The Fearsomely Fantastic FIVE!: Las Vegas Adventures

Bentley, Jake, and Viva travelled to Las Vegas to spend five days with Grandma Karen helping her celebrate her 60th birthday! They had quite a bit to say about their trip right after they returned. I tried to record as much as I could of what they said. It's not easy when you have three children talking at the same time! Here's what they shared:

THE PLANE TRIP:

J: Don't eat the sandwiches. He ate one with parsley on it and it hurt his mouth. (Viva said it was a jalapeno pepper, not parsley.)

J: Don't drink apple juice. You have to go to the bathroom too much.

J: Don't have a nose bleed. (It took a pint of hydrogen peroxide to clean his shirt and pants.)

B: "The only good part was the digiplayer. They didn’t have snacks. They didn't bring chips." (J & V had food on both flights; B didn't like the menu.)

B: "They didn't have puke bags on the plane, so it's good I didn't puke. It's good Jake didn't puke because he would have puked on me."

THE EXCALIBUR HOTEL AND CASINO:

"Isn't it cool that we all got a gift from the same gift shop there?" B chose a dagger and Viking helmet. J chose a penguin he named Boo because he got him near Halloween (which I find amusing because it's decorated in Christmas colors). V chose a nail polish set. She's already used it twice and she says she did a much better job the second time. The gift store had lots of cool stuff--dress-ups and wizard staffs with orbs at the top that lit up.

They attended a dinner show there, The Tournament of Kings. They ate food with their fingers. B had J help him tear the meat off his small chicken until he figured out how to do it himself. B says it wasn't a small chicken, it was a turkey leg. ?! B didn't get to eat as much as he wanted because the bad guy came with fire and it was scary and he had to shut his eyes and cover his ears and he couldn't eat then--for probably half the show! Viva says she only ate the potatoes.

There was fire erupting from the ground that was real scary. Sparks flew sometimes when they hit the swords. At the end of the show firecrackers flew from the front of the room to the back. There were cannons that shot. There were kings from Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria, and Dragon (the evil one.) Their king was Irish. The kings jousted and they threw spears at a target. They chopped heads off of pretend people--fake heads balanced on beams. When both riders stayed on the horses, they had to fight on the ground with their helmets off--according to J. B says the helmets were only off because they flew off and in another joust one of the knights had his helmet on. The king from Ireland was taller than opa!

J: The jester was really funny. He had a loop around his middle that made it look like a spear had gone through him. "Ha, ha, ha, ha!"

V says she liked the fighting part when they fought with real swords. I asked her if there were any girls in the production and she said not a single girl except for the dancers. I asked if the dancers were dressed in clothes from the same time period as the kings. She said there were maids and hula girls. Hula girls? I asked if they had grass skirts on, she said no, normal skirts. [V is being uncooperative. She is reading a fairy tale book and doesn’t like it when I interrupt her.]

THE POOL AT GRANDMA KAREN'S RENTAL HOUSE:

We had rings that we dove after and golf balls, too. (There was a three hole driving range set up next to the pool.) Shane and Hans threw us into the pool like they were a diving board, kind of. Once Hans picked us up from the side and threw us like it was a high dive.

V: "The pool was delightfully warm, especially the hot tub." Grandma Karen said the pool temperature was in the 90s! The children spent hours in the pool. The pool was in the shade, so no sunscreen was needed. SCORE!

J like jumping in the pool and doing cannonballs. V said she liked swimming and diving for rings. B said they learned some new swimming tricks like how to do a better cannonball. You only raise one knee up. Shane and Hans taught them the dolphin kick. J reported: "It is not allowed in the Olympics." The dolphin kick is fast B said, but J disagreed.

THE GOLF DRIVING RANGE

B & J played grass hockey with golf clubs and golf balls trying to hit the ball into each other's hole. (Good use of the three hole driving range.)

MINIATURE GOLF:

They saw lots of bunnies at the miniature golf course. They were all over. The course had nine holes and a pond or lake or short river and a small waterfall. It had some harder holes that went down and curved. There were sand pits. No one won; no one got a hole in one. B did get one in two strokes. B: "More than one in two. Definitely more than three in three and four in five." (Huh?)

THE LAS VEGAS STRIP

J: We visited that line...The Strip and we visited that pyramid from Giza, the Luxor, and the Eiffel Tower." B: "And the Statue of Liberty" "And The Golden Gate Bridge." J: "The London Bridge!" B: "No, the Golden Gate. It started with a G or B." [The bridge argument went on for some time and got quite heated. FYI: There is a replica of the Brooklyn Bridge on The Strip.] J: "And the space needle." B: We didn't visit that, we saw it. V made us miss out on visiting the Space Needle because she really needed to go to the bathroom so we had to go home."

Viva liked how The Strip looked at night when all the buildings were lit up. Bentley said it was colorful and bright. Jake added wondrous.

Viva bought a pink and purple souvenir key chain of the famous Las Vegas Strip neon sign. She really likes it. Oddly enough her mom came home from Paris with a souvenir key chain with the Eiffel tower on it. We are not a family that collects key chains, so this was an odd coincidence!

RED ROCK

J: "We kind of climbed red rock" B: "No, we did not. We walked ten feet down a pathway." J: "No, twenty." B: "No, just a small way. I wanted to climb half of red rock."

THE PARK

J: "We went to a small park. It was a water park and a woodland park. It had small slides. I didn't like it the first day, but the second day Bentley convinced me and I loved it because I was so hot. I took my shirt off and got cooled down."

V: "It was very wet, especially when I got wet." "I loved all the logs--not real logs, plastic ones--especially since you got to climb them. There was a rock you got to climb, a super huge one. Well, not super huge, but it was a big one." J: "Like the Lion's King rock." Me: "Huh? What Lion King's rock?" V: "From the movie." Duh. V: (more on the woodland playground) "It was bumpy, stonish, plasticish. There are ridges you can hold on to and climb."

B: "It was supposed to be based on wood stuff or a mine because it had cool tunnels and bridges." [He mentioned boarded over holes like in abandoned mines.] "I don't know what it was themed on. They had a small water park next to it that I ran through with all my clothes on. I ran through it six or seven times or eight. I had my dry quick stuff on. Whenever I feel like we're going to do something wet, I put them on." "At the park they had a lot of water fountains. They were all over. We never had to get really thirsty. If someone said I need some water, ten feet away there's a water fountain or a bathroom."

POOL:

B: "We played lots of pool. I won six times and lost five times kind of...we shouldn't count the fifth time because Shane and Hans played a three way game and I didn't understand it. I still don't."

J: " I won against Grandma Karen and Bentley one time. It was great. We invented a game where you just use your hands and throw the balls into each others' holes." Grandma Karen told them if you get your hand hit you can't complain about it.

V: When I asked if she played any pool in Las Vegas: "Not real pool, but I pushed the ball into the hole. Bentley is the best pool player." When asked why she isn't better, she said "I barely ever do it."

PIRATE BOOTY:

B: "I found out an interesting thing about Jake. He suddenly has an interest in Pirate Booty." Opa: "What's pirate booty?" B: "It's a weird type of food." When J read what B told me, he denied liking Pirate Booty.

The children took a camera on vacation with them. They didn't take many photos. They did not get a photo of them with Grandma Karen!!