Who f*cking knew? Where did this year go? It was a good one for me. Another year with my sweetie, my sister got married, and had a baby, I went on my honeymoon, I met two of the nicest people ever, realized a few things about myself and dealt with a major loss of someone I love. It’s been a busy one.

I’m not one for reviews or for reflection, nor am I really one for resolutions. However I resolve to to make 2007 as good as 2006.

Happy New Year and thanks so much for reading…

I haven’t blogged this much in quite a long time!

Today, we traveled home from Vegas. I’ll spare you the details, it went very well. It was what happened on the way home that was so memorable. Yet again, even tho my sweetie and I swore that our Vegas trip would be our Christmas gifts to each other, he sprung a surprise on me… well two.

On our way home, we stopped off at the King of Prussia mall, I thought to get some last minute gifts. We are going to celebrate Christmas this weekend with my family and we haven’t finished shopping yet, so it was plausible. We went and picked up this and that and we walked past one of my favorite shops, and he went in. I asked why and that’s when he sprung it on me… we were there to pick up my Christmas gift! I was in total shock. I’ve had my eye on this piece for a long time. A Walt Disney Classic Collection Society Member Exclusive…. Pixie in Peril.

Click an image to see an enlarged version.

I was on cloud nine as we drove home, my mind racing as to how I’d rearrange my other pieces to fit this one in. When we arrived home, I scrambled moving things here and there to fit it in. Center stage. Ah… I was so happy. And that’s when he handed me the other box. It was another WDCC piece. A Stitch piece. The last piece I needed to complete my collection… Long Live the King.

Click the image to see an enlarged version

For a Christmas where I wasn’t supposed to get anything… I sure made out like a bandit.

It’s Christmas Day in Vegas, it doesn’t feel like Christmas, though I did spend the day full of anticipation. Today, we had planned to have dinner with one of my bestest buds Pinoyboy and his betrothed.

We woke up totally on Pacific Time (you knew it had to happen on the last day) and had a good Christmas morning snuggle. We then had a nice iChat Video Session with my family, my mom was happy to see us and my brother announced he got engaged to his girlfriend of 10 yrs!

Next we attempted to get some lunch. Boy was that a trying experience. The number of people in Vegas increased every day we were there and it was horrific on Christmas Day. We went to 7 different restaurants each with hour-plus waits. Lucky for us the Carnegie Deli in the Mirage had a very short wait and as we had found out the day before, very good food. We noshed, and laughed and ate enuff cheesecake to put us into a coma. We adjourned to our room for some rest.

Around 4pm, Pinoyboy gave me a call to tell me that they were in town and wanted to know what was up. We met up at the Venetian around 6pm and strolled thru the Grand Canal and had a cuppa. It was so good to see him and we had lots of fun catching up. Around 7pm we went our seperate ways and grabbed our better halves and met up at the Wynn for dinner.

While looking for the Wynn’s buffet, we all decided that as Pinoyboy’s boyfriend said we weren’t “buffet hungry”, so we went to the nearest restaurant. While the food was good, the price sure wasn’t. True we didn’t get as much food we would have at the buffet, we certainly paid a damn site more My martini was 12 dollars! The food was good, but the company was better :). After dinner, and a bit more strolling, we sadly had to part ways. I didn’t want to but, we had to be up at 3am to get the shuttle back to the airport. I’m sure Pinoyboy didn’t want to either. Sigh, such is life.

So in a few short hours, we’re off to the airport to catch our flights back home. All in all it was a great trip, with lots of good times and lots of relaxation. Just what I needed!

Happy Christmas to all my readers and friends. I’ll be thinking of you as I’m strolling the Las Vegas Strip this Christmas Day.

Have a good one. Hope you all got what you wanted!

Okay first… I have learned a lesson about my blogging skills. I should not attempt to write large, major blogs back to back in the same day. Xmas in Sin City (part 1) was a great blog, but part 2 was not as good. I guess I blew my wad on the first post. I’ll try to do better.

Sunday, Christmas Eve we decided to get out and about once again and just stroll up and down the Strip and finally decided to go check out a movie to pass the afternoon until it was time to go see La Rêve. Finding a movie theater on the strip couldn’t be that hard we reasoned, in fact I swore we saw one, one evening strolling back up the Strip. We found one near the MGM Grand hotel online and decided to head out. I still keep forgetting how DECEIVING the Strip can be. Hotels are so large, they look nearby but they are in fact pretty far away. It took us almost 45 minutes to walk from TI to the movie theater. We were beat! But we got there just in the nick of time and got tickets to see “Casino Royale”. Now I’ve said before I think that I’m quite a Bond fan, especially of the newer post Cold War Bonds, and this movie was no different. I enjoyed it and the new Bond, Daniel Craig very much. It was a long movie and we decided to hop the monorail back to our neck of the Strip to head over to the Wynn and get our tickets to La Rêve.

After stopping off at our hotel to get all tarted up and walked across the three bridges to the Wynn and got on queue to pick up our tickets for the 1030pm show. While standing in line, we noticed the big “Holiday Show Schedule” placard and sadly, we noticed there was NO 1030pm show on December 24th. The woman at the ticket counter confirmed that we did buy tickets to a show that was never scheduled and that we were the tenth customer this evening who did so. We were then also informed that we should NOT have bought tickets from Expedia but rather we should have called the hotel directly, well yes I guess I agree but I sure didn’t need to be chastised for it. She was nice enough to call Expedia and get us a refund. Boy are we glad we saw Zumanity!

