V is for "Vegas, Baby!"

I decided tonight that it was about time I stopped neglecting my blog. It's been a good 8 months since I've written anything here...and a lot has changed in that time. The last few entries took place over the Christmas holidays. On Boxing Day I made a wonderous discovery - I was harbouring a new life inside my body. It was no wonder those 2 glasses of wine at Festivus made me ill...there was a tiny being inside of me saying, "MOM, I don't LIKE wine!!"

We got married shortly after. Just to clarify...it was not a shotgun wedding...we'd sent the invites out in September. The wedding took place on March 8th, 2008 in Las Vegas, Nevada. We had managed to keep the news of our little bun in the oven a secret so far...but did we ever have a surprise for everyone at the wedding dinner!!! Needless to say, the whole crowd was pretty shocked - especially our parents and siblings. Suddenly, so many things became clear to so many people...the reason why my friends poured an entire bottle of red wine (minus one glass) into the sink at my bachelorette party...why I was the designated driver at every event over the holidays (including New Years!)...why I kept refusing R's mom as she attempted to inebriate me with her extensive wine collection...why my mom kept having dreams about babies (seriously, she did!)...the list goes on and on. I actually can't believe that no one figured it out earlier.

And so, the weekend wedding in Vegas came to a conclusion, all of our friends and family headed home, and we drove off into the sunset in our rented Mustang convertible. :-) We did an incredible figure 8 loop through Zion, Kaibab National Forest, Lake Powell, Grand Canyon, Death Valley, Kern Valley, Sequoia National Forest, San Francisco, Big Sur, Pismo Beach, and back to Vegas. It was the most amazing trip ever. I saw oranges and lemons on trees for the first time...and ate the single most delicious mandarin orange of life. That's right, of LIFE.

The only downside was that for the first half of the three week wedding/honeymoon combo, I was still suffering from morning sickness...this made it nearly impossible for me to eat anything except cucumbers in white vinegar (which is mighty difficult to find in the United States...apparantly no one eats anything but cider vinegar!) and Wendy's Spicy Chicken sandwiches (not so difficult to track down - except in Las Vegas!). We spent almost an hour trying to find a wendy's in the suburbs of Vegas. It sucked, but man did that Spicy Chicken taste good. And although I am in no way endorsing Wendy's...but they really were the only thing that tasted good for about 4 days. The bonus for Ryan was that he got to eat all the meals I ordered but couldn't stomach.

While our trip was fun while it lasted, it had to end sometime. After our stay in Big Sur (the Ripplewood Resort comes highly recommended...what an incredible place!) and 3 nights of relaxation in Pismo Beach, we beelined it back to Las Vegas to hit up the MGM casino once more before we caught our flight home. Ryan got swindled by promises of big money by the airport slot machines, while I revelled in the beauty of free wireless in the waiting area. We sadly left sunny California and the heat of Nevada far behind, and exited the plane in Winterpeg...to endure the remainder of winter in Whitedog.