Vegas was a blast. We flew down on Friday to celebrate Staci Arnone and Fred Milad’s Birthdays. We stayed at The Venetian like we always do. You can’t beat it when our Venetian Casino host, Chit, ends up comping our hotel rooms, dinners and show tickets. It makes for a good time when all you have to worry about is gambling money. Of course I love the bonus features on the penny machines. I always get excited on the big dollar machines as well.

After arriving it was time to grab something to eat and hang out. We went to the “Humpty Dumpty Bar”. I really don’t know the name of the little bar, but there was a Humpty Dumpty sculpture sitting on the wall so I will now refer to it as the “Humpty Dumpty Bar”. We ordered drinks and appetizers and that only began the evening. After hanging out for a bit we decided to celebrate Staci’s Birthday at Delmonico. We were hoping that our host server, Fiona, was working, but unfortunately she had the night off. She really does resemble Fiona from “Shrek”…..but don’t tell her I said that. We had an incredible dinner and it went great with my 1990 Gaja. Talk about great food and wine. After dinner we spent the evening playing the different penny machines. My favorites are Cleopatra, Wheel of Fortune and Ebay!!!!

On Saturday we ate breakfast at Thomas Keller’s Bouchon. If you have never had the French Toast at Bouchon you are missing out. It is the most incredible bread pudding style french toast, with warm layers of brioche, custard and apples that you will ever taste. They also have incredible pastries that you have to try at least once. Do you think I like food? I love quality tasting food. Talk about an orgasm for your mouth. Of course in Vegas we had to do some shopping. We cruised the shops in the Venetian Canals and the Palazzo. We then took a cab down to The Bellagio to see the Botanical Garden. I love plants and am always amazed at the creations that are created out of plants and plant material. Vegas always has more than enough attractions to see, and you can never fit them all in during a weekend trip, but I always love to see the plant art at the Botanical Garden.

After the Bellagio it was back to the Venetian to eat dinner. We ate at Morel, one of the new restaurants in the Palazzo side of the resort. Morel is a French style restaurants and was very good. I had one of the most incredible Wagyu steaks I have ever had. It was prepared medium rare and seasoned with only sea salt and crushed pepper, it paired excellently with our wine. After dinner we all went to see the Cirque du Soleil show ‘LOVE’ it really was a sensory overload. Check out the video of ‘LOVE’ on the Cirque Du Soleil web site. I recommend seeing one of the Cirque du Soleil shows if you are in Vegas. “O” at The Bellagio is still my favorite, but they are all incredible. There are so many incredible shows, you really should see at least one per trip. After the show we decided to head back to The Venetian and feed the machines a little more. Rick hit it big with the help of Staci’s good luck pull on a $25.00 slot machine and then we upped the ante and tried the $500 slot machine……can’t complain when you are a winner…..WINNER WINNER, CHICKEN DINNER!

Well the closets are finally in. Carriage House Cabinets did a great job in matching the vanity in the bathroom with the new closet. Now I have to go through my clothes and donate the clothes that I no longer wear. I am actually pretty good about keeping my clothing updated and not letting old clothes sit in the closet. Rick on the other hand tries to keep things for years. I just sneak in and secretly pull items out and put them in my donation pile, don’t tell him because otherwise he will never know it is missing.

Last night we ate a little local restaurant called The Ziti. It was great food. Rick had a very unique pasta with shrimp. The shrimp had all the legs and heads still on them. Too much for me to pick through, I hate cutting the fat off of a piece of steak, let alone the head of a shrimp. I ordered a calzone….which was great until I got to the middle and as I cut it this yellow liquid oozed out. I realized that I had a raw egg in the middle of my calzone. I nicely cut around the goo and ate the edge of my calzone. Everything else was great, I had the best fried calamari I think I have ever eaten. It was very fresh and tasted very good. Rick had an incredible mushroom cream soup with truffles. It was a great way to end the evening. The Eiffel Tower was lit up in blue again tonight, however it was even more fantastic because it sparkled like a million people were dangling from every part of the Eiffel Tower and were taking pictures with their flash on. It was impressive.

