Viva Las Vegas!

Last night we returned home from our 2 night get-away to Las Vegas. We drove down with Sam's research group Wednesday afternoon and stayed until Friday afternoon. Thursday morning Sam and his research partner presented their research on behalf of the group. Stress was running high the night before and morning of, but they did fantastic! I was very proud and were their professor. The group they presented to all received the pilot research very well, and they had comment which more or less supported/encouraged what they presented and no attack comments! Woohoo, you can never be sure what to expect from fellow psychologist and such. Here is a picture of the group we drove with.

So I was only able to attend Sam's presentations and the few afterwards in the same hour. So what did I do while Sam and the group attended the conference... shop of course ;-) I headed across the street to Caesars to the Forum shops (we stayed at Harrahs... on the third floor aka the 'pet friendly floor' Bah! We had a nice quiet room, until the second night... but two of the guys sharing a room were across the hall from a yapping dog and their neighbor had taped a picture of their dog on their door... LOL) Anyway, the largest H&M in the world is there and I decided to enjoy myself in one of my favorite stores. I controlled myself and only purchased one must-have item, an inexpensive houndstooth printed skirt (stretchy material) with a trendy zipper running along the backside. Heaven. Sam keeps calling it 'dogstooth' which I think is funny. On my adventures alone I also visited the wildlife habitat at the Flamingo, where a duck almost attacked me. Only a stranger saw and laughed... life is just better with Sam around :) Back in July 2008, Kelly, Liz and some other girls and I went to Las Vegas and stayed at the Flamingo. Hands down that was one fun trip. Being on the strip made me really happy thinking about those fun memories...

The rest of my time by myself was spent talking to old people at the McDonald's next to the hotel, which offered free WiFi. No joke, I chatted it up and looked up phone numbers for more than one elderly person on my Ipad. I ran into a lot of people from the midwest, I'm always proud being from Michigan and able to connect with people that way. So other fun stuff Sam and I did... we had dinner the first night at Cheesecake Factory (my favorite). The second night we had dinner with the group at Hard Rock Cafe. Afterwards Sam and I walked around... we hit up the M&M store (one of Sam's favorite candies) where he paid almost $2 for about 12 M&M's from the wall of the melt in your mouth not your hand candies... what a joke! We spent about 45 minutes walking around the MGM Grand looking for the white tigers just to find out they had been removed from their exhibit 2 weeks ago... lame! And then Sam's favorite part of the night was watching the Bellagio fountain show. All in all a fun trip, especially since the gas was paid for and the rooms were at a discounted price for the conference :)