Football in Vegas

This past year in the Arena League off season a new team came into the picture....the Las Vegas Outlaws.  The team was rumored for awhile because it had a major player in ownership. Vince Neil.  Yeah, the one from Motley Crue.

Over the off season the team became official and the decision to make a road trip there to see C's team play them was made.  I was excited to see exactly how they did things, knowing that the previous years new team, the LA KISS, owned by Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons of KISS, went pretty far over the top during games.  Girls dancing in cages above the field, rock star hair band half time shows, electric guitar National Anthems, you know, the usual family football fare.

Well, C's second game of the season, and first road game, happened to be against Las Vegas.  My momma and I packed our bags and headed out on a Friday afternoon about 2 weeks ago.  Yeah, a Las Vegas road trip at 33 weeks pregnant.  Totally normal! Also, I was a terrible blogger and took minimal pictures....so sorry about that!

Normally, the drive there is about 4.5 hours which is quite do-able.  Unfortunately, there was a huge accident the day we left that closed down both directions of the two lane highway that is the one major road to Las Vegas.  What a bummer.  Reports said the roads were going to be closed for about 4 hours, so we had to make the decision to take another route, which added about an hour and a half to our travel time.

We cut it waaayyyy to close on an empty gas tank which made for an interesting portion of the ride.  Us girls just got to talking and totally spaced it!  We finally made it into the city around 8pm.  We checked into our hotel, the Westgate Resort (previously the Las Vegas hotel) and grabbed some dinner with C. I couldn't hang much later so we headed off to bed for the night.

The next day we ate at the hotel, said hi to C before his meetings and headed out to shop. First stop?  The Coach outlets of course! For lunch we went to one of my favorite places, the Grand Luxe Cafe.  They closed the one in AZ, so I always go there when in Las Vegas.  My mom didn't quite understand how amazing their dessert, beignets, really are.  That was until she tried them.  She was in heaven too!

After a big lunch we headed back to the hotel to rest before the game, which I am so glad we did.  We headed to the game pretty early so we could watch C and the team do their warmups around 5:15.  Too bad they don't actually open the doors to the arena until 6pm! Oops. We stood outside chatting with other fans until they let us in.

The game was not nearly as exciting as I thought it would be.  Part of that was that we lost (womp, womp) and were down almost the entire game.  The other part though, was I was hoping for a crazy fun experience like the LA KISS team had provided last year and it wasn't that at all.  Their dancers weren't very good (and their uniforms were soooo boring), the arena wasn't set up for football at all (there was no score board telling us the downs or what yard line we were on....which is important in football), the music was pretty muffled and nothing really just felt exciting in general.  I guess the most exciting moment of the show was that a stripper sang the National Anthem. Just kidding. Thats not exciting, that's terrible.

The only photo I got during the game, go #6!

 After the game we headed out with the team to Gordon Biersch for some grub.  Half the team didn't even come though, they were too dejected over the loss.  Everyone thought this was an easy win...that's what happens when you get complacent. The bummer is, C's team will forever go down in history as the first team the Las Vegas team EVER beat!  Oops!

The next day, the boys left really early.  I'm talking 6am.  Never fun after a late night in Vegas!  Mom and I took our sweet time getting up and getting out of town.  We stopped for coffee, gambled at my favorite casino, the Cosmopolitan, saw a show at my happy place (the Bellagio water fountains) and then grabbed some lunch before hitting the road.

Not gonna lie, I think this was an accidental photo, but its the only one I've got!

All in all it was a good trip. The only thing that would have made it better would have been a win!

Now, a lot of people ask me if I go to all of C's road games and that would be an emphatic no!  That would just be too pricey.  The first two years, the only away games I went to was the Arena Bowl each year.  Last year, I went to LA and Portland (near where my brother lives....also the trip we ended up getting engaged on!). This year, I just plan on doing one or two more trips to LA.  The second one will be about a month and a half after Noah is born, so it depends on how he handles car rides!