Baby Zander

      A quick maternity shoot for my beautiful cousin who is pregnant with her second child, Baby Zander.

Such a sweet family.

Las Vegas Day One

     Wednesday morning we woke early and drove to Tanner's grandparent's house. They live pretty close to the airport and offered to drive us there and pick us up nine days from then which I'm very grateful for, parking and shuttling can get stressful for beginners and not to mention it's not free. We met my family (Mom, Dad, 2/3 of my sisters, Grandma and Far-Far, and my aunt and uncle) in the terminal. My other aunt, uncle and cousins had left earlier that morning so we met them when we arrived. 9 am our flight ascended towards the desert and the mountains. The flight wasn't bad, right around 3 hours if I remember correctly. Also with the time zones we gained a couple of hours so that was nice.

    The Las Vegas airport made me chuckle seeing the slot machines right off the terminals and seeing people actually play them was more funny to me for some reason. We took a cab to our hotel, Harrah's and started the some what longish process of checking in. Our room wouldn't be ready until the afternoon so we put our luggage in my grandparent's room and then met my parents out on the strip to do some sight seeing.

Our first of many dorky pictures in Las Vegas.

Of course we had to give the creepy wax Johnny a kiss.

We didn't actually go in to Madame Tussaudes but they had a few figures on display outside and they were definitely creepily realistic.

     That evening we all met up for dinner in celebration of my Far-Far's 90th birthday. It was also his wife, my grandma's birthday that day! Our waiter was super charismatic and sweet and kept bringing complimentary glasses of wine in honor of their birthdays which I ended up drinking.

It's a little out of focus and crooked but I think this is the only time we ever got together as a group for a photo.

Dad is always the last one at the table. 

     That evening we did more walking up the north part of the strip. It's quite amazing some of the architecture and just the things to see inside of the hotels. Like canals flowing throughout, fake skies that make you believe it's day light and/or night time.. etc.

Inside the Venetian, probably one of my favorite hotels we walked through.

    We were disappointed that Treasure Island had drained their pirate ship bay out front and didn't have the show going. But we were able to see the Volcano show in front of the Mirage (and then hear it every half an hour from our hotel room that night).

I feel like you can see how much Nikki and I look alike simply by our identical and spontaneous expressions.

Photo prepping.

I also took lots of video footage throughout this trip which I can't wait to mess around with. The only thing is that I am extremely inexperienced in video editing so if anyone has any tips/programs to recommend (that don't cost a fortune) I would greatly appreciate that! Day two will be up soon.

Aerial

     I've finally begun to go through all my trip photos. The plane ride to Las Vegas was absolutely gorgeous. Seeing the veins of the earth from above was so raw and organic. I decided to dedicate an entire post to just aerial photos.