[AOX81]

I completely forgot to post the details of my trip. Here is a the story of our trip written by one of my friends...

Wednesday
Waiting for us when we arrived was Mike and Amy, since their flight arrived about 45 minutes before ours. The four of us jumped in a cab and headed around the corner to the Tropicana, our home for the next four nights. After dropping our bags in the room, we headed out to find a bite to eat. We also got together with Patrick's friends from MN (Corey, Ellie, Mike, and Kerry). After scarfing down a couple of tacos from a nearby food court, we headed down the strip. We stopped at a couple casinos along the way, but ended up gambling most of the time at the Aladdin. The ladies had some luck on the nickel slots and brought home a little extra cash. After a little while, we started winding down, so we headed back to the Tropicana. After a little gambling there, Jessi and I decided to crash around 4am PST (since it'd been about 25 hours since we last slept).

Thursday
We pretty much tooled around town gambling and seeing a few sites in the morning. By the early afternoon, we were starting to gather up the troops to start the bachelor & bachelorette festivities. Of course, I'm not going to go into detail, but I can say a couple things. The men skipped dinner and stuck with the liquid diet, and my cell phone came up missing 3/4 of the way through the night. I've got a really good theory on how it disappeared, but you'll have to email me for that story. :-) Side Note: Jen & Dan caught up with us that night, since they couldn't catch a plane until Thursday night. Anyway, the men stumbled into our rooms around 5am PST. I don't remember going to sleep that night, but I did find about $100 in winnings in my pocket the next day...

Friday
The lack of sleep is starting to catch up with us. We slept in quite a bit, but we were still able to gamble a little "in house" before we had to head to rehearsal dinner. Rehearsal dinner was held at the Rainforest Cafe inside of the MGM Grand. We had a great time. After dinner, we went back to the hotel, changed and jumped into a cab. We had the cabbie take us to Fremont St. That was pretty cool, since that was my first Fremont St experience. After watching the overhead lights, we headed over to the Stratosphere. After a little bit of cranky arguing (see first sentence of this paragraph), we went up to the observation deck. Amy, Courtney and Dan decided to ride the Big Shot, and Amy convinced Dan to ride the super scary X Scream. I'll ride just about anything, but that X Scream is NOT on that list! After those thrills, we had our photo taken together as a group. Oh My GOD! Snarf's (Jessi's nickname for the trip) body is missing! She was wearing a green sweater when we stood in front of the green screen. :-)

Saturday
Since all of the girls were in the wedding (besides Jessi), Dan, Jessi & I walked down the strip checking out some of the older casinos like O'Shea's, Harrah's, the Flamingo, and others. After A LOT of walking, we went back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding. On the way to the wedding, we passed Wayne Newton's pad Shenandoah. The wedding was beautiful, and we had a boogied down on the dance floor after dinner. When the reception wrapped up, 27 of us jumped into an Excursion limo and drove around town for a bit. It was a BLAST! After pimpin' around for a while, we were dropped off at the Tropicana to slightly change and get back out to party. We all met back at the MGM stage area/bar for quite a few drinks. The lucky couple (Susan & Patrick) were welcomed on stage and were sung to by the entertainer while they slow danced in front of the huge crowd. We hung out for a while, and then the girls noticed that Kiefer Sutherland was sitting about 10 feet from where we were hanging out. So, the newly married couple and Jessi, Jen & Courtney got their photo taken with him. Pretty cool huh!?! After that, we headed to an Irish pub to switch up the scene and to have some more drinks. We were also there to celebrate Patrick's birthday (actually Sunday). After a while, we all went back to the hotel to get comfortable and head back out to do some gambling "in house".

This is where we went our separate ways...

Sunday
We packed up and headed home to Cleveland.

Sunday (for the rest of the group heading back to Detroit)
We packed up the room, checked our bags, and went to get some McDonald's before we caught our flight. After eating, we went to the airport and waited about 40 minutes to get past the security check (roughly a frickin' million people were there). We boarded the plane with Pizza Hut in hand. The captain came on the loudspeaker and notified us that the flight would only be a little over 3 hours. Thank you tail wind! While kickin' back in our "comfy" seat next to the engine (loud as hell), a middle aged woman was walking down the aisle. She was pale as a ghost and by the time she made it back near us, she started to lose her balance and she stumbled and passed out onto the floor. Luckily, a EMT was sitting a row or two up, and he jumped up and took care of her. The verdict: the woman hadn't eaten in over 24 hours and her blood sugar was so low, she passed out. Nice huh. Anyway, they took good care of her and comped the flight for the EMT for helping out. We arrived at DTW at 8pm. Russ (Rob's mom's new husband) picked us up and took us back to get our car. We were home in Flint around 10pm and were in bed around 11pm.