Kirby Family Reunion

It's quiet, too quiet. For many members of society quiet is a time to reflect, sort out issues, take a nap. I wish this were the case for me and many other mormon families. Since many of us grow up in homes similar to the old lady and the shoe we are not accustom to the peace.

This quiet we (the family) have all been experiencing has been getting louder and louder for more than a year. The silence had become deafening!

There was only one solution to all the peace and quiet: FAMILY REUNION!

We used a camera that I have to take the family picture. Actually you can see Grampa Dale took the picture, he's holding the remote. And like any large functional or dysfunctional (whatever the case may be :D) family, the patriarch gets to hold the remote!

Well I took the picture home and put Lilly's tongue back in her mouth, and opened Aunt Sharon's eyes. Here's the final result (you should be able to look at it in greater detail by clicking on it):

Since I am just a PhotoShop novice, at best, any suggestions would be appreciated. Anyone know how to get rid of that hand with the remote???

Leaving Las Vegas Post

Alright so I have very few pictures left to post but there were some things made them selves very evident while on this trip.  First and probably least important is that women get the short end of the stick when it comes to the relationship.  Now I’m not talking about respect or duties split in the relationship.  You should know me better than that, you should know I’m not going to take a hard line stance on those matters (I’m married and its a mine field of potential problems).

No, women get the short of the stick when it comes to men.  Time after time I would look at a couple walking down the street and think, “really, she’s with him, hmmm”.  Then I started to think about it.  Women typically make an effort to look good, especially as they get older.  While men, most of the time, make less of an effort.  You often hear of women getting botox or plastic surgery to fight the affects of gravity and time.  What do men do?  We add a side of fries. 

And this is after the fact that women age better than men anyway.  Sure we all get a little thicker but men start to lose their hair in addition!  Lets not forget that we don’t even start at the same place, women are far better looking early.  Women are pretty great to put up with us ugly guys and continue to put up with us as we age and get uglier. 

 

The second observation, great friends will always be great friends.  It has been 15 years since I had seen my friends Mark and Brooke but I looked them up knowing they were living in Vegas.  It was easily the highlight of the trip.  The last time I saw Mark and Brooke I dropped by their little house to say goodbye the day bef0re I flew out to serve a two year mission.  They had just had a little baby and Mark was finishing law school.  At the time they were a great example to me.  It was great to see their four children and catch up on the last 15 years. 

I have noticed that in great friendships there is never an awkward silence you just seem to pick up where you left off and keep building.  I look forward to keeping in better touch going forward. 

Before Mark picked us up we walked over to Mandalay Bay to The Four Seasons, which was a small corner of Mandalay Bay.  They had a great fish tank in one of their lobbies…

Now this is where I should have pictures of me and Mark and Brook but we got so busy talking I forgot to take pictures.  But after our visit Mark dropped us off on the strip at “The Forum Shops and Caesars Palace.  Another great example of failing to capture the scale because it really was so impressive.

  Check out the spiral escalator!

These pictures are of the ceiling so its a little weird trying to figure out what you’re looking at.   This place was amazing.  My favorite store here was the Peter Lik Gallery.  After that we walked home only stopping in The Paris to use the bathroom, nice bathrooms btw.

Alright so the last little bit of the Vegas trip wasn’t really eventful but I did walk over to In ‘N Out Burger on my last day.  I also went into a few of the hotel/casinos that I hadn’t had a chance to get to.  As I walked over I-15 I was able to get a shot of New York New York that better captured the scale of how big that place was.

just under the green light you can see the statue of  liberty.  In an earlier picture you can see how large it looked.  Now you can see how it pales in comparison to the rest of the hotel. 

I then walked over to the MGM Grand.  I mentioned earlier there were lions there to view.  Like in a zoo, only that day there were no lions on display.  They did have a restaurant inside called the “Rain Forrest Cafe” and of course there was a gift shop.

There was a big canopy from the fake tree filled with fake animals and a fog machine.  And of course a fish tank.

This was the entrance to the restaurant.

Here in amongst the fog and grass was a huge crocodile.  That spot on his snout is a penny.  And that blue thing in the bottom right hand corner was my 44oz :)

Now I couldn’t forget my kids on this trip, and I didn’t.  I thought of them constantly.  But I had to find something from Vegas that would make an appropriate gift.  If you’ve been to Vegas they don’t exactly have a ton of things for small kids there.  But I think I found something they would enjoy…

The top is the “peanut” side and the bottom is the “plain” side.

and this picture was for Isak since he loves race cars.

Now for Ruth, what would Ruth like…

Naw, probably not, I’m almost just like that only without the pony tail.

Maybe I’ll just have to bring her back so she can pick her own gift.

That’s all I got, the trip home was uneventful but great to be back with my family!

Tired of all the debauchery…

Man it is a lot of work to stay up all hours of the night drinking soda and crazy amount of slothfulness.  Aron finally ran into a superstar that he’d been dying to meet.

Spongebob was super cool but Patrick was a bit of a diva and wouldn’t let me get a picture of him.  I think he had a bad day at the roulette tables.

There really are two different types of Vegas day Vegas and night Vegas.  To this point we had been getting acquainted with day Vegas so we thought we would introduce ourselves to Night Vegas.  So we left the room at 10:00 pm, it was CRAZY to be out so late but what happens in Vegas…

Here is the MGM Grand, which I didn’t actually go into until my last day but there are lions that you can see.  Except for the day I happened to go, figures.   I’ll post some inside pictures later.

