Las Vegas!!!

What a blast.

Seeing Ryan at the baggage claim waiting for me was honestly an explosion of happiness. Yes, I just said explosion of happiness, it is appropriate. He is thinner (all that working out!)and all muscly and just as handsome as ever. I gave him a huge hug and may have held it about five minutes. Straight. I was so so happy to see him. It made getting up, going to work, taking a metro, two flights, a four hour layover in Atlanta (where a Marine returning from Afghanistan via LeJeune shared a table with me at dinner, how do they always find me?!) all so so worth it!

We got to the hotel around 11pm Vegas time so my poor east coast body was exhausted but I carted the professional wedding album my mom gave me as an early birthday present in my carry on so we looked at that... and Ryan had champagne (: Needless to say I was up very late that night.



We slept in and then made our way to our first all you can eat champagne buffet. You give us eggs Benedict and french toast and you get happy Loves.







We wandered the casino a bit before getting on the monorail and hitting The Strip.

Our first stop was the MGM Grand. There was roulette to be played and a Lion Habitat to explore.









We then wandered around got our first real taste of The Strip as the sun was setting.



It was hot so Ryan and I grabbed some frozen absolute lemonade and saw lots of the hotels like....

The MGM



NY NY





Excalibur



Paris





And many more.

Gosh I have a lot of pictures.

We went on a gondola ride at the Venetian and the guy even sang to us! Two songs were all Italian so I didn't know them, but he did sing "Bella Notte" (:




Shows! We saw two shows!

Blue Man Group



And Penn & Teller!!!






And of course the Bellagio Fountain Show (:










The Bellagio Fountain Show... some of it

There was a lot of roulette played, money lost (that we set aside for gambling only) but it was a wonderful time. I loved being able to hold his hand, rest my head on his shoulder, hug him and kiss him, and fall asleep and wake next to him. It was wonderful.



And the lights! It was crazy cool. We walked around as much as we could and still did not see close to it all.



All in all it was a great trip and very hard to say goodbye to him again :(

I did see the Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon from the plane though on the way back.





But good news.... I turn 24 tomorrow! (: