Vegas baby....

I just got back from a week in Vegas for the PPAI show. It's a Promotional Products trade show that I attend every year with my husband. I play the "Sherpa" and carry around the samples while offering up my "opinion" of the latest and greatest his customers may want. He's been in the business for over 20 years and tends to have blinders on when it comes to new products or ideas. I tend to be the "think-outside-the-box" girl and help with that. Well, I guess I was successful because today was his first day back at work, he brought an idea I had to one of his clients and they loved it. Makes for a successful trip! :)

We went to see the Jersey Boys at the Palazzo Hotel/Casino. What a GREAT show!! We went because we'd seen the show in San Francisco and met Erich Bergen (Bob Gaudio - the "genius" behind the Four Seasons success). Erich recently got hired to be in the Las Vegas tour of the show. Erich's Dad works with my husband in the promotional products industry. Anyway, we had 3rd row seats and the show was terrific!!! Even better, Deven May (also in the SF cast as Tommy) is now in the Las Vegas cast as well. Highly recommend the show!

Turtles too!

The day we went kayaking and saw the seal, we also saw some beautiful Hawaiian sea turtles. They're so peaceful in their environment. We spent about 45 minutes with them after kayaking out to their "cleaning station". These pictures were taken with a disposable underwater camera. Not too bad!

We just got our underwater pictures developed so I thought I'd add the couple that JT took of our seal friend as well. The first picture he was 'head on'. Incredible huh?
This second picture shows him and his fascination with the anchor used to keep the kayaks in place. Our guide Deja could only think it was because she had used a bit of coconut oil on herself earlier and may have had a bit on her hands when she threw the anchor overboard. Either way, it was such fun watching him play with the anchor for as long as he did!

More of Hawaii....

Hawaiian sunset on our last day...why am I smiling??

A little recap of our trip: Christmas Day we took a brunch cruise around Lahaina bay with Pacific Whale Foundation. As the name suggests, we were expecting to see whales. We didn't. What we DID see were hundreds of spinner dolphins! They were so cool to watch jumping in the air and spinning around. Here's a link to my photostream on Flickr. There's our Maui pics and some pics from a HDI outting to Colorado Springs.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/24473755@N07/

For JT's birthday (Dec 26th) we went snorkeling from Big Beach south of Makena on Maui. We saw several Humpback whales from shore (the pics are too small to publish here) and he tried his hand at bodysurfing. Pretty funny. At least he can now say he went to the beach on his birthday.

One of the other things we did was take the drive to Hana. The road was very windy (600+ turns) and beautiful old single file bridges (55+) and overall a beautiful wet drive. This first pic is one of the beautiful pools we saw along the way. Note: ALL of the pools along the way were noted "no trespassing" and/or were blocked from access.
This next picture is of black sand beach at Wai'anapanapa park. Beautiful beach and the next picture is of the really cool cave you can climb through.

This last picture is of the 7 sacred pools (aka O'heo Gulch). We weren't allowed to swim here either! (UGH). There were park rangers (it's in Haleakala National Park) and barbed wire keeping you away.
Mahalo for reading!