Lauren Returns to Vegas

Lauren hasn't been to Las Vegas since her grandmother was alive, and she was probably not even two at the time.  So now that she's seven, it was an adventure for her to accompany me to Las Vegas.  We drove there from Arizona, as a stop-over on our way back to the Bay Area.  I needed to be in Las Vegas near the end of July for a tradeshow, where I needed to work at my company's booth.

Lauris agreed to do the stop-over, but I think he was starting to get second thoughts about it as we got closer to leaving for Las Vegas.  But in the end we all went, a full household including dog and cats.  We left early Tuesday morning last week and arrived around 3:30PM in Las Vegas.  The drive was relatively uneventful, although we did get to stop at a Cracker Barrel and have lunch in Kingman, AZ.  Cracker Barrel is one of Lauren's favorite restaurants, and she was happy to be able to go again, since we don't have any in California near our home.

When we arrived in Las Vegas, first stop was the Animal Inn, where we dropped off Cookie, Bella and Domino.  We boarded them for our entire stopover in Vegas.  The facility was great and included grooming services for Cookie, who just always seems to smell like, well a dog.

Lauren and Lauris got to investigate the sites of Las Vegas, while I worked.  My first night there involved a five hour customer dinner, which surprised everyone at the length of the dinner including myself.

But I did manage to squeeze in lunch and dinners with the family the following days.  Lauren enjoyed getting to see the insides of the casinos including the statue replicas in Caesar's, as well as all the shopping venues.

On our last night in Vegas we decided to see a show, and went to the half price ticket booth.  We didn't really see anything interesting, but Lauren noticed that Dancing with the Stars was showing at the Tropicana, and since it's her favorite TV show, she convinced us to see the show.  It actually turned out to be pretty entertaining and it was great seeing some of the stars and professional dancers from the show.

We left early Friday after picking up Cookie, Bella, and Domino from the pet hotel, and drove back home.  Our only interesting stop on the way home was a stop-over at Casa de Fruta.  It's been a while since I've been to Casa de Fruta, and it's certainly grown up from the old days when it was just a shack on the side of the highway.

One of the neat things they have there is an old waterwheel, as shown in the first picture, and they sell bags of dirt so kids can go sifting for treasures in the water runway off the waterwheel.  I picked up a "sluice bag" and Lauren found little gemstone treasures in her bag, including some amethysts and bright red stone, which I assumed to be carnelian.  She enjoyed it so much she kept asking when we could go back.

On Saturday after our return we had another busy day.  I took Lauren with me to my company's summer picnic at Saratoga Springs, where she had fun in all sorts of activities including getting a glitter tattoo as shown in the picture here. We also had great food, took silly pictures in a picture booth, had an artist draw us, got an animal balloon, climbed a rock wall, played on blow up jumpy attractions, and more.

After the fun at the picnic Lauren got to got to a birthday party at her friend Carolyn's.  While she no longer goes to school with Carolyn, she and Carolyn did share a classroom and daycare from the age of 2 through the end of kindergarten.  The party was a pool party at Carolyn's new house.  While I was there with Lauren I could barely get Lauren out of the pool, as she was having so much fun.