A little of this and that

Last weekend, we celebrated our friend Leigh's birthday by hanging out all day at dog beach. It was fun chaos - there were kids and dogs everywhere and we had a great time. I actually didn't take too many pics (surprising, I know), but here's a few of the good times.

A nice photo bomb by Uncle Rob:

Hana and Jake kept this up pretty much all day:
Georgia was a safety girl with her floatie vest - too cute:
Bennett is one cool beach dude - good thing he loves it because he's going to be there a lot. Same with Neil.
It was pretty funny, Galileo and Georgia got pooped out pretty quick - they are the senior citizens of all the doggies now. When all of us were out in the water, they kept a close eye on our stuff. Good work, guys. Too bad neither of them kept all the dogs from peeing on my chair. Often while I was in it, too. Rude.
But, Galileo still managed to get some good water time in, too.
Leigh got to try out her lobster sand grabber:
and I got dog-piled...well, by, dogs!

The next day the Sparks had a BBQ at their house and I was impressed, everybody rallied! Still a random sampling of photos - I guess I wasn't fully feeling my photographic inspiration. There HAS been a lot of celebrating lately and my camera trigger finger is tired. :)

Aunt Leigh with baby Nilla - I want a turn! :)Tara, Leigh, and Jess
Kev and Jason:

Another nice photo bomb, this time brought to you by Aaron.
Rob and Jason:

And, finally, the latest backyard obsession - Cornhole.

Vegas #4 - the rest of the story

Saturday in Vegas we had sprung for 2 pool cabanas and I'm so glad we did. Chilling in those was the perfect way to recover from Friday night. Those cabanas were legit! Other than everything being gold-colored (comb-overs were optional), they rocked - they had A/C blasting which was heaven. Needless to say, it's pretty hot in Vegas in August. Whaa? Shocking, I know. The cabanas were the hookup - stocked with sodas, waters and fresh fruit. They even came with our own cabana dude!


It's too bad none of us like each other.




The pool was nice and chilly - this was definitely the best seat in the house:

We even got in some good Owen time - love that little man.

Show me your best "I'm way too cool in my shades":

We hung at the pool literally all day, then at night rallied...

and some of us went to dinner and then the Beatles Cirque de Soleil show, LOVE. It was the 2nd time Rob and I had seen it - it's amazing and I'd highly recommend it to anybody who likes the Beatles. Before the show, I won $120 on penny Wheel of Fortune, woot woot! Oh yah, and Rob cleaned up at the Let it Ride tables. :)After Love we hit some different bars and stayed up WAY too late laughing our butts off up in our room later.



Sunday was a pretty chill day too - we said goodbye to most everyone on the trip Sunday but 6 of us remained behind. We went out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Tao, and had a slurp-tastic meal.
Meg and Bill test out the Elephantitis of the Wheel

Of course, more gambling, which brings me to the final pic of the weekend: I mean seriously, how often does this happen? I think we can expect to come home every time with this much money from Vegas, right? Um, right? A truly perfect weekend from start to finish.

Vegas #3 - I do! Again!

I have to say, we were looking forward to our renewal of vows for YEARS but also didn't really know what to expect. We chose an adorably cheesy little chapel - the Graceland Chapel is in a seedy party of Las Vegas (their big claim to fame is that Jon Bon Jovi and Billy Ray Cyrus got married there...not to each other, of course) and we weren't really able to choose many options other than 1. get vows renewed with Elvis, check. 2. have a videographer and photographer there, check. 3. um, that's pretty much it.

I LOVE this picture:

We got there a tad early, and there was 2 couples still in front of us to go (one scared looking little gal was about 9 months pregnant and looked as if she was heading straight from the chapel to the hospital to deliver...but I digress)...so we took some pics out front.

My fave pic, the piece de la resistance:

We were out there for a while and clearly we are able to entertain ourselves quite nicely - at one point we decided to see just how many of us we could cram into that little gazebo. It was like a clown car! (and the answer is: plenty of drunkards)


And then finally it was our time! No outside cameras were allowed in the chapel, but a couple of our friends did apparently sneak a video that's basically of my armpit the whole time, so needless to say, I'm so grateful we did the video package. Here's the ceremony in all of its 7 minute splendor!

Wasn't that awesome? We were both so happy the whole time. I love how Rob is channeling his inner Elvis and I actually got a little emotional (not that that's ever a big shocker). Speaking of Elvis, I fully knew it wasn't the real guy (I know, I'm a mensa genius) but I couldn't help but swoon a little bit. He had such a presence and was so sweet to us. What an amazing moment.

After the ceremony, we took a group pic then loaded back on to the big red party bus for a few more hours of drunken debauchery. We had such a blast and ended the night at the Bellagio - Rob was a big winner and set the stage for a weekend of actually coming home with a bunch of dough! Clearly it was kismet...a magical weekend all around.