Work hard, play hard.

Or so Vasili and I believe. Sure we work our tushes off all year round and may questionably be on the brink of workaholism (if that’s even a word?), but we also take at least one vacation a year for ‘us time’ and this time around we decided to go spend a week in Las Vegas. The first two days we literally slept, ate, and vegged in the hot tub in an attempt to let go of the stress build up we’d accumulated from a busy fall season, and then the last 5 days we spent doing a little sight seeing and checking out the glamour of The Strip. Although I totally wish we were, we’re just not fancy-go-out-to-the-club people. Maybe one day when we have more money to buy the right kind of clothes.. the last night of our trip we designated as our ‘go out and party night,’ and as we were walking by the Mirage one of the hotel managers stopped us to give us a pass into their nightclub 1 Oak. Awesome! We don’t have to decide where to go or even pay to get in. But our excitement was killed pretty quick as we approached the door to get in and the bouncer flashed his light down at Vasili’s feet.. “You can’t come in with gym shoes, sorry.” Apparently you can’t wear even really nice immaculately clean Pumas into a night club in Vegas ha Oh well, we tried. So instead we went back to our hotel, grabbed some cash and hit the casino next door until the sun came up. Oh, and in total Las Vegas style, we finished with steak and eggs for $5 at 6:45 in the morning and then we slept for two hours until leaving for our flight 🙂

But I think my absolute favorite part of our trip was road tripping it for a day to the Grand Canyon. And thanks to our trusty iPhones, our GPS took us on a 5 hour trek to the North Rim of the GC instead of the closer South Rim. But in all honesty, the drive and adventure of it was totally worth it. We drove through probably about 6 different landscapes and when we got to our final destination, it was covered in beautiful trees and there were NO tourists. So we wandered around for a half hour to take a few pictures, watched the sun set over the canyon together and then drove back.

And in between our road trip and gambling all-nighter, we met up with Vasili’s parents for dinner and a couple of shows (including Zumanity – loved it!), lounged around saw the Hoover Dam, stopped at the airport to watch the planes flying in and out, and just really enjoyed taking time to be with each other and not our emails and Facebook. Speaking of which, I really need to figure out a way to start separating myself from all of those distractions.. like maybe after a certain time of day no more internet so I can actually start paying attention to my real life again and not just work and who commented on a recent photo I posted to Facebook.. *sigh* Perhaps that will be my next personal blog post 😉

above: we were about 3/4 of the way to our destination when we stopped on the side of the road to take this shot.. we were kind of in awe of the view as the road began to climb in elevation. As we got back in the car and continued on our drive I remember thinking as we passed an abundance of beautiful spots how I can’t wait for the day that we have kids and I can stop and let them explore those kinds of places..

above: can you find the little speck in this photo that’s Vasili?