Las Vegas & Red Rock Canyon 2016

When Gaby asked me a few weeks back if I wanted to go to Las Vegas for the weekend to escape real life and hike red rock canyon and have a generally non-Vegas-y Vegas trip I impulsively said yes and booked the trip. I flew out Friday after work and when I landed in Las Vegas it was still hot as balls. I searched the airport for Gaby, we eventually realized that we were in different terminals, and then when I tried to take the shuttle someone left their purse onboard so police had to be called, everyone had to "step back from the shuttle!!!" and eventually we just decided to catch our own Ubers and meet at the hotel. After checking in and finally finding our room (the MGM is hugeeee) we headed out for a bite to eat. We went to Shake Shack (my first time). By the time we got our food I was so hungry and tired that I only ended up finishing half my beer which might be one of the most shameful things I've ever done. It was my first night in Vegas and it was before midnight. Epic Rebeka Fail. After dinner and after stocking up on SPF80 sun screen for my ginger skin, we called it an early night because we had to get up early for a magical day on Saturday!

^^Vegas night one with my giant beer that I didn't finish/first time at Shake Shack! Also, v obvious screen shot of Gaby's snap b/c I am a narcissist^^

On Saturday morning we woke up early, got a rental car with Oregon plates (!!!) from inside the hotel (so convenient!) and drove out to Red Rock canyon, with a quick stop for iced coffees and breakfast sandwiches along the way.

^^First stop: visitor center^^

Red Rock Canyon is seriously magical. The landscape is so stunning and it's really fun to explore there. You pay $7 to get into the park and there is a 13 mile loop you can drive around and stop at various points to hike the rocks. We stopped three times and ended up hiking around, exploring and climbing up rocks.

^^Here comes a bunch of red rock canyon shots. Are you ready?^^ 

^^Can you spot Gaby and I down there on the rock? Thanks stranger for taking our picture candidly then texting me later!^^ 

Unlike hikes in the PNW, these weren't necessarily long hikes, but instead we would go short distances and explore around and climb up on huge rocks and it was really fun and gorgeous!

 ^^A Gaby sized hole^^

^^Gaby and I^^ 

^^Dancer's pose in the desert^^ 

^^obsessed with the cacti^^ 

^^Stopped at one last viewpoint after all of our hiking^^ 

^^On a giant rock^^ 

^^We did it!^^

On stop two of our hiking tour, we found a hole. It was so magical. It was cool in the hole and the hole had a great lookout and we decided if the world ended we'd like to hide in the hole. It was one of our favorite parts of the trip, being in the hole, rehydrating, hiding from the heat and laughing. I can't explain its magic, but it was real.

 ^^The hole^^

^^Gaby in the hole^^

When we left Red Rock Canyon Gaby told me she had a surprise for me! It was very exciting! She remembered that ice cream sandwiches are one of my favorite things and she took me to this shop where you can choose your cookie flavor(s) and your ice cream flavor and your topping flavor and make your own ice cream sandwich. It was super clever and I loved it - it was sooo delicious. I want to go there always. Thank you Gaby for the awesome surprise! You're the best!!!

^^Can't contain my excitement^^

^^Two double chocolate cookies with peanut butter ice cream and rainbow sprinkles for the win^^

After eating our ice cream and popping into Lululemon we drove a little further to grab some sushi off the strip. The sushi place we wanted to go to was closed for a private event, so we went to another place nearby with good Yelp! reviews called Sushi Fever. It was super tasty and when we sat down and I realized that we'd been in Vegas for a million hours and I'd only had 1/2 a beer, I ordered some Sake with lunch, which is a huge DUH. It was a great decision, I was feeling pretty good after hiking, ice cream, sushi and then some Sake!! Fat kid status!

After sushi we headed back to the hotel to return the rental car, hit the pool for a little bit and then took a nap. Eventually we made our way across the street to Diablo's Cantina (where Gaby knew the bartenders) to eat some Mexican food, share a 48oz margarita, make up fake life stories for the restaurant staff and then call it an early night, part two. This quickly became a theme for us. We were totally good with early bedtimes and plenty of sleep (minus being woken up by drunk girls screaming at their friend Marsha who apparently wouldn't let them into their room. I hate those girls. Where are you, Marsha?!).

