Adventures in Vegas

Before we went up to Utah for Christmas, we had a couple of adventures in Vegas.

One morning we hiked a few trails in Red Rock Canyon with Sarah's mom, Lisa.  One of the hikes was to a waterfall, and I have to admit that I was surprised with what we found.

 

I wasn't expecting a frozen (okay, it wasn't completely frozen, it was dripping) waterfall in Las Vegas, regardless of the time of year, but there it was in front of my eyes.

  

 The picture of us is kind of blurry because my hands were so cold.  (I wasn't expecting it to be colder in Vegas than it was in Oklahoma when we left.)

  

 

 Our last hike was in to the base this canyon before we decided to turn around and go home for lunch.

Since we had brought our discs to play disc golf over the break, we decided to go play one afternoon at the park by Wes and Lisa's house (anticipating that snow in Utah would deter our desire to play there).

  

 

I think Lisa enjoyed her first game of disc golf and Sarah continues to improve.  (Apparently my ability to get pictures with the disc in the air has improved as well.)

Per tradition, Sarah got together with her best friends from high school for dinner.

 

Nicole, Laura & Melissa surrounding Sarah (I can't tell them apart), and Emily (who since the picture gave birth to a healthy 9 lb. 13 oz. baby girl).

The biggest letdown of the trip to Vegas for me was this next adventure.  Wes has acquired some paintings valued at millions of dollars, but can't find anyone interested in purchasing them for even a small fraction of that.  We decided before going out there that Wes and I would try taking them to pawn shop from the History Channel's show, "Pawn Stars," one of Wes' favorite shows.  

Unfortunately, once we arrived with some of the paintings and took them inside, we were informed that they only buy gold, silver and platinum, because nothing else sells very quickly and just takes up space.  The shop was basically a tourist attraction to see some of the things they had purchased on different episodes of the show.  On top of that, none of the stars from the show were actually there.

 

 

 Wes, inside and outside of the "Pawn Stars" pawn shop

Speaking of adventures with Wes, we had another one when he decided to buy a mattress from Sam's Club.  We tied it to the top of their minivan with two straps and he was ready to go.  I wasn't too sure and wanted to use one more strap, but he seemed pretty convinced that it would be fine.  Even though home was only about two miles away, after about a mile, the front of the mattress flipped up vertically above the minivan.  Luckily, the back of the mattress stayed tied down and after Wes pulled over, we were able to get it secured for the remainder of the trip home.