Las Vegas - June 2009

Las Vegas

June 2009

Matt and I went to Las Vegas for his annual Immigration Lawyers Conference held each June. Last year we went to Vancouver, British Columbia which was a lot more exciting than Vegas, but we were happy to leave the kids with my mom and get away for a few days. Each year we get to see some of our best friends, Rusty and Vicki O'Brien from Louisville. Rusty is also an immigration lawyer. We had a blast hanging out with them. The conference was held at the Palazzo Hotel which is attached to the Venetian, so we spent a lot of our time there. Here are some pics from our first night there and hanging out with Rusty and Vicki:

Matt and I in "Venice"

Vicki and I

Rusty and Vicki

At the Grand Lux Cafe in the Venetian

Here are some other pics from us walking the strip:

One of our nights in Las Vegas, we went to a dinner for immigration lawyers honoring succesful immigrants. There was a cool artist from Belgium that would paint a canvas upside down to music with only his hands. He would then flip it around when he was done. He painted a great one of the Statue of Liberty and one of John Lennon. He was amazing. He would paint one in about 5 minutes. Our pictures didn't turn out very well, but here is the one of the Statue of Liberty:
Carlos Santana was also honored and was there to accept his award. He gave a very strange speech, but it was cool to see him in person. Unfortunately, he didn't play his guitar. Again, the lighting was bad and the pictures didn't turn out very well.

Matt with his law partner, Nancy Jo, with the John Lennon painting behind.

Here I am with the MC of the night, a comedian named Alex Reymundo, who is and up and coming comedian and supposedly the next George Lopez. He was really funny and super nice. His wife is from Louisville and Alex had a ton of Kentucky jokes. Afterwards, we got to meet him and his wife. We ended up hanging out with them at the Palazzo pool the next day.

Hanging at the Pool

Vicki and Rusty hadn't ever had In' N Out before, so Matt and Rusty got it for us and brought it to the pool.

The exciting part of the day was our brushes with fame at the Palazzo pool. It turned out the Today show was filming a segment on Las Vegas when we were there. Natalie Morales from the Today show was there with a bunch of women training to be "Bond girls". Mario Lopez was also there for a bar scene. I'm not even a Mario Lopez fan, but it was pretty funny when we saw him. It was all about getting a picture of a celeb!
This would be Mario saying hi to me as Matt took a picture! Nice wife beater t-shirt! He was on the way to the "adult pool" at the Palazzo where tops are optional! As you can guess, we didn't go to the adult pool! Here are some pictures with Natalie Morales and Mario Lopez as they were filming: Vicki and I being complete dorks! We were trying to get the scene behind us.

Vicki with Natalie Morales. After this little brush with fame, Matt was in the elevator with Vicki and the rode up with Jan from The Office! It was one celebrity after another!

We had dinner at a yummy Mexican restaurant at the New York New York Hotel.

We were walking down the Strip and got mobbed, as usual, by the people handing out cards for prostitutes. This Mexican girl was handing them out while talking on her cell phone that was held to her head with a rubber band! Matt called it "the poor man's blue tooth!"

Here we are at the Bellagio waiting for the water show:You pretty much see everything in Vegas...including Jack Sparrow! He really looked like him. I had to get a picture with him!
Last year when we were in Canada, we got crepes every night. They were so yummy! It is now a tradition that we have to find crepes when we're with the O'Briens. We determined the best place to find crepes had to be at the Paris Hotel. They were good, but not as good as Canada. Here we are chowing down on some good crepes:

We pretty much ate our way around Las Vegas. I guess that's what happens when you're Mormon and can't do much else!

On our last day, we wanted to go to the Bellagio buffet, but the line was huge! We settled for Paris, once again. We had to have crepes one more last time.We had so much fun in Las Vegas this year. Even though we've been to Vegas tons of times, it was so much fun to be with our good friends, Rusty and Vicki. Next year the conference is in Washington DC. I hope we can find crepes somewhere there!