It was not all that upsetting as what we spent on the tickets covered a good bit of our food bill over the past few days. We headed back to TI and had some dinner and did some gambling, no of course I didn’t win anything but I didn’t lose that much!

Tomorrow… Christmas Day and dinner with Pinoyboy!

Last night, we took a chance and headed out to New York - New York Hotel to see Zumanity by Cirque du Soleil. Before we made it to the hotel, we wandered around and went to a few other hotels and places near by, we had a great time just strolling the streets and talking.

We hit up New York - New York, a very interesting themed hotel. It’s by no means perfect but it’s cute and a nice idea. We strolled along in the hotel until we were on Broadway and found the theater. One thing that made me smile and laugh a bit was the manholes all along the corridors actually give off steam. A nice touch.

Zumanity was an AWESOME show, very adult, lots of nudity, and very entertaining. It’s a Burlesque show with lots of acrobatics thrown in. I enjoyed the two women in the giant clear pool, the hoops girl, the two men and their cage fight. There was a lot of audience participation and it was very clever. Very much worth it.

After the show, we strolled up the Strip and stopped at Paris and just enjoyed the cool evening and each other’s company. We ended up back at our hotel and had dinner at a place called Pho. I had one of my favorite Vietnamese dishes Mien Ga. It was a great meal. After which, we spent some more time just talking and relaxing before turning in for the evening (damn time difference).

Today we just took it easy, we had breakfast at the Mirage, the buffet was AMAZING. Tonight we went out to Madame Tussaud’swhich I was not too impressed with. It was neat, but… I didn’t have my camera… after that we did some shopping at the Venetian and at Caesar’s Palace, followed by a lovely dinner. All in all a perfect relaxing, stress-free day. Just what I needed.

Tomorrow… La Rêve

Okay, so that last post was crap. What can I say, it was fired off in a much haste at the Airport in Philadelphia, waiting for our plane. But it got the point across. The past few months, work has been more than a burden and I’m in dire need of some rest and relaxation. With my sister taking my new nephew to see his paternal grandma, we have a week’s reprieve from Christmas. Much to my mother’s dismay, we’ve set a precedent last year of not HAVING to celebrate Christmas ON Christmas. It sure doesn’t bother me but I know it doesn’t exactly make her happy but it sure does make Christmas less stressful for all involved. With that early Christmas gift and the fact that I had a gig for work the week before this, we decided to do a long weekend in Las Vegas, of course the day after we booked the room… the customer canceled. But the room was non refundable and we REALLY needed the break so we decided to go ANYWAY. We booked 5 nights at Treasure Island.

So here we are, the flight was on time. We got really lucky, at the last minute when booking the flight I got pissy and insisted on a direct flight. It was only 50 dollars more, but the stop would have been in Denver and after the massive storm they had, we would have never made it to Denver. Also glad I chose the return flight with the stop in Atlanta instead of Salt Lake City! Just like our last trip to Vegas, we chose not to rent a car, we took a shuttle to the hotel and checked in. The hotel is really nice and our room is fantastic. I don’t have a single complaint, in fact only one bad thing has happened and that is the fact that I forgot to pack the camera. Thank goodness we took plenty of pictures on our first visit.

Sadly for us we are still on Eastern time and we were both OUT by 930pm here and back up at 430am PST. We got up and headed to breakfast here at TI, the buffet was amazing. We ate and then headed over to the Fashion Show Mall where we got to see yet another Apple Store, Picked up a few Xmas gifts and just had a nice stroll around that mall and wandered over to the Grand Canal Shoppes at the Venetian and picked up some coffee and headed back to the room, more than a bit worn out.

Now we had pre ordered tickets to La Rêve at the Wynn, but I wanted to take in another show if possible and we decided to take a chance and order tickets to Zumanity. I’ll let you all know how it is!

That’s all for now More to come…

Well the project is done (mostly) and I’m off for the rest of the year. And I’m off to Las Vegas for Christmas and to get some much needed time with my sweetie.

If I have access, I’ll post, if not please have very happy holiday!

This is proving to be a very difficult task for me. I’ve been busting my hump at work on this one project and the end is near, I’m going to be finished (well at least the first phase) any moment now, however I’m finding it hard to keep my eyes on the prize. It’s not the work, I’m actually enjoying it, what’s making it so hard to stay focused is the fact that my vacation starts on Thursday.

I’m usually off the week between Christmas and New Years, I take the time to just sort of “recharge” my batteries, but this vacation is a little different, we’re not going to be home for Christmas… we’re going to Las Vegas. Yup V-E-G-A-S baby! We leave this week and come back just after Xmas. I for one am looking forward to it! So much so that I’m having trouble staying focused on my work! Arghhhh!

This weekend, we headed to the parentals to visit with my sister and my nephew. We got to babysit on both Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon. He is such a joy to be around. Even when he’s screaming his little head off, you can’t help but love him.

Yesterday afternoon, we took him out into the front yard since it was such a nice warm sunny day here and posed for some family photos. There were pictures of my mother, father, both my sisters, my nephew, myself and my boyfriend. There are some great shots, but perhaps none pulled my heart strings as much as this candid shot that my boyfriend got when I wasn’t expecting it. Look close and see if you can see his tongue, one second after the shot was taken, he actually licked my nose!

It was very sad to have to pack him in the car and send him home, but I’m sure his daddy missed him and my sister just as much as we do when he’s not around. Who would have thought 36 hours with a baby could make you forget all the drama and stress in your life, if only for a short time?