Oh my WOW!

WARNIING: This post might be a little long. Prepare yourself to laugh, cry, and maybe even jump as you read about one of our best weekends in Las Vegas and other states..... Continue reading... if you dare!

Our last official weekend in Vegas went out with a BANG and as our life continues, things have gotten so much sweeter!

With our last official weekend, we wanted to do everything on our bucket list. We are still going to be here for 2 more weeks, but we'll be extremely busy and getting ready to move... yet again :) What was on our bucket lists you might ask?... well, there were WAY TOO many things on our list! We decided to just do a couple, and maybe save the others when we come back for a few visits (hopefully). We each got to decide 1 thing we absolutely wanted to do before leaving our Vegas home behind. I chose to see a show, and Jason chose to go have a blast at Hoover Dam and Lake Mead! Here is the story of our exciting adventures...

Friday night came far too quickly. We had been looking at houses like crazy to prepare for a future move back to Utah. Finally a little sunshine broke through and we were filling out an application for a house! I was relieved, but the process was a little crazy and soon we found ourselves a little behind for our fun filled evening. With sandwiches in hand and zooming down the road to the Venetian, we prepared ourselves and talked excitedly about our very first show in Las Vegas Nevada. I got tickets to Phantom of the Opera for a really good price and it just so happened to be on my bucket list and that ladies and gentlemen was the start of an amazing night.

I got tickets! Our seats were really good, but I still had to wear my glasses to see :)

While waiting for the play to begin, we made ourselves comfortable with Godiva chocolate and we had ourselves a little fun with taking pictures. Suddenly we were yelled at that no photography was allowed in the theater, the lights dimmed, and the most amazing show began. Both Jason and I were sucked into the world of the Phantom and were blow away by the performance. The stage was incredible, there was fire, fireworks, flashing light, falling chandeliers, beautiful songs, amazing effects that you'd never believe and many gasps from the audience. It was by far the best thing I had ever seen, and when the lights came back on and performers took a bow, the whole audience was standing. I was sad to see the play end so soon and find our Godiva chocolate wrapper empty...

We're waiting for the show to start, and to eat out chocolate!

Waiting for the show to start + sharpie= Clarissa and Jason with mustaches!

Us after the show outside the theather

With the surprise of the show only being and hour and a half, we suddenly had a very early night with endless possibilities. The night was young and we were not about to waste our last date night Friday in Vegas on being old people and going to bed early. That is when we decided to visit all of the Casinos we wanted to visit, but never had time. Our first stop was New York, New York to take pictures by the bridge. Because it was at least a 2 mile walk down the strip (seemed liked 2 miles) we took the car and parked it at the Monte Carlo. As we walked down the street, we heard awesome music and decided to dance our way to New York. Ok it was more like I danced my way, and Jason gave me weird stares, but I LOVED it :).

On our way to our chosen destination, I saw M&M world and so we made a little bit of a detour. It as more for just kicks and giggles, but I found myself in heaven when we got there. You see, my weakness is M&M's. I LOVE them, mostly because they are chocolate but also because they are just awesome! We couldn't believe all the stuff you could buy and the colors were amazing! We even got a couple of FREE samples if you can believe that. I think my favorite part was looking at all the little kid clothes :P lol. Before we actually cracked and bought some crazy insane M&Ms we had to run away!....

Look at all the colors!

When we arrived at New York, New York, the adventurers inside of us wanted to check out the Manhattan Express Roller Coaster!!! We were ready for a thrill seeking ride until we got in the insanely long line. For $14 a ride, we were not about to wait 5 hours and waste the time we had in Vegas standing and waiting. Instead we decided to go on a deadly motorcycle ride in the arcade. Now I know why some people might take their kids to the strip. New York, New York was kid heaven with all of the arcade games you could want. It was like Chuck E. Cheese on steroids!! Kids were everywhere spending all of their parents money.  It was definitely the kid version of a casino.

With the excitement and disappointment of not being able to put our adrenaline cravings at bay, we exited New York, New York and made our way to the Luxor. A friend of our works there, and we kind of wanted to check out the interesting building that you can see from miles around. The pyramid is acutally the hotel part of the casino, and so we weren't able to go in but you could see inside and that was awesome! One day I think we'll stay there, but we shall see.

With that, our legs were tired, our bodies aching (really from our intense work out the day before) and with a couple of yawns, we made our way back to our car at the Monte Carlo. We then made our way home to find our pillows and crashed at 2:00am. What an awesome night to have as our last out on the town :)

Saturday started with a late morning for us, but it was glorious! Sleeping until 8am has never been more amazing! With that we showered, got our swimming stuff on, ate a breakfast for kings, and made solid plans to go on a Hoover Dam tour, have a picnic, swim in Lake Mead, and end our night with a concert on Lake Las Vegas. Things don't always happen as we plan though, so we headed off in search of more adventure.