So as you’ve seen from my earlier posts I love the fountains at the Bellagio so I had to go back at night to watch them all lit up… We had to wait a while but that gave Aron some time to get in front of the camera and do what he does best…WORK IT!

Let the show begin…

Wait for it…

Wait for it…

Here we go

Ok so you really have to go there to get the full effect but lets move on to the next attraction.  The Venitian famous for its gondolas.

The ceiling is painted like the sky and changes from day to night every 45 minutes.  We got there in the day but it was actually almost 12:00 out.

Aron was always looking for way to get in front of the lens.

After this we walked past a club inside the Venitian, and it was loud busy.  There were guys and girls all dressed up and ready to party.  Aron and I took one look at each other and we knew what the plan was… grab a cab and get to bed.

The Debauchery continues…

Today I got chills, I actually saw something so cool it gave me chills.  But I' am getting ahead of myself.  Today is Sunday and for us Mormons that means family, church and service.  But this place is the pinnacle of debauchery, if one were catholic they would have to go to confession just for visiting Vegas!  This morning I got my church clothes out of my bag, I had to they were in the way of my swimming suit.  I had only checked out the pools from Google maps and they looked impressive from space, but you should have seen them from the ground, well here check these out…

But even I felt like a loser hanging out at the pool by myself, so I only stayed an hour; plenty of time for this pasty viking to get burned.  So I  decided that I would do some sight seeing.  By going out the front door one can take a tram closer to “the strip”.  Here is the front of the Hotel and the view from the tram station…

After getting off the tram and taking a small walk I was there, at one end of the strip thinking I would walk my way to the other end and take lots of pictures.  So I invite you to take a walk with me down the strip. 

The MGM Grand and New York New York are across the street from each other and at one end of the strip.

Right inside of New York New York there was a candy apple stand, I took a picture and felt like I was looking at food pornography. WARNING! you may put on weight just looking at the next photo.

Anyway you want to talk about a wolf in sheep’s clothing some of these buildings are amazing and conveying their size and scale in picture is really difficult.  But yet they are dens of matchstick men trying to get hands on your hard earned money any way they know how.  (That was my Sunday rant :D  ).  Let’s continue, shall we?

This is the Excalibur, they use every mid-evil pun possible.

Aha! case in point, the very restaurant of Satan herself !

Here is the Monte Carlo, very cool building.

This one they cleverly called “The Paris” its a little cryptic but you’ll get it if you think about it long enough. 

 

Alight so earlier I mentioned getting chills.  I don’t actually remember the last time I saw something that gave me chills but this was pretty impressive…

Some of you may have guessed it.  But for those of you who haven’t seen them outside of movies its hard to describe just how impressive the fountains at the Bellagio are.  During the day there is a “performance every 30 minutes.   I was there at 4:00, just in time to watch the choreographed fountains perform to “God Bless America”.  The fountains exploded in firework style.  Apparently the force used to shoot water 50 feet in the air makes quite the noise.  I won’t try to explain it because words just can’t do it justice. 

 

Well after such a busy day I was going to need some food.  And with so many good sporting events what better place than the ESPN Zone.  Aron was working so I was left to get us a table.  Check out this table…

Talk about a little slice of heaven.  Yup even in Vegas where the devil has such a stronghold there seems to be a little oasis of peace.  And for those willing to look hard enough, there is good to be found in everything. 

Yes after a day of choosing to only see and experience the good things Vegas has to offer (it is Sunday after all).  There is only one way to finish off this day,  a soda in my favorite chair…

Until tomorrow…

P.S. I love you Ruth, Lilly, Isak and Simon!!!!

Mormon Debauchery

Sin City, yup that's right I'm in Las Vegas!  That means caffeine headaches, red meat and face cards!! (As I sit in my hotel room at 7:45p.m. drinking a glass of water on a Saturday night updating my blog) We're talking wild!

We started off the trip with some gluttonous burritos (but that was still in Oregon), I'm sure its just a sign of things to come! Here is a picture of Aron directly following that burrito

 

 

 

 

 

 

This was Aron a little later after the burrito had digested but it was a huge burrito (the guy is like a python, he swallowed it whole)...

  Much happier!

When we landed it was easy to see that we weren’t in Oregon anymore.  The place just invited you to let your hair down and enjoy the sunshine.  This is just the airport.

 

Our hotel was just on the other side of the airport so we didn’t have far to go but it was easy to see on the short ride that we weren’t in Kansas any other state that works 9 to 5. 

It’s also clear to see that money is different here.  In the rest of the country people are looking for ways to save money, stretch their dollar, and reduce costs.  Here they are looking for any one with a bad architectural idea to throw money at (see above photo).  Or get multiple cars and “murder them out” (make them all black for us non-MTV watching folk).

Our hotel is the Luxor, famous in Las Vegas for the light that shines at the top and can be seen from space.  It’s also unique in that it’s the one that looks like a pyramid.  Here are some of the photos from the inside…

The photo above is looking up at the rooms from casino floor (yup casino, you know where you’ll find me, at the nickel slots; easy money;-)

The photo below is looking down on the mezzanine level from our balcony on the 24th floor. 

And finally we made it, our room!  As you might be able to see from the picture our windows are slanted inward as they make up the outside of the pyramid.  I’ll get some photos from the outside tomorrow.  For now  There’s a CRYSTAL (light) waiting for me in the bathroom sink (on ice of course), LET PARTY!