Las Vegas With Our Kids!

Las Vegas is our favorite place to go! There's so much to see and do all within a few mile radius.
We usually just drive through so we don't spend more than a few hours to one day here. But this time we spent 3 days in Vegas. And even though we spent 72 straight hours walking, exploring, laughing, eating, and making memories we still didn't do everything on our bucket list. But there's always next time.

Here's what we did:

DAY 0:
 We don't count Day 0 since it's the day we check in our hotel, unpack, shower, stretch our legs, and head to the grocery store. To help save on cost we ALWAYS go to the grocery store for snacks, drinks, food, and whatever else we might have forgotten like deodorant, hair brush, etc. So during the day we have our backpacks of snacks and water to help fight off  tempting overly-priced yummies.
But this day we also visited Mike's sister, Michelle. We just popped in on her. We told her we were sending her a package so if she could send me her address.

This package was way nicer than she expected.

 Our kids played nicely while Mike got to chat with his sister. After leaving a few hours we headed back to our hotel and went to sleep. We needed it!

But before we went to sleep Mike and I purchased our Go Passes from Groupon.

These passes have lists of places you can get into like museums, restaurants, shows, etc. So we can picked 3-5 from the list and we can show our pass and get in. We get our passes about $10-20 cheaper per person from Groupon or Living Social. Every dollar counts! 

So we printed our passes from the hotel office center to save on phone battery and got ready for the next day. 

DAY 1:
We woke up early. Enjoyed the hotel breakfast then headed out so we could start our adventures.

 Almost all casinos offer free parking so we just pulled into one and parked for the day.
Our girls wanted to see if anyone was swimming. When they seen that no one was they wanted to go.

There Strip is so peaceful in the morning. There's no one out and even though nothing is open this is the best time to see some sights. 

First stop Carol's Bake Shop in the Venetian Hotel.

My kids love Cake Boss so this is the one place we stop at each time we come to Vegas. After ordering our cannolis we waited and watched the workers make the yummy treats through all the windows.

 After enjoying each bite we were on our way.

Paris Experience: Daytime Eiffel Tower trip. 

This was included on our Explorer Passes. It really is beautiful to be up that high and see all of Las Vegas. Like beyond the strip. It's a beautiful city. 

 There's telescopes that cost $1 in quarters so since we we didn't have any change they just pretended.

 My sweet Lily.

There's little holes in the fence around the deck that give great angles to take pictures. 

Included in our tickets are the usage of iPads. The iPad gives a tour of what you're experiencing. Like the Wall of Locks, a replica of a bridge in Paris, and when you get to the top of the deck you scan the Vegas landscape and it shows where things would be from the actual Paris Eifflel Tower. Like Notre Dame or Lourve. My kids were really liking this since we just learned about France in homeschool. 

Lily says to me, "Look Mom I'm learning about Paris."

"Look Cati you can see Paris." 

Since we didn't have change they just used their imagination. But after I took this photo the guy in the photo paid for the telescope for them to look through. Nice people are everywhere!

 It's so pretty up here.

The Bellegio before the water fountains come on. That thing is huge!

"I'm sitting on the Eiffel Tower!"- Hailey says. 

This girl is so funny!

Even though this Eiffel Tower is half the size of the real one it's still really cool what you can see from this height. 

Mike took this photo from a peep hole in the steel floor. Look how far down this it! The people look like ants. :)

 It still is so cool to at. Now I want to go to the real one. Someday, Someday.

 Hexx Chocolate and Confexxions
I seen this in the Las Vegas Magazine that was in our hotel room. When reading I found out the store gives Free chocolate tours and tasting. And FREE is our best price!

 I signed us up on their website for the tour and while we waited for our turn we ventured out to find Mike some caffeine.

But right when we walked into this shop the smell of chocolate overcame us and we wanted to eat the whole store up. It smells so good!

During our tour we learned that making chocolate was a lot harder than we thought. The picking of the best beans, melting, cooking, cooling, and then the aging. 

The nice lady let us try the chocolate right out of the cooker thingy. It's so warm and delicious.

Then we were seated and given 2 trays each with enough samples for each person to try each flavor. Hershey's is now my #2 chocolate.

 Mason is my chocolate loving buddy. He and I could have eaten the entire store if no one looked.
But the cost of each bar was $6.99. So our kids had a choice of either a Hexx bar or M&M's. I was the only one who walked out with a Hexx bar.

Everything Coca-Cola Store
We love this place! Besides being a Coke drinker most my kids now drink it too.

 Representing Coke with the hand "C"

Our favorite thing here is the Taste Around the World. 

 There's 18 kid cups filled with Cokes from around the world (6 being floats... it's hot outside). The sheets of paper on each tray help you know where this coke is from.

 We keep score and mark the sheets of paper of which ones are eachother's favorites so when the sips are complete we can grab that cup and enjoy the rest.

 I don't know what Lily is doing. She's always doing funny faces.

 She gets it from me. My bad :)

 Sipping Time! Italian Coke is the worse.

 Told you! The faces we made are so funny.

