Just the Two of Us: June 2011

So you might not have heard of this show just yet....

...but the X-Factor is a new (to the U.S., anyway) singing competition created by Simon Cowell. It has no age limits and even allows groups to audition as well. The prize at the end - 5 million dollars!! So we are talking serious talent...only the best of the best of the best....

Wouldn't you know it? The show came to Seattle for auditions and we scored some free tickets, woohoo! We had friends with tickets, too, so yesterday Rebekah, Liz, Derek, and myself loaded up and headed for Seattle.

You should check out this dress code requirement printed on our tickets...
(not the tickets in the previous picture, but the tickets we printed off the Internet)

DRESS CODE IS STRICTLY ENFORCED FOR OUR INTERNET TICKET HOLDERS! Hip, uspcale attire is mandatory. Colorful, spring colors are requested. ABSOLUTELY no apparel with logos of any kind on the front or back are allowed in the studio audience. ABSOLUTELY no t-shirts, sweatshirts, white tops, shorts, or flip flops! We'd prefer you don't wear jeans. Please dress hip and upscale as if going to a nice club or restaurant. You will be on camera so it is very important that you dress nicely! When you look great, the show looks great!

IF YOU DO NOT DRESS ACCORDING TO THE DRESS CODE YOU WILL NOT BE ADMITTED.

I was freaking out. I definitely don't count my clothes as either hip or upscale. I settled on a dress with leggings that followed all the rules and just prayed that I would get in...I did. But so did all of the other people that I don't think even looked in the mirror before they left home. I saw every single rule broken, bummer for me. I would've been much more comfortable in my jeans and top, but oh well - I am definitely NOT a rule breaker =)

How do we look?

Okay, so all you can really see are our happy faces, but trust me, we fit the dress code perfectly =)

We arrived at 12:00 for our 1:00 auditions just as we were told...and we waited...and waited...and waited...finally getting to our seats at 1:30. But we had such a great view of the stage!!

2nd row up from the floor!

We could only have our cell phones for taking pictures, so this is extremely blurry, but it's the best I could do.

Simon Cowell, Paula Abdul, Nicole Scherzinger, and L.A. Reid

It was a really fun experience. We saw about 10 contestants, heard only two "Yes" answers and one "come back tomorrow." Simon was brutally honest as always, although not as rude as I had expected. Paula was a much more honest and constructively critical judge and not as much of the "everyone is just so wonderfully talented" judge as she was on American Idol. Nicole was great. She loved it when a contestant belted out "My Redeemer Lives" by Nicole C. Mullen and said it was one of her favorite songs. L.A. - still not sure who he was, but at least he didn't say "dawg" or "yo, yo, yo" a million times. We can't wait to watch the show! Well, the Seattle auditions episode that is. We had a blast!

...goes on the blog!!

Derek and I decided to celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary with a little trip...

...to fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada!

We spent our first anniversary chaperoning kiddos at Bogg Springs Kids Camp.
We spent our second anniversary in Portland.
We spent our third anniversary overnight in Seattle.
It was time for something a little bigger =)

We got an incredible deal on our trip a few months ago and we just couldn't pass it up. It totally worked in our budget, so we booked it and have been counting down the days until our little getaway. We left Tuesday morning and just flew back home last night. We had a blast!

The first signs from the air that we were in the desert

In the airport! We made it!!

We arrived at our hotel, Excalibur.

After checking in, we set out to do a little sight-seeing...

The Tropicana - where we hope to stay next time.

The Monte Carlo

New York, New York!

Then we stopped for lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe.

We shared some yummy nachos...

...and a delicious "Anti-Cobb" salad with craisins, apples, strawberries, grilled chicken, mandarin oranges, avacado, and mango...mmmmm....

We went inside the world of Coca-Cola and saw this on the menu - 16 samples of sodas from around the world.

So we ordered one! We tried every single soda on our trays.

Derek's favorite was the Vegiabeta from Japan

And I loved the Smart Apple from China - it was like drinking a melted sour apple Jolly Rancher =)

We hadn't really planned on doing anything special on our first night, but on the plane ride I noticed in the Southwest magazine that there was an advertisement for Penn & Teller and it said to present the ad to get 2 tickets for the price of 1 - so I ripped out the ad and we decided at the very last minute to check it out.

It was a really cool show, lots of fun tricks and stunts of sorts.

We even got to meet Penn...

...and Teller, too.

After the show, we were exploring inside the Rio and we discovered this little event happening...

The World Series of Poker

So we decided to take a peek and this is what we found at 11:30p.m. - hundreds and hundreds of poker players! There were some pretty serious looking ones...wearing hats and sunglasses, listening to music through their headphones, and even some with their own personal massage therapist...intense.

Then we moved on to go see the Bellagio because we wanted to catch their evening fountain show.

It was beautiful indeed!

Then we went inside to check it out - this gorgeous chandelier was in the lobby!

They had beautiful botanical gardens and it just smelled soooo good.

And then we saw some Lovebirds...awww....

