Spring Break

This year for Spring Break we decided to spend a few days down in Mesquite at my parent’s place.  The minute we got there the girls were desperate to get in the pool.  Literally, within 5 minutes of arriving, the girls were in the water.

It’s a good thing, too because the rest of the week was rainy, windy and cold.  We at least were able to enjoy the one hot day. 

The next day we thought we’d take a day trip to Hoover Dam and Las Vegas.  We were able to convince my mom to come with us.  We got to Hoover Dam a little before lunch time.  As we were paying for parking at the Dam the worker there gave us our parking pass and then proceeded to tell us that there wouldn’t be any tours today because  the elevators weren’t working.  Nice of him to wait until after we paid to park.  Grrr. 

We decided to stay anyway and walk through the museum (lame) and skip the long line (lame) to watch the movie about Hoover Dam.  Of course these things weren’t free.  We had to pay for each of us to do these things.  At least the admission price included access to the observation deck.  At least that part wasn’t lame. 

Calista had no problems leaning over the railing to look all the way down.

Téa, on the other hand, had some issues.  Looks like the Randall acrophobia gene is dominant in her.  She stayed by the wall most of the time.

We finally convinced her to outside on the observation deck area.  She was fine as long as I had a death grip on her hand or my arms wrapped around her. 

Some cool tidbits of information we learned: the dam is almost as wide (at its base) as it is tall and there is enough concrete in the dam to pave a two-lane highway from San Francisco to New York.  That is a buttload of concrete.

Here is the Colorado River at the bottom of the dam. 

Almost 17 years ago my parents took me and three friends on our boat and we motored our way up to the buoys. It was a fun trip and an awesome site to see Hoover Dam from below.  It was fun to finally see the dam from the top.  We didn’t cross the Hoover Dam Bypass, pictured here.

This bypass is where the traffic now crosses between Nevada and Arizona.  We found out you can walk across it as well but decided against doing that.  It would have only been Calista and me so we will save that for another day.  Plus, it was raining (lame). 

After only an hour at Hoover Dam we decided to head to Vegas.  The only thing on our to-do list was to hit M&M’s World.  I’m glad we did, even though it was packed.  Next time we will go in the morning hours to hopefully beat the rush.

The girls loved picking out their own colors of M&M’s and Mark found the perfect mug.  My mom offered to buy their candy.  Next time we go I will skip buying the candy though.  They got a small bag of the colors they wanted and Mom ended up paying over $20!  I could have bought 10 lbs. of M&M’s for that price. 

Here’s Téa showing off her bag of the most delicious candy in the world.

The rest of the the time we spent hanging out in Mesquite.  We helped my parents clean up their water feature in the courtyard.  Meaning, we washed a bunch of rocks so they were clean and wiped out fallen leaves inside the bottom of the fountain.  Never thought I’d wash rocks but the kids had fun helping out Nonna and Papa.  

I probably forgot to mention that my parents decided it was time to make an addition to the family.  I think they were getting a little too bored in retirement.  So, here is Jeep.  She joined the family back in February.

She is part German Shepard part Husky.  And yes, she has one blue eye and one brown eye.  Kind of creepy. 

How do you enjoy a windy day?  You take advantage of it and headed to the park to fly kites.

We had a great time visiting Nonna and Papa.  We were able to stop by in St. George to see Grandma and Grandpa, too.  They are done with their work at the St. George temple so further visits to them will be back in Beaver.