Las Vegas Nursing Conference

This last week, Kenn and I spent 4 days in Las Vegas kid free (thanks Mom and Dad for making that possible). The main purpose was to attend a Neonatal Nursing Conference, but we were also able to do a lot of fun stuff.
Wednesday after we flew in, Kenn and I picked up our rental car and found our hotel. We stayed at a place called Red Rock Resort (it was about 20 minutes away from the strip). It was a beautiful place with an amazing pool, an amazing view of the red rock mountains, a comfy king size bed (with mints on the pillows), big screen plasma TV, ridiculously large bathtub (with another plasma TV above it), and many other amenities. The mini bar/snack bar was weight sensored, so just by picking a product up you were charged for the item. Luckily my kids weren't there, or we would have been charged a lot of money (just a candy bar or a soda cost $4). I forgot to take pictures of our room, but here are some of the pictures from their website (which look exactly like what we saw).

After grabbing some dinner, we went to the Las Vegas Temple. We have been there a couple times before, and it was just as beautiful as I remembered. I was very touched during the temple session, but I was also very emotional because my Grandma Ballard broke her hip just the day before, and she was not doing well at this time (though she is doing a little better now, I feel like this is the beginning of her progression towards death). I am grateful for the Lord's comfort and love toward me, and for the reassurance of the gospel principle that my family will be together forever. Since it was night, we couldn't get as many pictures of the beautiful temple grounds and flowers as I would have liked, but believe me it was beautiful!

Thursday, I actually had to go to a few hours of the nursing conference. Kenn hung out a the sports book in the Venetian casino where he could watch 10 different games at a time while beautiful women would bring him endless drinks (of cherry Coke). Later that evening we went with a group of other friends also attending the conference to the opening night of baseball for the Area 51's who just happened to be playing the Salt Lake Bee's. The weather was perfect for a baseball game (~75 degrees). Even though most people were there because it was dollar beer night (I have never seen such long lines for the beer, but hey I guess it is Vegas after all), it was a great game and the Bee's ended up winning 6-3. These are a couple of my nurse practitioner friends- Miriam Bastian, Nancy Limburg, and Jennifer Whitehead.
Friday I slept in and missed the most of the morning sessions (luckily all the talks are on the internet for me to review later). In the afternoon I hung out with friends at the pool (it was awesome, just don't look at my pasty white legs). Later that evening we went out with more nursing friends to a Mexican restaurant and then we had fun losing our money at the blackjack tables and the slot machines.

Kelly, Andi, Jennifer, Jolene, Paul, Kacey, Nancy, and Miriam (sorry Kenn couldn't be in the picture, but thanks for taking photo).