Before we hit up the HUGE Hoover Dam, we were able to walk across the tallest bridge of the Western Hemisphere. We walked from Nevada all the way to California in a matter of 1/2 hour. It was pretty awesome, although I must say that I am not a huge fan of the height. It was insanely high, and when we stopped to look down in the middle of the bridge, a semi drove by and hooked making me jump out of my skin. Jason got a good laugh out of it, but I think it scared him a little too lol.

We started in Nevada and ended up in Arizona!

On the bridge taking pics

The sign was on the other side :(

The Hoover Dam was incredible. We are crazy people who love learning while on vacation (ha ha it feels like vacation everyday it's hard to say it's really not). We got to watch a movie, take a guided tower down to the generators that supply an insane amount of electricity to power miles of cities including Las Angeles, and we got to walk on top of the dam. It was really neat, but boy did it wear us out! I think I walked off about 5 lbs just walking across the bridge and going on the dam tower.

The Bridge!

On top of the dam

Lake Mead was minutes away, and after eating our picnic in 107 degrees we were ready to jump in the water. I prepared my body for the shock of my life to jump into ice cold water. Funny thing is, I didn't think about how were were in Boulder City, in a lake, outside in 107 degree weather, and that it would probably the warmest water I have ever swam in. Well that's what it was, the warmest water I have ever swam in! It was weird how much it cooled us off though. After jumping in a few times, we grabbed our boogie boards and headed out into the water to have a standing contest. I think the boogie boards won, because Jason and I were bucked off our boards about a million times each. It sure was a good work out, and after seeing our hands and feet were beyond prunes, we got out to dry off and get ready to head over to Lake Las Vegas.

After our awesome competition!

As I said earlier, life has a funny way of surprising you. We both had the sudden urge to just go home, plop ourselves on the couch, make some shakes or smoothies, and watch The Lorax with our new roommate Becca. See our roommate Heidi left for the Dominican Rebulic and had her friend stay in her room. I felt really bad though, because even though we were both home all day during the week, I never saw her come out of her room. I was so excited when she joined us, but totally felt bad when I made the worst milkshake ever! It was more like chocolate milk, and that my friends is why I only let Jason touch the blender. While we tried to get The Lorax to play on the T.V for about 1/2 hour (we only had it on our computer) Becca decided to check the movies on demand. That's when we suddenly found ourselves watching Crazy, Stupid Love with delicious smoothies (I had the chocolate shake wannabe).

After the movie at 1:30 am we climbed the stairs to our room and Jason had the sudden urge to check his e-mail. See he had been interviewing for an incredible job all week and was waiting to hear back about the last one. The last interview was supposed to be in person, but the company worked with us and made it possible for him to do it over the phone. With that interview we promised the next one would be in person. Jason's heart was pumping and it was then that he found an invitation for that last interview in person on Monday. We were thrilled! We were so excited we looked for plane tickets right away. We almost cried when we saw the price, but then weighed other options and laughed when we finally realized Jason could drive, leave Sunday, stay with my sister that night, and attend his interview Monday morning. I think it was about 45min of excitedly talking about the future, that we decided I could go too! There was no reason I needed to stay (I don't work during the summer) and we could look at houses!!!! With that we made our final plans and went to sleep.

Sunday morning while I got ready and packed, Jason wrote down things that he could say in his interview. We got dressed for church super quick and went to go say goodbye to the wonderful friends we have made while being here. I hate last Sundays, and this was our 5th one in the span of 2 years (since we've been married). It is so hard to get to know so many amazing, wonderful people, get attached and then say goodbye. We almost thought of just skipping it because of that reason, but we knew that we had to see everyone one last time. I really felt sad as I told my friends I'd miss them, and even when I sat by a fun little lady I had just met and started to get to know during relief society I almost cried. We also found out that some people from BYU-Idaho had just moved in and we knew them! Even though our hearts are sad, I know that we will be able to keep in touch and we will be blessed with their friendships for a very long time.

After church I made lunch while Jason packed his things. We raced around making sure we had everything we needed, talked to Becca about us leaving, and zoomed out the door. We then started the very boring 6 hour drive to Orem, UT.

It was awesome to see my sister and her husband, but we didn't really get to spend too much time with them. When we arrived we played the farming game for a couple of hours and then we all headed off to bed with the anticipation of the next day.

Now, I won't tell you too many details about the next day because there are way TOO many! Long story short, Jason had a good interview, house hunting was both annoying and exciting, we are no longer going to be homeless in a couple of weeks, the house is even better than we had dreamed, and the drive home was just as boring at the drive there. We Osborns are really crazy, but life has been so very good to us! To save you from your eyes burning, I'll give you all the details about the adventures that day (well the ones that matter) another time. Until then, I'm off to change the oil in the car. Have a great week!