Vegas, St. George, Zions...and more!

In March, Audrey and I flew down to visit my dear friend, Jenie Rainey. After talking about getting together for a fun girls weekend for...forever, we finally decided to make it a reality. And after planning for so long, it was over way too fast! But we had soooooo much fun and I was so glad I took Audrey with me. She is awesome and I love her to pieces!

With a gorgeous home like this, I don't know why we needed to go anywhere, it is like a resort in iteself! But, of course, we didn't sit still for too long... we shopped, hiked, ate, took pictures, shopped, ate, and headed to Vegas for a few days!

And... the most exciting thing about this picture below is that we were in short sleeves, capris, flip flops and it was just so toasty warm. It was heaven.

Audrey and Jenie's boy, Jake, who are the same age spent many hours over the days we were in St. George at their awesome neighborhood pool. We didn't swim in Jenie's pool because it wasn't quite ready for us, but Audrey would've stayed in this one all day if I let her! Those two were crazy together. We usually went at night so I didn't take any pictures other than this one with my camera.

Gorgeous view from Jenie's family room window one morning at sunrise.

On Monday we headed to Las Vegas! We stayed in the New York New York Hotel on the strip and the first thing we did after checking in and dumping our bags in our room was to rush out and ride the roller coaster. It was craaaaaaazy fun! I went once, Jenie gallantly offered to stay behind with the camera (chicken!), and we bought Audrey & Jessica all day passes so they could ride as many times as they wanted. Let's just say they went sooooooo many times they lost count. They had the thing memorized and worked hard to have the best photo at the end of the ride.

Standing in line for their second time on the roller coaster.

Picture taken from our hotel room.

Anyone who knows me well, knows my weakness for peanut M&M's, so of course, I couldn't pass up the M&M store!

Mpire Strikes Back! Love it.

Love me my M&M's!

We spent time walking the strip and having our picture taken with many exciting characters...

Audrey was so excited to take this picture with the Halo dude to show to Ethan! Ethan was a tad jealous.

And, of course, Elvis!

Audrey and I had our first burger at Hard Rock. It was super yummy. Audrey and Jessica had the most fun watching all the totally awesome 80's videos they were playing. Good stuff.

And of course... the ketchup bottles. We started off with one... it was empty, asked for some more... This is a story you had to be there for but we were rolling by the end of the night, as was our waitress!

Jessica sporting her new jacket from Ross. (It was getting cold!!!)

Jenie also took us to Zion's Camp while we were in St. George and it was so amazing. Breathtaking! We hiked up one of the "expert" trails that were steep with narrow trails. We, of course, thought that sounded like the perfect trail for us. We did not realize that the narrow trails were on a cliff. It was pretty awesome though. Beware! I tried really hard to narrow down my pictures, but I just loved too many of them....

Excited for our hike!!!

Trails were starting to get more and more narrow. We were so high that looking straight down made my stomach do a little flip and made me a bit dizzy. (And I am not afraid of heights at all!)

At this point the trails were so narrow that you had to hold on to the chain to help you from slipping. It was crazy, but so cool. I had a dream that night that Audrey slipped off and fell... I woke up immediately before I even had time to react, but it seriously made me a bit nervous for her at a few points. It didn't even phase her....

Jenie helping Jake down the narrow part of the trail.

So far down......

I had to turn the camera around so that everyone could see how high up we were. So cool!

After our hike we stopped by a souvenier shop and bought the kids some rocks and when they got home they busted them apart so that they could look at the inside. It kept them entertained for quite some time.

And I couldn't end the post without a mention of our very special traveling companions, Fred and Günter. Fred and Günter had so much fun and Audrey made sure to take many pictures with my phone to document their exciting trip. They went shopping, tried new foods, met new friends, and had many more exciting adventures...

My gorgeous gal...

And, lastly, before we left, I took some senior pictures of Jenie's oldest, Joey, and some family pics. What an awesome family!