"What DIDN'T you eat?!?!?"

Yikes!! I just finished uploading all of the pictures I took from Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, and being the novice blogger that I am, it took me FOREVER. Plus I am still trying to figure out how to upload them in the correct order, and after moving them all around by hand, I am out of energy so the captions will be short :)

First, here is the view from the Monte Carlo pool!! The pool there was awesome - there was a regular pool (which was actually pretty deep considering many Vegas pools are like 2' deep kiddie pools, I suspect to keep the drunken fools from drowning?), an outdoor hot tub, a lazy river, and a wave pool. We spent lots of time here!Sunday morning, while Mike and his parents hit the casino, I hit the hotel gym. As I mentioned before, it's a bit of a ripoff that they make you pay EXTRA to use their gym after you drop so much money at their hotel and into their slot machines - but I knew that I wanted to get a couple workouts in, so I sucked it up. They had a 2 for 1 special going on, so I paid for Sunday and got to go on Monday for free.

I did 40 mins on the reclining bike, 20 on the elliptical, crunches, and some of the weight machines. Then I met up with Mike and his parents, who said that they weren't hungry for a huge buffet breakfast yet, so I muched on the snacks I had brought - I LOVE Clif Mojo bars!!! They truly are the best combo of sweet and salty AND chocolately... yum yum!However....... immediately after I had finished my breakfast (plus a Starbucks coffee with a soy top-off, not pictured), they decided they WERE hungry after all!! Thankfully I can always stuff my face, even when I am not hungry, so this wasn't a problem for me one bit :-)

I enjoyed the make-your-own-omelette station (egg whites with lots of veggies and cheese) and also had some fabulous PRE-opened crab legs. It was the Father's Day brunch, so there was lots of extra-good stuff today, plus unlimited champagne, which I loved SO much (and had so many glasses of!) that I forgot to get a pic!

Dessert was a ton of french toast, and the insides of two chocolate croissants that I picked apart. Mike and I at the pool.... With Mike and my in-laws drinking our humongous drinks poolside - the pila colada was fabulous except that it only took me about 30 seconds to down it!!

After Mike and his dad won bushels of $$$$ (I had two coffees with Bailey's during this time), it was already way past dinner time so we took a walk down the strip and finally settled at Paris for their late-night buffet.

It was dark in there and my flash is broken, but there is a lot of cheese, potatoes, seafood, vegetarian dolmades (Greek stuffed grape leaves), quiche, etc! Sushi and cheesey spinach tortellini, which I later got more of..... Along with stocking up on CHEESE... the blue cheese and dill havarti were excellent!!! Dessert was some type of blueberry torte thing, and a homemade crepe filled with chocolate sauce. It would have been 1000x better if it was filled with Nutella, but obviously I am not complaining about a gooey, warm, chocolate crepe ;)*****************************************************************

MONDAY:

This morning I started off the day right by getting a great run in!!! It is obviously WAY too hot to run outside in Vegas, plus you would demolish about 100 tourists per second on the crowded city sidewalks, so I knew that I had to suck it up and do a treadmill run even though I usually prefer to run outside.

I ran 4 miles on the treadmill and then did another 20 minutes of cardio on the elliptical. I followed that up with some crunches and then sat in the sauna for about 10 minutes while I chatted with my grandpa on the phone. (My grandma moved from the hospital to a nursing home today and is doing much better!)

Buffet: another delish omelette, some hash browns, and some smoked salmon. I've always loved salmon but the smoked stuff looked kinda yucky to me and very raw, sushi-esque - but it IS cooked and don't be scared, it's quite tasty!! Especialy with a squeeze of lemon and some capers on top! Seconds of salmon, plus some dessert...
And MORE dessert (I think I shocked my father-in-law by finishing the entire plate of this!!) Posing by the Paris fountains later that night
Posing on an *outdoor escalator* - one of my favorite parts of Vegas! :) So fun - why don't we have these in Chicago?!? The LaMonica crew had their heart set on hamburgers ALL night, and after walking for what felt like hours, we finally found Stripburger, which worked out well so we were able to eat outside. I had a HUGE helping of these sweet potato fries which I loved .... and a homemade veggie burger with avocado and cheese. I did pick off the top bun though - it detracted from the other great flavors! **************************************************************

TUESDAY:

Breakfast/lunch (depends on whether you consider me on Vegas or Chicago time) was a flatbread sandwich with lots of veggies, guac, and some pesto. It was great - and I had what you see in the picture, times 2

My MIL bought some See's fudge and this is my portion - it was phenomenal and I wanted more!!She also bought some chocolate covered peanuts that we enjoyed on the plane. I had about 1/2 of this bag.

Back in Illinois, here is some of Yaya's spanakopita (Greek spinach and feta pie).... and though I swore up and down that I wasn't the least bit hungry, somehow after eating this piece I also ate about 6 Greek cookies!! (not pictured) Once Mike and I got back to our condo, I was pleased to find that the package I had secretly ordered for him had arrived....
My husband LOVES HIS COOKIE DOUGH!! So once I saw this pictured on My Summerizations blog, I knew I had to get him some ASAP. We were both disappointed to find that it did not contain any actual cookie dough chunks (just had a chocolately flavor), but it was still quite superb!

Later last night I also made myself a quesadilla with goat cheese, basil, and salsa, and for dessert.... completely caved and had a huge bowl of walnuts and chocolate chips. Yes, it is ok to induge in stuff like this once and a while, but due to the fact that I had been gorging ALL week it was not a good idea and I felt pretty ill afterward. I guess I have to train my body to eat like a normal person again!

And that concludes my weekend in Vegas!!! Now it's time to get back to my normal life (and eating less than 10,000 calories a day) ;)