 ^^Can't go wrong with margarita and guacamole^^

A majority of the day on Sunday was spent at the pool. It was so nice and relaxing. We paid for fancy, cushioned chairs in the adult only pool (not the party pool, the Revive pool) and ordered drinks and laid in the sun and then under an umbrella and aggressively reapplied sunscreen and got in the water and it was so great. After the pool we went to In-N-Out Burger where we both had burgers and I got animal fries and it was OMGSOGOOD. Gotta keep on top of those bikini bods with a strict diet of delicious fried shit!

 ^^Beer by the pool = living the dream^^

^^Gaby killing it at poolside chillin'^^

We then headed over to another part of the strip, stopped to see the Flamingos at the Flamingo, drank dranks, discussed whether or not this old guy named Gary was gay or just a complete psycho, then took a shuttle to the Flamingo for some Roulette where we won a hundred and some odd dollars. Yes!

After gambling we headed back to the hotel to change into dresses before heading out to dinner at this great place off the strip called Carson Kitchen which was intimate, had lots of gorgeous wood, a magical server named Dakota and there was a deck upstairs that looked like it would be low key fun to grab a drink on during a warm, Las Vegas evening.

^^Gin martini and gin cocktail for me and Gaby, respectively^^

After dinner we took a quick walk up Freemont street before deciding we were exhausted and just wanted to go to bed, so we got in an Uber with a man who told us about how he used to sleep on the sidewalk. He has a bed now. We called it another early night because why end the loser streak on our last night, am I right? The next morning I had an earlier flight than Gaby so I woke up and headed to the airport where I grabbed Coffee Bean (fav) and then flew home (less fav). Gaby had another pool day before catching her delayed (boo) flight that evening.

Best not-too-Vegasy Vegas trip ever! I can't wait until my next vacay with Gaby!!  Cheers!

The Osbornes DO Vegas

Monday afternoon I got back from an epic weekend spent in Las Vegas. It was one of the most fun trips I’ve ever been on and  I learned that I can function on a very small amount of sleep for many days, but when that happens I get weepy at everything and it takes like a whole week for my body to recover. During our first night in Vegas, Beth and I stopped into a Walgreen’s on the way back from dinner at the Bellagio buffet where “the kids” drank about a million margaritas because we had to take advantage of that $12 unlimited alcohol add-on, so she could buy bandaids. We also decided that it would be a wonderful idea to buy a 5th of blueberry vodka and a disposable camera to document the weekend. Half of these pictures are from that camera, the rest are from my iPhone. This is what happened:

DAY ONE:

After going to bed at approximately midnight the night before, we woke up early to be out the door by 5am. I swooped up Beth and we headed to PDX to prefunk our 8:30am flight like champs. My parents don’t drink (anymore) and this was my mom’s first ever flight (and my dad’s second ever flight, but the first one he’d been on in over 40 years), so she took some anxiety medicine to cope with her fear. My mom, dad, brother, Beth, Jered, and my mom’s two nurse friends from her work were all on the flight. So was this total douchy bro who was shouting SO loud about how he “knows people” etc. I hated him a lot. Everyone did. Flight was smooth, we landed alive, hooray! The Guerrero clan (Karen, Joe, Andy, Brooke and Kory) were waiting for us at our hotel. I had already convinced them that we needed to have In-N-Out burger for lunch and they agreed to drive me there to get burgers and fries for everyone in their rental car. They are the best. So is In-N-Out. Build one in the PWN already, please!!
 

After lunch we all wandered to a few other hotels and gambled and Beth won $100 playing video roulette for the first time ever at New York, New York!

