definitely not the WOOHOO VEGAS kind of vegas trip

the bean's big jamz nationals weekend kicked off on friday, which she was super excited to "have" to take off from school.  with a mandatory practice with her cheer sisters at 2pm, we had no choice but to leave that morning for our 3-hour drive through the desert to beautiful las vegas.  she was up bright and early, packing up last minute items, making sure her electronics were all charged up, and about 45 minutes into our drive i turned around and found...this.

but i'm no better.  i tried so hard to stay awake, but you can't put food in my belly and sit me in a moving vehicle for a long period of time and expect me not to fall asleep at some point.  throw in a good magazine or two to read and i'm KO'd for at least an hour.  when i came to, i opened my eyes and found that we were already there.

(i realize that's a super random picture of the paris hotel's eiffel tower, but there you go)

we'd arrived with about an hour to spare, so we grabbed some lunch before heading over to the gym that the squad was using for practice.

the girls were scheduled to practice their routines for a couple of hours before their surprise team bonding outing - a ride on a party bus to the strip, where they'd be taken to the fashion show mall and into the sugar factory for a sweet treat to share together.  i took a couple of selfies before waving goodbye and heading off to the hotel with the hub to get us checked in.

we drove through a bit of the strip before taking a turn and heading to our hotel.

much to the hub's dismay, we were not staying somewhere fabulous on the strip.  we weren't even staying somewhere fabulous OFF the strip.  nope.  instead, purely for convenience, we were staying at the hotel attached to the arena where the competition was being held...

i'm so sorry if you're a regular at the ol' orleans, but damn.  it's kind of a shithole.  we stood in line with a million other cheer families to get checked in, only to find that our room wasn't quite ready for us.  so we dropped off our luggage at the bell desk and got the hell outta there.  we decided to go to caesar's palace and walk around the shops to get caught up on our steps for the day - being stuck in the car for three hours really killed our active calorie burn.

and as we strolled around the shops, the hub took care of some work calls.

at the aria, we made a stop and browsed through some fabulous red-soled footwear.

inside the hotel itself, we found the perfect spot for a quick sweet treat:

 and found a few minutes to sit down at our favorite quarter slot machines.

by then, we knew our room back at the orleans was ready.  so we hopped back in the car to go and grab our keys so that we'd be able to take the bean right in once we picked her up from her excursion.  of course, the parking lot was almost completely full with other families arriving for the weekend all at the same time and so the hub ended up dropping me off so i could just get the keys, have the luggage brought up and then head back out again to pick up our child.  the room wasn't terrible, but there was a really funky smell in the hallway.  ew.

a sobering reminder of what happened in this city just a few months ago.

the keys themselves were kinda fun, though:

and there were signs like this outside every elevator in the hotel.

we arrived at the sugar factory a little early and rode up the elevator with a server who was bringing this gigantic sundae up to a table - most likely one our kid was seated at.  heh.

i don't think she was quite ready to be picked up yet.

the place was super cute:

we knew she hadn't had dinner, so we went downstairs and grabbed some sushi.

and look, i even hit a fitness goal on the ol' apple watch!

since it was still pretty early, we decided to make one more stop with the bean:

there was plenty to look at in there.

 this section made us miss the old lady, who wasn't able to join us because she had to work.

this is a 1-pound solid hershey's kiss.  yowza.

she got to fill a bag with lots of tasty morsels before we headed outta there, and i had to have a few of these so i could see what they tasted like.

and then it was time to head back to the hotel, get her showered and settled down, and rest up for the next day.  the hub decided to head downstairs for a little poker action, while the bean and i fell into bed and passed out cold.

we sure know how to live it up in vegas, don't we?