Afternoon Downtown

We needed to go downtown to pick up our tickets to the Nutcracker. Two years ago we saw it at a theater at UNLV, but this year Nevada Ballet was performing in the Paris hotel. I didn't want to worry about picking them up the day of the show, so we made a special trip. There was this big gorilla statue that we passed while walking past a bunch of shops. We saw tourists taking pictures with their arm around it, but I rather like Jess' pose.

We were also hoping that Matt could spare a few minutes and show us around a bit of City Center.



After we had the tickets, we couldn't resist going across the street to see the Bellagio's Christmas display. It was beautiful as always. Jess loved the Christmas train. Makenna liked the polar bears made from white carnations and huge ball ornaments made of roses. Isaac's favorite was watching the spitting fountains and the multi colored led lights that make it look like the water was changing color. They all kept their eyes on the ceiling to watch for when the fake snow fell. I imagine that Times' Square has a bigger tree, but this is the biggest one any of us have seen. It was gorgeous.

We were able to meet up with Matt. From the Bellagio we caught a Tram over to City Center--that made it even more fun for the kids. We spent about an hour walking around with Matt and saw just the smallest fraction of the one of the buildings. Having heard his stories over that past few weeks made walking through much more interesting. It is very modern and clean and beautiful. We had fun finding pieces of art here and there and there's another one. Some of the art works were HUGE. Some were rather functional, others just for fun, well, for decoration. Walking around together made me long for the time when we can get a sitter and go on a fancy date again. It's been a long time, but the tide seems to be turning. This project has been so good for his company, and will hopefully lead to more work on other properties.