Vegas, Baby

Josh and I left for our weekend trip on Thursday afternoon. We stayed overnight with Alyse, Charles and Ella in Des Moines. Thanks, Anliker family!

We got up at 4 am to head for the airport since our flight left at 6:20 am. We got through security without too many problems. Our flight from Des Moines to Minneapolis encountered quite a bit of turbulence. Not a good thing! But I'm glad we were only on that plane for about an hour. It was so tiny.

We got to Minneapolis and switched planes to head for Vegas. The flight had a lot of Minnesota and Wisconsin Schwan's people on it so we got to meet a few people before we even got to the event. We got to Las Vegas and Schwan's had a shuttle waiting to take everyone to the hotel.

We stayed at the Wynn. Our room was really nice. We're just glad Schwan's picked up the tab for that! We knew it was fancy when we saw the signs on the mini-bar.



We didn't have any free time before the meeting on Friday afternoon. It was the "business" part of the weekend. They had some corporates speakers: blah, blah, blah. We had a couple hours before the Friday night banquet so we just looked around the hotel a bit.

Friday night was an awards banquet broken down into each region. Each driver was introduced and given a plaque. Not much different than the banquets we have been to in the past. They broke it down into regions because there was a 567 drivers nationwide that were in the top sales level and went on this trip. Plus their guests and the people from corporate. They estimated about 1,300 Schwan's people at this event.


Josh is in the top 567 drivers in the nation!!! I am so proud of him.


The event Friday night was over about 10 pm so we went out to see the sights a little. It was raining Friday night so I didn't take my camera out.


These pictures are of the view from our room:

We got up about 8:30 Saturday morning and headed out to sight-see. We ate breakfast at Treasure Island since our hotel only offered Champagne Breakfast and it was $40 per person.

These are pictures of the pirate ships at Treasure Island...the only things Paige wanted to see pictures of.

We just walked up and down the strip...the outsides of the buildings were far more interesting than the insides.

Caesar's Palace

The Mirage

Margaritaville

You have to have a margarita at Margaritaville

Paris Las Vegas: The Eiffel Tower and views from the top of it.

We're definitely not in Iowa anymore....outside escalators, palm trees, orange trees and people swimming outside in January. It was 68 degrees on Saturday afternoon. My spring fever is gonna come early this year!

We had to be back to the hotel by 3 to get ready for the evening celebration. We had a "Celebration Dinner"scheduled but had no idea what that would consist of. We had supper and then a little presentation including a speech by Alfred Schwan.

The fog "door" leading into the banquet hall.

Where's the cheeseburgers?


Doug Schiltz, Josh and Jeff Loken. The only 3 drivers from Humboldt Depot that made Chairman's Club. Doesn't Josh look handsome in his suit?

Josh and Alfred Schwan

See what happens when I try to take a nice picture? Goofball!!
After the dinner they had a huge party with a band that included some celebrities: We saw Donna Summer, Tom Jones, Elvis and Tina Turner but I missed getting pictures of them. I did get....

The Blues Brothers

Michael Jackson

Cher

Madonna

Ok, so they were celebrity impersonators...but it was still fun!

It's time to go home when the feather boas and glow sticks come out!

We ended up getting to bed about 2 am on Sunday morning and had to get up at 4 am to catch our flight home. You know you've been to Vegas when you got 7 hours of sleep in 3 days!

Views from the flight home:

We're so tired we can hardly open our eyes!

You know you're back in the midwest when you can see nothing but patches of farmland!

We are really glad we got to go...but are not in a big hurry to do it again anytime soon.