It took us a million years to be able to check into our hotel rooms, but when we did Beth and I headed up to the room we were sharing with Brother Jim and Jered – worst or best idea ever??? maybe somewhere in the middle – to get ready for dinner. We waited another million hours in line for the Bellagio Buffet because it was my dad’s birthday and the Bellagio buffet has sushi and when it’s dad’s birthday we do what dad wants to do! The 4 “kids” at dinner (there were kids (me, Beth, Jim, Jered, Andy, Kory and Brooke), and there were adults/parents (mom, dad, Joe, Karen, Judy and Pam)) opted to pay the additional $12 for unlimited drinks and we devoured about a million margaritas at dinner because we had the best server ever.

 
We stopped to watch the water show at the Bellagio fountain on our walk back. We also stopped so Jim could give some of his drink to a street accordion player. We stopped again so that we could go into Walgreens and then have the temporary tattoo man take our picture with our disposable camera and take a chug out of our blueberry vodka 5th – but for whatever reason those two photos did not get returned to me when I picked up my film, WTF?! When we finally made it back to our room we drank vodka and took voke tabs and jumped on the beds had a dance party to rap music (“can you guys play anything but rap music?!?”) before heading downstairs to win a MILLION DOLLARS on the roulette table (I wishhhh).

 
Because Jered put $100 down on the routlette table before we could make it out of the casino we gambled there all night. Literally. It was 5am before Beth and I went to bed. The rest of the group even came to meet us and at one point all the “kids” were around one table drinking free vodka redbulls (the waitress kept bringing a million rounds) winning all the dollars and it was so much fun. I came out of that night $200 richer. #KILLINGIT!

DAY TWO:

I woke up at 8am after only 3 hours of sleep, my heart was racing/pounding, Jim and Jered weren’t in the room, I needed to put food in my mouth, so I got up and found Jim and Jered downstairs, still gambling. I fed us all Starbucks breakfast sandwiches, chatted with my parents, then headed to the pool.

We rented a cabana/gratto thing at the pool and it was the best idea. There were couches and a TV and a fridge and bottled water and fruit and a waitress and most importantly, shade! The whole clan hung out by the pool all day drinking and eating and taking ridiculous pictures and it was so much fun! Joe’s niece who lives in LV even showed up with her two baby girls and we swam with them which was a blast.

 

In case you’re wondering, I wore a metallic bronze/orange one piece from American Apparel and I had to wear pasties under it that you could CLEARLY see so I felt the need to announce it to everyone, even the “dads” sooo sorry dad and Joe, “everyone has nipples!”

When we’d had enough of the pool Beth, my parents and I headed to Todai (my dad’s FAVORITE place ever, but they closed all the north west locations, so he was super stoked to get to go to one in Vegas) for all you can eat sushi! I got really upset when talking about Ebola and the US man who got it trying to carry a pregnant woman to the hospital – only to be turned away! Weepy incident #1.

After dinner Beth and I headed to Old Town to meet the rest of the crew. When we got there everyone else was just walking into dinner #annoyed, so we decided to make our own fun. We got these large mixed drinks with sexual names from Whiskey Licker Bar that said “Liquor in the front… Poker in the back” on the cups, and we saw this upstairs balcony bar we decided we NEEDED to be on.

So obvi, we marched ourselves inside, walked up to the man in a polo guarding the elevator and told him “we want to be on the balcony, how do we get up there?” and so he took us up. And walked us back. And then stayed on the balcony chatting with us.  It took about 10 minutes before we realized he didn’t work there, he was just a random man standing by the elevator LOLZ! His name was Jay but after he left we nicknamed him “black Doug” from the Hangover because (a) they looked surprisingly similar, and (b) Jay asked us if we had any ecstasy. No.

When the rest of the group got out of dinner we met them, said goodbye to 1/2 of them and the rest of us went out to explore Fremont Street.

 
Andy and Kory zip lined while we ran into THE DOUCHE FROM THE PLANE! OMG! I made sure to shout “OMG it’s the douche from the plane!!” which his friends heard and we all had a good LOL over how drunk and douchy he was (obvi he does not remember). And we all chatted for a while.

 
Beth also got Rebeka “tattooed” on her leg in sharpie by a topless 19 year old who has a 4 month old baby named Clyde who we found on the street. Obvi we told her she is heading in the wrong direction and is too young to be living that vegas life and then we gave her some dollars and some pulls of blueberry vodka from my purse flask.