Hailey's fear is kicking in .

 After trying even though it's gross she didn't die. I told her she wouldn't.

We've gotten sharing these cups down to a science to avoid any backwash. Either scoop with spoon. 

 Or sip with straw then lift up. Yeah we're weird like that!

Mason is doing a great job hiding his dislike of the Italian soda. 

Even though I'd love to represent Coke everyday of my life with all their cute stuff I'd rather spend my money on other stuff so after drinking our Cokes we headed to our next destination. 

M&M World

 What kids doesn't love this place. With a wall with so many different colors and flavors it takes our kids a few minutes to make their decision. Plus with the price of $6.99 per pound they have to make a choice and stick with t.

We get everyone a small bag of M&M's. Which is harder than you think. When the scoots open up the candies rush down. So it's a quick open-shut thing.  And thankfully I found a coupon that took off a few dollars but we still managed to pay close to $20 for candies! It's all about the memories!

 After our purchased we headed upstairs to see the 3D movie.

It's a short film, about 10 minutes, just long enough for us to rest of feet.

Then bathroom breaks but the race car. They look so cool leaning against this thing.

By this time we've been walking the Strip for hours and wanted to go back to the hotel to rest before our evenings events. Heading back to our car we seen so many characters walking around.

 After paying for a photo which is dumb we got in our car and drove back to the hotel.

But walking to our car we seen this gem in the Wynn Hotel.

So many pretty things. All made of flowers. So magical :)

While I rested with a nice book in our hotel  Mike took the kids swimming in the hotel pool. After everyone was showered and dressed I made diner (sandwiches and chips) we headed to our show.

The Ultimate Variety Show

 

This show was also included in our passes so earlier in the day we picked up our tickets to avoid the lines later. 

This show was so AMAZING!!!! We all loved it! Jugglers, dancers, aerobatic roller skaters, body contortionist, comedians, etc. This will for sure be a show we see again! After this we headed back to our hotel.


DAY 2:

This day we started a little later because we wanted to stay out longer. First stop

Las Vegas Temple

 The grounds are so small. We're use to large temple grounds that people can walk on and not disturb other people's experience. This day there was a wedding that left the parking lot filled and the street parking filled as well. This is a good problem to have. So we just drove around it.

 Like I said before any temple with palm trees are on my list of faves.

Next thing we went shopping. We love thrift shopping while on vacation. The things we can find will either make us scream in horror, laugh until our sides hurt, or squeal in delight for finding a treasure. Mike found himself some golf clothes. Like $70 pair of pants, still new, for $2.50!! 

For lunch we had White Castle. I got Mike hooked on those little burgers. We can chow down on those burgers all day. 

After eating we headed to another show, Nathan Burton Magic Show. It was horrible! So bad I'm not even going to write about it!

So let's continue to our last activity from our pass.

CSI; The Experience at the MGM

While walking to the CSI experience we seen this really cool dragon. It was so big that we only took a photo of it's head. 

 Now the CSI experience was so much fun. It involves team work, problem solving, looking at clues, and trying to solve the crime. We've watched this show along with tons more crime shows that we all knew our way around this.

 Photos are not allowed inside but we sneaked a quick photo since our kids looked so cute in their crime fighting vest.

 When we found out it was the friend Ducati was so confused on why a friend would kill her BFF. She then tells us that she's thankful her friend doesn't try to kill her.

After this we headed were going to walk the strip to find a food court. Which lead us to Excalibur. Then one thing lead to another and we purchased tickets to Tournament of Kings.

 
The tickets are on the pricey side but we still found a way to save around $13 per ticket. Thanks to having a M Life card. Easy to get and it's free. Show it everywhere and most likely there's a discount that isn't advertised.

It's a dinner and a show. We ate soup with handled bowls. Chicken, broccoli, whole potato with roll with our bare hands. There's no utensils back in the medieval days so this was new to us. 

Messy but fun! 

And the show was Exciting, Amazing, Thrilling, Engaging- just so much FUN that the price was worth it! There's knights jousting, riding horses, sword fighting, death of an evil knight, coronation of a king, and singing/dancing. 

 King with our daughter.

We were all screaming and cheering for our knight that we left with sore throats and hurting hands. 

We grabbed a drink and continued our walk on the strip. This weekend it was raining so the limit of high heeled ladies were on the low. So it was really nice. 

Walked through the Hershey's store where Ducati asked if she could eat the Statue of Liberty licorice. 

 We walked all the way back to our car with sore legs, hurting hands, and sore throats. That's a sign we had a good time.

Day 3:

We went to church. We love going to church outside of Utah. Utah Mormons are different than Outside of Utah Mormons. After church we picked up some Sonic and went back to see Mike's sister. 

Our kids played in her rock garden. Played with her dogs. Mike and her played a game of chess. It was nice and we didn't want to leave but we needed to get back on the road. 

Within minutes of our drive our kids fell asleep. 

We drove and drove and drove. We made a few stops at rest stops to refill in gas, grab an energy drink, go on a walk,  and continue on. It was so nice to get out and have some fun.