Honeymoon

We spent our first few days together in Las Vegas at the Monte Carlo. It was kinda funny for me to stay in a hotel in my home town even when I am not living there any more! Sunday morning we ordered room service for Easter brunch, then we went out on the town so I could show Luke around. We went to Paris, and Planet Hollywood and enjoyed being tourists before going to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen. Not your traditional Easter dinner, but this was not a normal day!

What happens in Vegas...

Luke really wanted a shot glass from Vegas as a souvenir 

Paris holds the key to her heart... (Anastasia)

I have a list of 101 things to do before I die, and Luke was so cute our whole honeymoon as he wanted to accomplish as much as we could off the list. One of the things on my list was to go on a gondola ride, and the Venetian has one that goes through the shops. A Gondolier paddles you through telling stories and singing in Italian. The couple that rode with us had just gotten engaged, and we were just married so the gondolier gave special attention to "The Lovers" as he called us. He recited a poem for us he had written for his wife, and sang us an Italian love song. It is good luck for romantic couples to kiss as they pass under bridges and the last one we went under our gondolier, Alfredo, held on to the top of the bridge to stop the boat so we could have a special good luck kiss! The ride was worth the wait as it was very romantic, and crossed another thing off my list.

These are just stock photos I found, The one of us is on Luke's phone

Monday morning we got up and drove down to San Diego. We stopped at state line to ride the Desperado--one of the worlds largest, fastest roller coasters! Luke loved it as he is as much into adventure as I am. The ride got the adrenaline going for the rest of our drive! We got in late and had dinner at the restaurant in our hotel. They were short staffed and very slow, but at least we had a good view! Our hotel overlooked a marina and there was a gorgeous sunset that day! When we finished we went out the front of our hotel and walked along the beach and the pier. We were admiring the view we had of the city when out of nowhere a Pelican blasted off into the sky and scared me so bad that I grabbed onto Luke and almost threw us both in the water! All we could do was laugh for the rest of our walk! 

State Line adventure

The next day we went to Sea World as I have never been, and it was another thing on the list! We dropped our digital camera on our first day in Vegas so all of our pictures at Sea World were taken on Luke's Blackberry. The first thing we did was ride a roller coaster called Journey to Atlantis--it takes you up this track and then plunges you into a fountain! The only problem with this was it was a bit of a cold day--we were glad we rode this ride first! After the fountain the ride goes back to a coaster track and then dumps you into a 3-d elevator with dolphins swimming all around you, and then back to a regular roller coaster making it like a 3-in-1 ride! We enjoyed it--if it hadn't been so cold we would have ridden it a few times! We then watched the dolphin show, and saw the penguins, and of course saw Shamu! We were careful all day NOT to sit in the splash zones because it was so cold and windy. We left the park to have lunch and had to search for our car--we were so excited to get into the park that morning we had forgotten where we parked! HA HA luckily we were not the only ones walking up and down every aisle! 

The next day we drove back to Vegas. We had tickets to see the Blue Man Group-- I am such a bargain shopper I found tickets for 1/4 of the price and we were in the 5th row! We had an excellent view, and Luke really enjoyed the show. We decided we would hate to be on the cleaning crew for that show as they make since such a mess. After the show we were up for some more adventure so we went and rode the roller coaster at New York New York. This was also one I had been on before, but forgotten how fun it is. Luke had a hard time deciding which one he liked best! After that we had a nice dinner to celebrate our honeymoon coming to an end at PF Chang's. It was APril 15th--tax day-- so they gave us 15% off our bill! 

The next day we were supposed to drive home, but we woke up and were just not ready to come back. We called down to the front desk to ask how much it would cost for another night at our hotel, and they tripled the price we had just paid! We thought it may be best to just go home.... but we had to take care of some things in town--closing my bank account, mailing Luke's taxes (another story!), and then decided we really wanted to stay as it was late in the day! We went to see Fast & Furious since Luke has been talking about it for months and then pulled out our computer and booked a room for the night at Tuscany. We had dinner at my parents house since we wanted a home cooked meal after eating out all week, and then ran off again. This was dessert night! We went to the Bellagio to get gellato and watch a fountain show, and then I took Luke to downtown Las Vegas--old downtown like Freemont Street. We watched the laser light show and went to Mermaid's to get deep fried Twinkie's, but they were out so we had to settle for deep fried Oreo's. We were so sad to see our trip coming to an end, but knew we had to get back to real life.

In young women's when I was 16 we had a project where we made wedding cans. We had family and friends write us letters and sealed them in a food storage can to open our wedding night. Well, in the hustle and bustle of everything I had forgotten all about it so when we had dinner with my parents mom had given to me. As we drove home to Utah I opened the can and read the letters aloud. I had included a letter to my future husband which I read to Luke and it was amazing how well it fit him. I wrote it when I was 16, I had no idea the kind man I would marry, but everything I wrote was as if I was speaking to him today. Amazing how that worked. We were both teary eyed by the time all the letters in the can had been opened. It was a very special experience to share with each other and I hope someday when I am called to be in young women's that it is a project they will be interested in doing as well since mine meant so much to me!