Nickki's birthday

We're still in October...

For my friend, Nickki, we celebrated her birthday at this cool restaurant called Rush Street in Culver City. It was a bit of a decoy dinner as there were "surprise" plans in the works for the upcoming weekend.

This lady who apparently was also celebrating her birthday was giving out her cupcakes. Jen willingly took one but when others declined, she got a bit aggressive and forceful sprinkled with some profanity about us taking more cupcakes.

Friday morning, Allison pretended to head to work (aka come to my house to wait until Nickki left for breakfast with Tim). Tim and Nickki headed out to breakfast and we headed back to her house to pack her up for her surprise weekend. Somewhat of a stressful next hour of packing ensued (where I first learned to do roll everything packing). They returned, we yelled out surprise and gave her a basket that Tim and Allison had put together of hints of where she was going. See the bags packed in the background. Yeah we were only going for 3 days but its hard to pack for someone else. Luckily Nickki is so spontaneous and was pretty much ready to go.

Into the car we piled and headed out for Vegas. At this point everything was still not known...where we were staying, more people coming, what we were doing.

Destination - Paris Hotel & Casino

What then ensues basically is a whole lot of lying to Nickki (I'm really horrible lying) as she's trying to make a plan for the evening and the next day. Little does she know that there is already a few plans in place including seeing Le Reve. So Diane and I are out shopping and she's back at the room trying to plan with Allison and Tim. She's calling the concierge to get tickets to Le Reve while Tim's saying he really doesn't want to see a show (very uncharacteristc since he's pretty go with the flow) and I'm saying that I've already seen it which doesn't mesh well since I had announced on the car ride that I hadn't been to Vegas in 8 years and the shows only been there for 2. But with a little quick thinking on my part, I say that I saw it in Chicago. Nickki's response, "Shannon, there is only one 100 million gallon water tank. They can't move that thing around."

Poor thing here it was her birthday weekend and unspoken rule would say that the birthday person would get to do whatever they wanted. She's highly irritated but is able to snap out of it (honestly I don't know how cuz I would have been super irritated by us) to go to dinner. After dinner we head back to the rooms to get ready to go out dancing. By this point the other group has arrived and have the chance to surprise her a bit more. Oh yeah and we then get to tell her we're going to Le Reve the next night. Whew no more surprises, mess ups and lying.

Sorry no pics from Friday night although we had a great time dancing at XS at the Encore.

Saturday was a little bit of spa time and relaxing by the pool. A few of us went out to explore the other hotels. One of my favorites is the Bellagio.

They had these random talking trees.

And the largest chocolate fountain I've ever seen.

A trip to Vegas isn't complete without seeing the Bellagio water fountain show.

Headed out to dinner and to Le Reve.

For dinner we went to Serendipity (there is also one in New York). Its famous for its $3000 dessert - it has a gold leaf in it and the frozen hot chocolate.

the real frozen hot chocolate

the desserts were huge and amazing

Off to Le Reve

the 100 million gallon water tank.....

The show was amazing!!!! Some of the acrobatics were jaw dropping. Highly recommend seeing it if you're in Vegas.

Tim picked the lucky slot machine which provided a few hours of fun and some interesting personality traits surfaced from all of us as we cheered him on. I actually won $50 off that machine.

Oh yeah I forgot to mention probably that it was Halloween weekend. There were some interesting (think XXX) and crazy costumes like the one below.