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Christmas- Part 4 (The Final Chapter)

So we're nearing the end of January (already?!?!?) and I realized I haven't shared any photos of our final Christmas related event: our trip to Las Vegas with Paul's parents to visit his brothers and their families.
Don't want you to feel like you're missing out on all the excitement so here we go:
With a three year old in the house we knew we wanted to be home for Christmas.  So we decided to head to Vegas on December 27 and stay for a week.  LP did great on the six hour flight out there (although the whole not quite completely potty-trained child on a full flight with teeny tiny airplane bathrooms was a nightmare) and jumped right into playing with his 5 year old cousin as soon as we arrived...
The first night there we had our fourth and final Christmas- the kids ripped into the pile of presents so quickly that I'm still not sure who gave LP half of the gifts he received!
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The next day we spent mainly at the local playground- we were all a bit jetlagged and it was great to just hang out and relax and enjoy the sunny weather!
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Love this shot of the cousins, so cute:
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We spent most of our trip really just hanging out with family.  The guys got some golf in, the girls got some shopping in, and a few of us ate cotton candy for breakfast one day:
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We'd given our neice this cotton candy maker for Christmas and it turned out to be a lot of fun! You throw a few hard candies in the bottom and within seconds it's turning out spun sugar!  Yum!
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We made a couple of trips down to the Strip to see the Christmas decorations.  The Bellagio was the most impressive.  LP LOVED the penguin display:
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And these giant polar bears covered in flowers were pretty cool too:
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On another playground day I hiked to the top of the local "mountain" to get a few shots of the view from the top.  Here's one looking towards the strip:
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And one looking off towards the mountains:
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We'd never been in Vegas for New Year's before (at least I haven't) but we knew we weren't too interested in paying a fortune to go out somewhere.  Instead, Paul and I introduced his brothers to our recent interest in sushi-making and we had quite a New Year's feast!
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We celebrated the New Year at 9 p.m. for the kids (hey, it was New Year's back in Massachusetts!) and by midnight only three of us were left standing (or lounging on the couch).  We rang in the official New Year by making fun of the local Las Vegas news anchors and their absolutely horrible New Year's show- it was so poorly produced that we were literally on the floor laughing as their countdown was about 10 seconds beyond the official countdown shown on the screen.
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We attempted some family photos- this is the best one I could get of my mother-in-law and her 4 guys.  In every other shot someone is making a face, standing on his tiptoes to look like the tallest, or punching someone else in the ribs.  You'd think that as grownups it would be fairly easy to get a decent photo but get these three brothers together and there's nothing but trouble:
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We also got a shot of the three boys plus their significant others/kids (minus LP who was in bed by this point).  Yup- it's a bunch of tall guys and a bunch of short girls...
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We capped off the trip with a visit to the local Bass Pro shop where we checked out the aquarium and then spent some time checking out all the boats.  We found a party boat that we all loved so we'll have to start saving up!
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I also got a little fabric shopping in which I'll share in another post!  After a full week in Vegas we were ready to head home.  It's always hard to leave family and we wish that we all lived closer but it was also nice to be heading back to our own beds... LP did great again on the way home although had a complete breakdown the second he walked in the door to our house, yelling, "I want to go back to Lilli's house!!!!!  Take me to the airplane!!"  
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Hopefully we'll get to see them all again soon!

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