Vegas Adventure

April was like a WAY busy month. I can already feel life slowing down a bit now that it's the last week of school and most of the "end-of-year" activities are over. Plus, this week is a black-out week for teachers which means they can't get a sub. Unless they're deathly ill I guess. So I'm on forced vacation time- as I will be all summer until school starts up again. Money-wise it's not awesome, but we always got by before, so we will be just fine. I'm going to be getting the kids "summer school" stuff organized real soon, and Dana and I want to plan lots of fun AZ weekend summer adventures to places in Arizona we haven't seen.

One wonderful part of our busy month was going to Las Vegas to be a part of special events on Dana's side. Our niece Maura graduated high school and is leaving for Alaska for the summer, our nephew Donovan got ordained as a priest and Dana got to be a part of the ordination, and our niece Meredith moved into Laurels. So their mom, Angie invited us to their house for a lunch/graduation party. They have grown up to be the sweetest kids and we loved spending time with them. It was so much fun and well worth the quick trip! (Thank you again Angie for the invite!)

We also got to go to Freemont Street with everyone. It was a little culture shock for the kids but it's great for them to see outside of our Gilbert world.
 

Eli wanted to give every street performer, or person with a bucket out in front of them, some money. As this would have definitely sent me over my budget, I gave him $1 to give to someone, which he did with a big smile on his face:)

The kids were very excited when we saw a sign for $0.99 (where's the cent sign on the keyboard?) chocolate dipped frozen bananas.
Here's our group!
 

There's a pool at Dana's brother Dale's house (which was freezing) but we couldn't keep the little girls out of it! They swam as long as they could then resorted to each other's body heat to warm up.
 

As an extra bonus we got to spend some time with Jeff, Carrie, and Berkley. She's so smiley!
 

Carrie had to work but Jeff and Berkley came with us to IHOP.
 

Can you stand the cuteness?!!! What a blessing to have such a wonderful family.