The Twins are TWO

The day after arriving home again from vacation the twins celebrated their 2nd birthdays. This year I was glad to see they didn't cry when we put their party hats. We then wet right down and opened up their gifts under the birthday tree, really it was just left from Phoebe's birthday and everyone liked it so I didn't take it down.

Josh was really into openeing all his gifts and he did quickly all by himself.

Cami on the other hand paid as much interested in her gifts as one would reading a piece of junk mail. We ended up begging her to come back so we could open presents together, but eventually we had to open them for her and just show her and you can see by her face, still how much interest she had in them.

Here are my three "biggies" in their b-day clothes from grandmas. 

Later that afternoon while the twins were napping, Phoebe & I went down and picked out the twins b-day cupcakes (sorry to disappoint all throes who thought I would homebake greatness, I DON'T do birthday cakes). While we were out Phoebe got to spend her $2 that she got from Grandma Potts and these were the treats she picked.

After mini pizzas for dinner the twins blew their candles out on the cakes. Once again Cami was blew hers out immediately and Josh had a bit of trouble getting his candles out. Bless his heart, he sure is zealous with his little blows, but he just has no since of aim with them. When he finally got his candles out all the kids enjoyed frosting only part of their cupcakes.

Second birthdays around here tend to be luster lacking, but they had fun still. 

I just had to add this last picture because Josh is giving me the angry eyes, something that is getting to be a more common around here, but it never ceases to make me laugh.

Vegas Baby!

I am really slow in getting to this but in the middle of October we went on a vacation to Vegas with my parents. We were excited for the vacation but really sad when shorty before we left we found out that one of the restaurants, Nascar Cafe, that we saw on on Man vs Food was no longer open. The Lord must have felt our sincere sadness and had pity on us because though we couldn't try the B3 we did win a free McFlurry from McDonalds.

For this trip we stayed at the stratosphere Hotel; nice hotel but a bit far off the Strip for walking.  Seeing as they were one of the only hotels, however, that didn't charge for kids they won us over.  Almost everyday we started off by eating at Denny's (3 different Denny's in total). We then hiked to the monorail and started on the strip down by MGM.

We saw the Lions and this time we even splurged and took the family in the aquarium in Mandalay Bay. It was a bit expensive but really cool. We saw a Golden Crocodile, Komodo Dragon and one of the only predator shark takes in the world. My favorite was the Green Sawfish (it can reach up o 24ft and their snout has 24-28 blades on it).

Among one of my favorite parts of Vegas besides the lavish displays are all the great buffets! I figure if I am not eating healthy I won't make my kids either so yes that is a chocolate cupcakes Cami is eating for her dinner, it was one of the only things that silenced her yells.

As always the Billagio Gardens were was AMAZING!!! The giant ears of corn  re made up from 60 pieces of Indian corn. You proabably can't see but the pumpkin weighs 835lbs and there were several this size. Our kids LOVED he 20 ft tall talking tree. The apples at it's base were 3 ft tall and made up of 3,400+ roses EACH! There was even more wonderful stuff to see in the gardens, but too much to post all here.

The Bellagio was also home to Jean Philippe's Patisserie, which had several cool things one of which was the world's largest chocolate fountain. It took 2 years to build and stands 26ft 3in tall. It circulates 2 tons of chocolate at a rate of 120 quarts per min. Just as a fun treat we bought a cookie there, we only got 1 because they were $4 EACH so the kids all split it.

The patisserie also housed this which was hand made out of 60 lbs of chocolate and 30 lbs of fondant. It took 4 people from the patisserie 1 month to create it.

One of the coolest parts about going on vacation with my parents is that they took the kids for a might so we could have our "million dollar date." Okay so it wasn't actually a million dollars, but it was one of the most expensive things we have EVER done! (Thanks Mom and Dad for treating 1/2 of it). We started by having dinner at Fleur which is Hubert Keller's restaurant. I have to admit I had never heard of him, but my dad said he really loved watching him on the Food network. I was shocked when I found out that Hubert really was the chef there, he came out and greeted a couple tables, non of which was our to my dismay. The food was so fancy that it was near microscopic is size (the true measure of fine food) and that was for the LARGE platter which we ordered; literally Cory's dinner was served on a 6x12in rectangle platter & came with a 1/2 a small fennel, 1 baby carrot, 2 pieces spinach and a piece of duck smaller than the size of my cell phone. To make up for the puny per-portions of our dinner we ordered 2 deserts to share, DELI-SH!

After dinner we went and saw the Broadway version of the Lion King. The costumes in this were truly amazing! It deserved every award it has won.

I had mentioned before that every day we had to take the monorail to the strip well when I asked Phoebe what her favorite part of the trip was she answered pack the moving stairs and the train so I figured I should get some pictures of them for her then.

On our last full day we finally got to see M&M world and we even took time to go watch the 3-D movie they had, which some kids like and some not so much.

The morning we were leaving was the day before the twins birthday so we had a little early celebration at the hotel buffet with grandma & pa Potts. For a special treat our waitresses fashioned mini cakes for them, even though it was still breakfast, complete with candles to blow out and several other staff members singing. As you can see by te grin on Cami's face she loved it! Josh was eager to blow out his "hot" candle and took serveral blows at it, but in the end I had to help him a bit

Right after breakfast we had to run up to the tower on level 108 and view Las Veags from up on high.  As you can see the strip looks much less exciting during the day, but our pool did look better from that high up than when we actually went and swam in it.

As we were leaving town we had to take a picture of Las Vegas' largest Souvenirs Store with a sign so dumb I could't believe they actually have it up. Although its redeeming quality is its obvious stupidity does make me still laugh a bit.

As with all our trips with our 4 Ratbirds we left absolutely exhausted and eager to return home where they can run free, but thanks from all the added help from my parents we truly did have a pretty fun time down in Vegas.