Today we headed to The Louvre Museum. We spent all day admiring the many different pieces of artwork displayed throughout this museum. You really need probably two days to be able to see everything there is to see in The Louvre. I really liked some of the pieces and want to know more about them. I had seen some ancient artwork while in Rome last month, but this was truly incredible. There was some very impressive pieces of history displayed in The Louvre. I really liked the Egyptian art, the sarcophagi where incredible to see in person. The Parisian artwork and of course the Mona Lisa painting were cool. One of my favorite paintings is “Gabrielle d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters” for some reason it really caught my eye

I recommend visiting The Louvre Museum on your weekend in Paris trip. However, you may want to add an extra day to your trip to be able really see the details of this museum. If you really want to enjoy The Louvre, then I suggest that you read up on the paintings, I did some brief reading here at The Louvre Web site. Tomorrow we head back to Utah. We leave at 10:00 a.m. and arrive in Utah around 1:00 p.m. that does include the 11:00 hour flight time. I hope I can get some sleep on the plane tomorrow.

Click on any of the Pictures to see more of My Weekend In Paris

My evenings this week have been filled with Olympic fever. From swimming to gymnastics I am glued to the TV to watch the worlds best athletes compete for the Gold in Beijing, China. Competition can be fierce. These Olympians are the best in the world at their event, the talent level is raw and mesmerizing. However, even though they are the greatest athletes in the world, there is danger in any sport. I compiled the top 10 ways to get hurt while competing in the Olympics.

#10 - Jumping On A Springboard With Too Much Spring

#9 - Holding On To The Pole Too Long During Your Vault

#8 - Failing to Complete A Steeplechase Hurdle

#7 - Not Paying Attention To The Shot Putter

#6 - Jumping On A Springboard With No Bounce

#5 - Not Watching The Javelin Thrower

#4 - Hammer Throw During The Rain

#3 - Crashing Your Bicycle Ahead Of 50 Other Racers

#2 - Missing The 4 Inch Balance Beam

#1 - Getting In The Way Of The Chinese Government And Their Olympic Quest

One of my favorite things to do is cook food. I am not really good at it, but I enjoy trying new recipes and experimenting in the kitchen. Rick is an excellent chef and mostly cooks around our house. We are lucky that we have good friends that let us experiment our culinary skills and then kindly put up with the food. Luckily we always accompany our dinners with enough wine to make everything taste good. Rick decided he was going to make a rolled turkey breast stuffed with fresh asparagus, portobello mushrooms, and havarti cheese. He also made and incredible angel food cake that he then topped with chilled peaches that had been cooked and then chilled in Port Wine. I am not a huge fan of Port, but this was a pretty excellent dessert.

I was in charge of appetizers. I decided I would try and make some date ramaki. I took fresh dates and cut them open and filled them with a mile blue cheese and then wrapped them in bacon. I put them in the oven and in the midst of getting everything ready for dinner forgot about them. Well of course I burned the hell out of those little bacon wrapped dates. The house filled with smoke and that mean I had to start all over. I ran down to the store and bought new dates, new blue cheese and bacon and started the process all over again. Luckily this time they turned out perfect.

Stacey and Ryan along with Sharadee and Dajun were kind enough to let us experiment our latest food creations on them. We obviously enjoyed our wine during dinner because by the end of dinner we ended up singing Karaoke around the piano. It was a very impromptu Elton John Tribute performance. Stacey sure has numerous expressions and loves the jazz hands while singing, watch for her to compete on the next Singing Bee….we couldn’t find a microphone but she kindly took to the deer antler as a makeshift microphone. Sharadee provided us with an outstanding snip it from The Phantom Of The Opera. The dogs into the action and made the appearance as well. God forbid that they be left out of some important activity. Rick wants to audition for Dancing With The Stars, so he busted out a few moves through out the night. Check out the video below for some hilarious excerpts from our Crazy Karaoke Bunch.