We could have stayed in those gardens all night, but it was time (about 1 a.m. by now) to start walking back to our hotel, but not before taking some night time pictures on Las Vegas Blvd!

Day two started off strong. We knew we were in for a roaster of a day, but didn't think much more about it. We did a little walking and more sight-seeing on the strip.

Found a Statue of Liberty made of Jelly Bellies!

Checked out the Grand Canyon, ha ha!

Snapped a picture in front of our hotel, Excalibur

Overlooking Las Vegas Blvd

Went inside the MGM to check things out

and found some lions inside =)

Love these palm trees!

We were told that the famous "Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign wasn't far at all from where we were so we decided to take a stroll to check it out. Every tourist needs a picture under that sign, right? After a bit of walking and no sign in sight, we realized that we had been misinformed, but we thought it was too late to turn back.

So we walked all the way down to the sign to get a picture, sheesh. Definitely should have taken a cab.

Then things took a rather scary turn. Since we didn't realize how far the walk actually was, we didn't bring our water with us and it was 110 degrees! I was starting to feel light headed and my lips were tingling...uh-oh... So we took the picture and started walking back when out of nowhere, we saw a cab, an empty cab. Hallelujah! We climbed right in and rode back to our hotel where I drank lots and lots of water and then took a nap. Whew! I know just Who sent us that cab ;)

We had tickets that night (that came with our vacation package) to see Cirque Du Soleil, KA' at the MGM Grand. It's no secret that we are huge cirque fans and we were really looking forward to our night.

And once again, Cirque did not disappoint! I have to say it was really amazing to see a show that wasn't just a traveling show, but in a venue that was built specifically for it...definitely added a whole new level of amazement!

Incredible show, incredible date, love this guy!!

I wish we could tell you that we had an incredible dinner after our show because that's what we were expecting...but that is NOT what we got. We had reservations at a Brazilian Churrascaria at Planet Hollywood that was highly recommended and supposedly had high ratings, but we give it two great big thumbs down. Terrible, slow service and mediocre food. We were sad, but it certainly didn't ruin our night!

Then it was back to the hotel to rest up and get ready for day three...

...and then we saw the forecast for Thursday - HOT, HOT, HOT!

After surviving the heat of day two, we were much smarter on day three. We stayed in our hotel until the sun started to set and just spent the day relaxing by the pool and hanging out indoors. Did I mention our hotel had a Cold Stone in it? Yum!!

Once we got to late afternoon, we decided to head out and see what kind of deals we could find on an evening show. Never ever book your show tickets ahead of time and certainly don't pay full price for them. There are so many places to get discounted tickets WITHOUT having to take a time-share tour, ha!

So we went down to one such vendor (we had booked our dinner through them last night), and got a super great deal on tickets to see Blue Man Group.

I had really wanted to surprise Derek with tickets even before we got to Vegas, but the cheapest tickets I could find were over $100 each, yikes! I was so glad I waited...

We had plenty of time to grab some dinner before the show, so we decided to try out the Harley Davidson Cafe, because it came very highly recommended by Mr. Darron & Mrs. Joanna and they were right, it was yummy!

Inside the cafe, very cool flag made of chain links and motorcycles constantly rotating around dining area.

Onto the show...

So excited!

The Beautiful Venetian

Inside, just gorgeous!

We were so lucky and landed seats in the poncho section, third row back! We were disappointed that we didn't get any paint on us, but we sure did have great seats. It was such an incredible, incredible show - we loved it!!

Got a picture with one of the blue fellas after the show.

Thought we'd take a gondola ride while we were there...but apparently, they are having some issues...so we just headed back to our hotel for the night.

But we did take a few pictures on the way...

And then came our fourth and final day in Vegas. We had to check out of our hotel by noon and catch an airport shuttle around 5:00, so we had a little time to kill. First, we took a tram to go check out the Luxor Hotel, pretty nice!

Love the sphinx in front of the giant pyramid

Check out the guards =)

Inside the front lobby

Then, since we were tired of walking and were so over the heat, we decided to use our bus pass to board the Las Vegas Strip bus and just ride it all the way to the North end and back. So we hopped on and got lucky enough to sit on the upper deck in the front row...much like being on a double decker tour bus but without the corny tour guide, ha!

The bus took us into "Downtown" Las Vegas

The last stop was at the Fremont Street Experience, so we hopped off for a few minutes just to look around. I hear it's pretty incredible at night, but we'll have to save that for next time.

We got back on the bus to head south back to our hotel and were pretty excited to catch a Glimpse of the pawn shop featured on History Channel's "Pawn Stars."

We also saw a few famous wedding chapels but the bus was too quick for me to take any pictures and we didn't want to get off since we had some pretty exciting plans for our afternoon....

...we just couldn't leave without seeing our friends Kevin and Ashley!

As you can see, they drove us back to the sign so we could get another picture...this one with happier memories =)

They also took us to a local shopping center and into a coffee shop where I got to have one of these delicious treats, an ice blended pom-blueberry drink!