Bowman West

What Happens in Vegas...gets posted on my blog -- obviously.

Sorry it's been so long since my last post, but after being out of town for two weeks I had a two-day turn around to get ready for my sis Mel and her better half to visit. Now we're three days into their visit and somewhat settled so I thought I'd take some time to post.

Long story short...we left at the end of February to fly to Texas for our friend's wedding (congrats Clay and Carrie!) in Austin and then we spent a week in Vegas. We had a blast at the wedding. I haven't had that much fun in a LONG time! Andy got to hang with most of his high school/college friends and we wives joined right in. Charlie stayed with my family and others brought along babysitters for their kids. Sheer madness ensued. I just hope the pictures never surface. :)

It was weird being back in Texas. I forget how Texas-y it is, especially in Austin. Boots, cowboy hats, endless Texas limestone...no red brick, white-columned buildings in site. Oh how I miss Texas! Don't' get me wrong -- I love Virginia and Cville but Texas...ok, I'll stop now.

While in Austin we got to meet up with my old pal Adrian for lunch at Chuy's (we were in Tex-Mex heaven) in downtown Austin. Adrian and I were office mates during our two years in graduate school together. I seriously would not have made it through without him and our third Musketeer, Sarah. We laughed so hard thinking about some of our experiences during that time. I'll have to write a special post one day recounting them. The memories run through my head like a sitcom, and I'm pretty sure they ran in real-life the same way. I can't even explain to you the insanity of some of the things we encountered! I had to take a picture of the food to drool over while back in Virginia. Charlie was definitely excited about the chips and queso.

Anyway, we flew out to Vegas on Sunday and met up with our bestees and vacation partners, Brook & Amanda. We hadn't seen them since they helped us move to VA so it was so great to be together! We ended up getting rooms at The Golden Nugget, which is downtown in what's considered "Old Las Vegas" (think Frank & the Rat Pack) instead of on The Strip. I was worried at first, but we loved it there. It was much more our speed, being that we have no use for coolness of any sort. We saw Mystere (Cirque du Soleil) and I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. I loved every second, though I'm convinced that the concept and costumes are the result of someone's acid trip. It's brilliant and insane. Another highlight -- I won $500 at slots. Awesome. It paid for my outlet shopping trip. Which brings me to my next story...

Amanda and I stepped into the DKNY Jeans outlet store, basically because we were just walking around looking at every store. Amanda was looking at a shirt at the front when a little sales girl came up to greet us. Here's how it went down:

Girl: Hey, how are you?

Us: Fine, thanks.

Girl: You may want to look at the women's sizes in the back of the store. They might fit you better. Just to let you know, I'm wearing juniors (as she slaps her surely anorexic hips). These are all juniors up here.

Me: Look here, little girl...after the point when you push a human from your va-jay-jay and earn yourself enough stitches down there to sew up a hot air balloon, you can point me to the women's sizes in the back of the store!

Ok, so maybe I just responded silently, but I almost felt like I was in some cheap rendition of Pretty Woman, where I'm a shorter, less attractive but much purer version of Julia Roberts. Are you kidding me?? In her defense, I don't think she was trying to be mean. I think she really was just that dumb. I will say though that Amanda and I had a great time referencing the situation throughout the rest of the trip and will probably continue to do so for the rest of our lives. Oh, and that was just a few days after my 31st birthday. Talk about making me feel old!

Speaking of my birthday, we went to a piano bar at Harrah's where these middle-aged (and hot) twin sisters play dueling pianos. Despite the fact that being on public display is one of my biggest fears, Andy and our pals decided to notify them that it was my birthday (which was actually several days earlier). I was forced to sit on the pianos with three (much older and drunk) women who also had birthdays. Had the piano players not been awesome twins I would have been mad. I'm now thinking of convincing my twin, April, to move with me to Vegas and learn the piano. I'll let you know how it goes.

Ok, I'm already tired of this post so I'll just end with some pics. I'm also not proofing this so get over it (that one's for my sis, April).