Sunny Saturday

On weekends when Devin and I don't leave the state I usually end up working at least one day during the weekend, and this weekend that day was Sunday, which meant Saturday was wide open for excursions and adventures!

I started the day by watching the newest episode of Pioneer Woman, who I am deeply and unabashedly in love with. I'm not sure if it's her red hair, her sweet demeanor, or all the amazing food she cooks but I am hooked on Ree Drummond. While we watched her whip up a fabulous dessert panini Devin kept saying "That's SO much butter!" Yes sir. Yes it is. She is not afraid of butter and does not apologize for decadent things like a dessert panini filled with marshmallow fluff, strawberries, and nutella - more reasons to love her pioneer ways!

I then did one of my workout tapes which made me feel only slightly better about our first stop of the day: A Mexican lunch buffet! Devin and I both LOVE Mexican food and when we saw that a restaurant a few towns over has a lunch buffet on the weekends we knew we had to try it out. It was definitely tasty and we both concluded we would go back again. It actually reminded me a lot of our wedding meal (which if you weren't aware was a fajita bar because that is how much we love Mexican food) - they had beef and chicken to make fajitas, rice and beans, shredded chicken, guacamole, queso dip,  AND chicken nuggets...presumably for children but one might have made its way onto my plate.

Then it was off to Babies R Us. I had a few strollers I wanted to look at and thought it would be fun to peruse the baby gear to start narrowing down what we want to get for our little nugget. Nothing will make you feel more like a first time parent than walking into Babies R Us. We are champions of shopping for onesies, and my doctors appointments have been smooth sailing (Yup baby is still located in your uterus and still getting bigger). But the baby store is a whole new ballgame. Devin and I fumbled over latches, buckles, buttons, levers, snaps, and belts trying to figure out how all this stuff is supposed to work. Luckily, I had watched a few videos on the specific strollers we wanted to try out so looking at those went a little smoother...but seriously just a little. I definitely got the car seat jammed into the stroller with no hope of getting it out leaving my husband to struggle with the contraption for a few minutes before he could finally yank it free.

Yeah. We need a little practice.

Next up was highchairs which was the biggest debacle of the day. There were like a million buttons and as we pressed each one it never seemed to do what we expected. The seat was sliding up and down (it goes so low, why does it need to go so low? Are you feeding your baby while sitting cross legged on the floor??) and we couldn't figure out how to fold it up while also folding up the tray. So yeah. If you want to know what pre-parenthood looks like you can imagine 2 grown (fairly well educated) adults investigating a high chair like it was dropped from the sky from another planet. Is this even a button? No that's just a screw. High chairs: 1 Cosmes: 0.

The other problem is there are a million options for any item you want to purchase. And if you ask for advice one person will tell you that this swing is all their baby used and it was a complete life saver, while the next mommy will inform you that that same swing was a complete waste of money and never got used by baby once (the same thing happens if you venture into the review sections on any internet site selling baby items). This reminds me a lot of when I did speech and in the same round one judge would say your introduction was beautiful and moving and perfection and another judge sitting one foot away from them would say they did not understand the point of your introduction at all and would suggest a full rewrite. Aye gee. So the point is we have no idea what baby will like because baby is the size of an apple who just got the ability to hear muffled sounds this week. (Hellllloooooo baby! Can you hear my growling tummy??) Thus I am taking a deep breath and taking a guess, looking for deals, and accepting the fact that we are going to figure these things out in due time. And we will figure them out quickly, because babies come with a pretty fast learning curve. If our stroller is complete crap, we will learn, and next time around we will laugh about that shitty stroller we bought for our baby number 1 and tell baby number 2 how grateful they should be that we have (some) things figured out.

Laughing. As we try to navigate this new strange world with bottles and nipples (there are so many different nipples), and strollers, and bouncers, and swings, and swaddlers, and humidifiers, and pumps, we are going to try and laugh as much we can and remember that with a little laughter and a lot of love our baby will probably forgive us for not having their preferred swing immediately upon entering this world.

