What Happens at Meet the Teacher… Stays in Vegas

Okay, so I know this title is super cheesy, but I am combining two posts into one. This past week has dawned the beginning of yet another school year in the Gray household, but not before meet the teacher and a very fun girl’s weekend in Vegas (hence the title). So here we go!

Meet the teacher night is always a pretty hectic day, there is a lot to get ready in a short amount of time. For the most part I had my room ready to go with a few exceptions. At my school, our second and third grades loop, which means we keep our same kids from second to third grade. This is going to be my first year experiencing the loop, and so far it has been great. Usually, meet the teacher is a little nerve racking just meeting my new students and their parents. I pretty much had my same class from last year, so it was really good seeing all of my kiddos and their families. Here are a few pictures of my room.

My classroom library

Half of my class

The other half of my class.

My door

All and all it was a successful night!

So the day after meet the teacher night I went on a girls weekend to Las Vegas. I was pretty excited because I had never been to Vegas before. We stayed at Caesar’s, which is a huge hotel. Once we got in on Friday we just walked around on the Strip which was entertainment alone. We went to Sprinkles Cupcake and Ice Cream. The Sprinkles in Houston only serves cupcakes so we took advantage of the ice cream. The ice cream was pretty good and worth the try. If you are ever in the Dallas area it is the closest Sprinkles that has ice cream. On Saturday, we got up to make our 9:00 reservation at Mon Ami Gabi, which is at Paris Las Vegas. It was a recommendation given to us and it was a good one that I am passing along. It is definitely worth the try. I had the Salmon Eggs Benedict, the eggs were a little overdone, but the hollandaise sauce and salmon were amazing, and even though the eggs were slightly over done the meal was not at all horrible. After breakfast we began our day at the pool. The group that I was with were not big gamblers, so we were just fine with a couple of spins on the slots, but the main thing we knew we were going to want to do is sit by the pool all day. I would definitely recommend staying at Caesar’s. The staff is very friendly and the rooms and pools are out of this world. There is plenty to do just at Caesar’s. This of course is my first time in Vegas so I am sure the other hotels are just as amazing. If you are an avid pool goer I would definitely recommend getting a day bed, especially if you have a group. The day bed was $250 for the day. I know some of you are probably in shock just for a day bed, but if you have a group the split of the cost per person is not that bad, and trust me, it is totally worth it. It was in a really good location and the service was really good for as many people were around. I think they were a little backed up in the kitchen, but our waitress was really nice and she kept the drinks coming. That night we planned to go to the Brittney concert, and had dinner reservations at 6:00. We ate dinner at one of the restaurants at Caesar’s called Nobu, which is a Japanese restaurant. All of us love sushi and it was another recommendation from one of the girls co- workers. The had some different rolls and it was very good, and I thought it was also reasonably priced for Vegas. Dinner was cheaper than breakfast, but we also had drinks at breakfast, which is honestly what will get you in Vegas. I will say that being from Houston has made somewhat of a food snob (I mean our restaurant week lasts a month). If you know anything about Houstonians, know that they love their food and they love to eat out, so I have had my fair share of five star food. Nobu was definitely amazing and the food was absolutely five star worthy, but it isn’t anything that I couldn’t find at my favorite sushi restaurant here in Houston. Again, it is so worth the recommendation and a place I would recommend to others. To end our night we went to the Brittney concert, which was absolutely amazing. Now don’t get me wrong she is no Beyoncé, but for her being one of my favorite childhood pop stars she put on a really good show. She played all of her hits and then some, and kept me on my feet the whole time. She comes on about 15- 30 mins late and she plays for about an hour and a half, but the best thing is that she costume changes every three songs. After the concert we went back to the hotel because we had an early flight the next morning. Here are just a few pictures from the weekend.

Paris Las Vegas

Caesar’s

Bellagio

Breakfast at Mon Ami Gabi

The Britney concert

The girls at the concert

It was a wonderful weekend and my last quick trip before the school year. This past week went great. It was tiring, but great seeing all my students again. I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe Labor Day weekend!

Love Always,

Amie

Fourth of July Weekend

During the summer Loren and I work at the Museum of Natural Science doing summer camps. The camps are two weeks teaching and one week off, so we were very lucky to have a long fourth of July weekend and the following week off, and we decided to visit Loren’s parents, who live in McAllen, TX.

Our trip down was very exciting, we are exchanging Loren’s car for a couple of weeks while his wonderful dad does some MAJOR work on it. First, there is no AC, it’s hot, it’s July, it’s Texas, and it takes 6 hours to get the valley (McAllen). So you can only imagine how much fun I was having packed into a car with our dog. Luckily we left at 5am so it wasn’t in the heat of the day, but still equally miserable. The drive was going as good as it could go until about 45 minutes from our destination when we got a flat tire, that is right a flat tire. Of course we happened to get this flat tire on the stretch of the trip with nothing around, so here we are with a flat tired, a hot dog, and now a hot wife. So we unpacked the car and Loren began to attempt to fix the tire while I was convinced that this is where we were going to die. We broke down on the side of a four lane highway so the cars where going pretty fast with some of them not changing lanes, which really ticked me off.

Lily and I on the side of the road waiting on Loren as he changed the tire.

About 30 minutes into our tire changing experience a Brooks County Sheriff pulled over, and believe me I have never been so happy to see a sheriff in my life. In the wonderful state of Texas it is the law to have an empty lane of traffic between you and the officer, so with him behind us the people who weren’t pulling over now had to, thank goodness. If you ever end up on the side of the road like that you should definitely call the non emergency line so they can have some sort of law enforcement agent come to assist you, if definitely put me at ease knowing if something happened at least there was someone else there with us. Soon after that we were back on the road and got to McAllen safely.

When we got to Loren’s parents they had an awesome lunch ready to go for us with even better desserts. After we ate, rehydrated, and showered we headed over to Loren’s grandma’s house to watch the fireworks. The fireworks are shot from the high school which is about two blocks from his grandma’s so it was the perfect place to set up. We cut up our watermelon and enjoyed the awesome fireworks.

Loren and I

Jacyln (Loren’s sister) and I

Funny Dad photo bomb

Photo with Grandma

Mom and her girls

We are so blessed to have such an amazing family and friends and it is always an adventure coming down here. We will be leaving tomorrow to meet my parents for the second part of our vacation, which you can be sure I will be posting about once we get back into Houston.

Love always,

Amie