 

Then we got in a fight with Jim and Jered and stormed away to meet Kory and Andy after their ZipLine adventure.

 
Andy and Kory made us get in a cab to head back to the strip. We shouted EWWWWWW all the way there and then when the cab driver took us to the Tropicana we told him “THE TROPICANA IS EW! TAKE US TO THE BELLAGIO!” and so he did. We immediately drank mind erasers at the bar and then walked around and then Kory decided we needed to go back to the Tropicana because we were OOC.

^^EW selfies^^

Back at the Tropicana we fought more with Jim and Jered and Beth apparently dived head first for them and I cried in the bathroom then we and stole all the boys’ dollars and their chips. I gave back their chips but Beth forgot that she stole Jim’s dollars and in the morning he tore the hotel room apart looking for his $108 to no avail. Tuesday night I got a call from Beth telling me that she found Jim’s money waded up in the bottom of her purse LOL #shame

 
Then I went downstairs and drank with Kory and Andy until 4am.

DAY THREE:

I woke up at 8am and packed up my shit and we looked for Jim’s money and Jered (who didn’t ever make it back to the hotel) and checked out. But on my way to check out of our rooms I found Jered at the Roulette table, down $1200 and he asked me for a number. I told him 12. He bet 5 dollars and won $600. You’re welcome Jered. At the airport I ate orange chicken for breakfast and shoved eggrolls in my purse for later. I almost vommed on the flight which was terrible in my mind and it made me want to cry, but I didn’t vom, and then when we landed (all 13 of us on the same flight) I drove from Portland back to Seattle and it was over. But it was one of the most fun weekends of my life and probably I’ll have a lot more funny stories for you later because some weird, funny shit happened that weekend and it deserves to be told.

When can we go back?!

Know Your Numbers

My work has this “Know Your Numbers” initiative going on right now. You can go in, get a flu shot and a health screen for free, they’ll donate 50 vaccines to people in need and you get $50 or a Fitbit. It’s pretty rad. I’d never had my cholesterol or body fat measured, so I figured I’d give it a go, plus I’m pro vaccine and I needed my flu shot, sooo win/win. I made the mistake of doing this screen last week, right before I went to Las Vegas. The perfectionist in me wants to get my “numbers” down even further so I can be healthy and hopefully avoid issues later in life. The rest of me wanted to have SO MUCH FUN in Las Vegas (which I did) and probably if I got tested today my numbers wouldn’t be great after how I treated my body this weekend.

So, let me tell you about some of the terrible things I did to my body this weekend to make you feel better about your life (hah) and remind myself that sometimes you just gotta live and hopefully the 80/20 rule is good enough:

• Ate two buffet dinners, both including sushi and dessert, one including about 3 too many margaritas;
• Drank vodka redbulls all night while playing roulette, woke up after 3 hours of sleep to a racing heart;
• As we were boarding the flight back to PDX, Jered was standing behind me and announced “it smells like Chinese Food” to which I responded, “that’s because I have eggrolls in my purse.” Chinese chicken for breakfast at the airport, check! purse eggrolls for snack, check!;
• Got a lot of sun (sunscreened, but still) and drank a lot of drinks at the pool on Sunday; and
• Only slept a total of 11 hours from Friday morning – Monday night.

At least it was fun! My body hates me. Time to get back on schedule (a normal sleep schedule, exercise schedule and work schedule etc.), cut back on the alcohol and get my numbers down.

Please tell me, what do you do to keep yourself healthy?

Las Vegas through the years

It’s Thursday afternoon, I’ve hit a wall, I’m drinking some coffee but I thought maybe a quick work break for a blog post would be a good productivity booster. Also, I have a headache and I can’t figure out why and I need to do something that’s easy on the brain for a bit.

I’m going to Las Vegas the day after tomorrow and I’m really excited about it. The closer it gets the more excited I get. I’m sharing a room with Brother Jim and his BFF Jered and my BFF Beth and that’s probably going to be interesting but I’m sure if we can work out an acceptable bathroom schedule and no one pukes (I’m looking at you, Jered), we’ll be fine. It’s supposed to be in the low 90s there so I booked a gratto at the pool for our clan on Sunday. Pool Party!!!