After a trip through baby gear land we needed a little pick me up and stopped for Froyo which is the perfect thing for any Saturday afternoon. Also, they had jelly beans in honor of Easter and I am a jelly bean-aholic so it was a great surprise! We spent some time just relaxing at home before deciding we needed dinner of some kind. We initially planned to do a nice pasta dinner, but on our way to the check out Devin spotted tater tots...so we abandoned everything in our arms for a bag of frozen potatoes and chicken tenders (don't worry antibiotic free!). Hey we don't need to set a good example yet. Then we came home and warmed up our frozen feast, brought the mattress out into the living room, and had a splendid evening lying on the living room floor watching Mockingjay (which was not as good as I expected - bummer).

I have to admit having a wonderful Saturday always makes coming into work on Sunday a little easier. A little.

Day 2. Special Guests.

Given that I went to bed at 11pm on our first night I was up at 5:30am Vegas time and ready to party. The great thing about this city is whenever you are ready to go, it's ready too. It was the perfect lazy morning, I read some of my book, watched Good Morning America, and waited for my body to feel like getting ready for the day. 

We started our day with an Irish coffee and a Bloody Mary, which was great except all my Bloody Mary came with was celery. Are you joking me? I can't get an olive? A pickle? A pepperonchini? Luckily I had some turkey sticks in my purse that I packed in case I needed an emergency snack, so I tossed one of those in there to jazz it up - a lady who brings her own meat to the party is the classiest lady you'll find. 

Then it was time for brunch with a dear college friend of mine Ryan! We did speech together and whenever I travel to Vegas we always catch up. We went to Palms for an awesome meal that consisted of made to order eggs Benedict and breakfast pizza, sushi, smoked salmon, all the best baked goods and street tacos (they were so good I had two despite my stomachs claims to be full). It was so wonderful to catch up and hear all about Ryan's Vegas adventures. And then Robin Leach stopped by our table (he knows Ryan) and Devin and I wanted to play it cool so we did not get a picture. 

Then I took another nap because I love naps, and woke up at 5:30 am. 

Then it was off to the strip! We took the bus that runs from Fremont to the strip and it was very convenient. Here's Devin waiting for the bus and clearly very happy to have me photographing him. 

Oh here's a smile I forced out of him. He's happy even when he's frowning, I promise. 

We had dinner reservations at 7 so we got drinks at a place called 3535 (recommended by Ryan) before we went for food. Damn. These drinks were phenomenal. This is a sampler of infused alcohol. There's an espresso infused whiskey, a bacon and ancho infused whiskey, and cookie dough Ingushes cherry cordial liqueur. I took a sip of each one and made a face like I had taken a sip of gasoline. 

Which is why I ordered a peanut butter and chocolate martini that was out of this world. I also got a coconut martini that included banana infused liqueur and rum chata. 

We then ate dinner at a restaurant called Javier's which is in Aria. It was a recommendation from my brother in law and Devin and I love Mexican food so it seemed like a no brainer. First of all we had this appetizer that sounded like a queso dip from the description but was actually a giant plate of melted cheese (thinking thick and melty like the cheese on top of a pizza) with mushrooms and chorizo and spices and amazingness. It came with corn tortillas so we made little cheese roll ups, which were very similar to the kind they have on Taco Bell's dollar 

menu but infinitely better. Like obviously not even in the same ballpark in terms of quality and tastiness but that's the only comparison I have. It was insanely stringy also, which is the best quality of melted cheese. Each spoonful begged not to be separated from the pile and attempting to pull the cheese apart just created longer strings of delightful cheesy heaven. If you can't tell I wanted to dive in for a cheesy swim but let's talk about our meals also. Phenomenal. We both went the seafood route. I did a mix of shrimp and crab enchiladas and Devin did a sampler plate that included a shrimp taco, a lobster enchilada and a seafood stuffed chili relleno. Everything we ordered was bursting with flavor, fresh seafood, and of course more cheese. Expect I was so full from the cheese explosion and brunch that I could only eat half an enchilada. Don't worry, that totally came back to the room. Because when food is amazing not even being a leftover can keep it down. 

Then we made it back to Fremont with overly full tummies and found our way to an arcade bar. 

Devin played a few of the classics. I killed at Tetris and then shockingly I dominated at the fighting games. We played twice and both times I beat Devin and then went on to win 3 rounds against the computer. I've never played an arcade game like that before so it could be luck, or it could be I am a born champion. 

Let's go with the second option.

Then I managed to stay up to an impressively late 11:15 before I told Devin it was my bedtime. The new goal of the trip is to see midnight. We'll see what happens.