednesday night anticipating an easy drive. Most of it was until we hit the mountains right outside the Utah border. Then the rain came. Oh boy did it rain. And we could handle the rain until it turned to snow as we climbed higher and higher into the mountains. Ok, no big deal, we're from Michigan, if there's anything that we know how to do it's drive through a bunch of snow in a blizzard. FYI driving through a blizzard in the mountains is just a little bit different than driving down 1-75 in one. Lots of turns, lots of hills and twists, and lots of me closing my eyes hoping that we weren't going to slide into the side of the mountain. We could barely see but Chad was a champ as usual and we finally made it home. Who would have thought that we would have to drive through a snowstorm here in St. George? Clearly not us!

We were back home and hesitant to see what kind of destruction had occurred in our home. Did she get out and rip everything up, chew on all the moldings, pee everywhere, poo everywhere? We opened our back door to find.... nothing. She held it the entire time! Probably helped that she had nothing in her! It was a nice surprise after the horrible drive. Ok, well that's enough talk about my puppy and her potty habits! Probably more than you needed to know ;) Good news for us though, we can leave for 24ish hours and our puppy will be fine without us!

We hope everyone had an awesome Valentine's Day whenever you decided to celebrate!