Vegas is one of those places I feel like people either love or hate. I guess that would mean I’m on the love side of things? I usually don’t get super crazy in Vegas, but it’s always a really easy trip from Seattle or Portland. It’s a quick flight, it’s usually nice there and there are a million things to see/do/eat/drink. Plus, what’s more fun than walking down the street wearing whatever you want with a drink in your hand?! I’ve been 4 times, this will be my 5th. Yikes, that’s a lot. Anyway, in honor of #TBT or #throwbackthursday if you’d prefer it, let me recap my trips for you thus far.

The first time I went to Las Vegas I was 22, I think. It was for my ex-boyfriend’s 21st birthday. Call me a cradle robber all you want – I quickly learned dating younger men isn’t for me. We hung out with his cousin who  lives in Las Vegas, thoroughly enjoyed those novelty size margaritas and I loved life while running around to all the bars by myself, skipping lines (while the boys waited in them) and walking right in because I was 22, a girl in a dress and alone(ish):

 
The second time I went was 1L year of Law School. Sister Erin and I went for SPRING BREAK, WHOO! We spent like $200 total on our flight + room at the super classy and totally convenient Stratosphere (ha!). We also ate McD’s chicken nuggs for like every meal because they were cheap and came in boxes of 50 and we were really poor law students. We definitely only went “out” one night when we were there (not before we made a cab take us to the Olive Garden for dinner because, it was definitely the classiest Vegas trip on the books) ended up spending $13 per well drink, and watching my friend from HS who met us there fall over backward on the dance floor, OOPS!:

My third trip to Las Vegas was with Dustin for a wedding at Excalibur we didn’t actually end up going to, because, DRAMA! Instead we went to see the Elvis Cirque de Soleil, ate PF Chaing’s for dinner (Dustin snuck in a water bottle full of vodka, because Vegas), had someone successfully unlock the door to our very nice room at the Aria (WTF?) and Dustin danced in front of the Bellagio fountain:

 
The last time I went to Las Vegas was actually January of this year (!!), this trip will make the places I’ve been to on a plane in the last year: cross country road trip from FL –> WA, San Francisco and Las Vegas X2. Let’s see if I can beat that this next year! Anyway, the fourth time I went to Vegas was with Gaby to meet our friend Dan who was in Las Vegas for the Consumer Electronics Trade Show. Gaby and I crashed in Dan’s suite, gambled at Circus Circus, ate guacamole for lunch outside in January (!!), went to the sexy Cirque de Soleil (by accident), walked a million miles, ordered a lot of room service (thanks Dan!) and made a cabby take us through In-n-Out burger:

 
I can’t wait to give you all a recap of the trip next week! Also, please tell me: have you ever been to Vegas? What do I need to do while I’m there? I’ve never been to old town. And I feel like I haven’t even skimmed the surface of amazing restaurants. Suggest away, please!

Anyway, back to work for me… right after I grab some Advil for this headache, yikes!

Happy Thursday, everyone!!

Dustin Dances

Finals finals, my very last set of them. That’s what I’ve been doing lately. It’s hard to get motivated to study tough when you know all you have to do is pass your finals, and in a few short days (like, 10) you’ll be graduating and done forever. Mostly.

But, in more serious matters, I just, finally, right now, while Dustin is at a Sounders game for “work bonding purposes” or something, put my vegas pictures onto my computer. And I re-discovered this GEM:

Dustin dancing in front of the Bellagio water show. Which we watched 3 times. It was good.

I LOLd when I watched this again. Dustin’s dance moves here just melt me, in the best way. SO GOOD!

…Just in case you didn’t get enough, a self-taken-picture from earlier that night, for picture/blog sake:

On a completely random note: I cannot, CANNOT wait for summer to get here. I can’t wait to wear dresses again. Dresses are the bestest.

Oh and P.S. what should I wear to graduation (under my robe thing, I mean)?  Suggestions, plz.