Merry Christmas!

As some of you know, I have to work on Christmas from 11-7, although I did have today (Christmas Eve) off, which was nice. David and I went to church today and our ward had a nice Christmas sacrament meeting with several speakers who told stories about their favorite Christmas memories. David and I were able to have a nice dinner together, which doesn't happen that much since I usually work until 9pm every night. David's brother Michael was here on Friday night and we went and saw the Christmas lights at the cactus garden by our house-there were a lot of lights. I forgot to bring my camera with me though, unfortunately. I did take a picture of our simple little Christmas tree though. Even though David didn't really want a tree I insisted that we get one, so I got a real one at a tree lot. I didn't have any ornaments, but I just bought some lights for it and made a little star to go on top. So it's a very simple tree but I like it. It's nice to have the pine tree smell too.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Christmas and gets everything they wanted! :)

New car

Ok, so we've actually had the car for about 3 weeks now, but I've been bad about doing regular posts. Anyway, we bought a new car after David sold his old car to his sister. It's a 2003 Toyota Corolla and we were able to get it for a pretty good deal. And when you buy a car from a private owner in Nevada, you don't have to pay taxes on it, so that was nice. I've been liking the keyless entry because I've never had a car before that has had that. Here are a couple of pictures of it (the guy we bought it from took these).

New job adventures

I started working in the new spa at Caesar's Palace last week. It officially opened to the public on Tuesday the 14th. It's been kinda crazy and there have been quite a few kinks to smooth out-everyone's still learning all the new things and how everything is going to work. The spa is very pretty and big. It's 50,000 square feet and has 51 treatment rooms, not including the other parts of the spa like the sauna, roman baths, steam room, etc. I got the closing shift since I was the last one hired and I'm at the bottom of the totem pole. I've been staying about 30 min later than my scheduled shift every night though, because there's been so much to do and I'm the only one there (for the women's side) to close. I think they are trying to hire more people though, so hopefully that and some other things will get better with time.
One thing that I like is that my hour lunch break is paid and they also have an employee dining room which is like a smallish buffet and the food there is all free for employees. I still need to find out about what sort of perks or discounts I get in the spa so I can start pampering myself a little bit occasionally. Someone said they thought we could get a free massage or spa treatment every so often, so I'll have to check on that.

Yay friends!

We had the pleasure of having our friends Nate Lowe and Dadoo and Mandy come to visit us last weekend. It was good to see them and we had fun watching Lowe gamble and lose hundreds of dollars (he did win most of it back though I think). On Friday night we went to the MGM buffet for dinner and it was very good. After dinner, Lowe wanted to gamble at the Stratosphere.
On Saturday we had a lovely breakfast and then went to Green Valley Ranch which is a hotel/casino that is off the strip and closer to our apartment. Mandy and I took a little tour of their spa, which was really nice. We went to downtown Las Vegas on Saturday night and ate at the Main Street Station's buffet and then went to Fremont Street to see the light show there. We saw a few interesting things while we were there also-there was a man who was extremely inebriated, and his friend (who was also a bit intoxicated) decided to carry him and proceeded to throw him across his back. They didn't make it very far though-they tumbled to the ground a couple minutes later. Ah, the joys of Vegas......

Some good news and Lake Las Vegas

I just found out that I got the job at Caesar's Palace! I will be working in their brand new spa that is opening in a few weeks. I'm pretty excited because I'll have the opportunity to (eventually) be trained on a lot of new treatments while I work there. It should be fun. I'll be starting my orientation and training soon.
On Saturday, we went with some friends who were visiting to an arts festival at the Lake Las Vegas resort. We had never been there before, but it is really pretty. They have a bunch of shops outside and it feels like you're in an Italian village. They also have a big man-made lake where they have gondola rides, etc. Here are some pictures....

Bellaggio exhibit and fountains

A couple of weeks ago we went to the Bellaggio to see the fountains and the exhibit they had in the conservatory. In the exhibit, they had small scale buildings, etc. done in great detail using only natural plant material. I thought some of them were really neat, so I took some pictures.

The Bellaggio

Capitol Building

Rapunzel's Tower

Westminster Abey

Lincoln Memorial

More apartment pictures

Well, we got our kitchen table and chairs put together last weekend (with the help of David's dad) and we also went couch shopping while David's parents were visiting. The couch that we bought just got delivered today, so I took a couple pictures of our living room and dining room now that they are presentable. I still have some boxes I have to unpack and go through-for some reason I have about 3 times as much stuff as David does. I also need to hang up more pictures, which seems like a daunting task. I have a couple of interviews on Tuesday for spa and massage positions at Caesar's Palace and Bally's, so hopefully those will go well and I will be employed soon.

More wedding photos

Here is another photo album I just made of all the candid photos I have from the wedding that weren't taken by the photographer.

http://picasaweb.google.com/schmelode/CandidWeddingPhotos?authkey=XLYHMb09GoM

Wedding pictures

Here is a link to our wedding and reception pictures for those of you who have not seen them yet.
http://picasaweb.google.com/schmelode/DavidAndMelodyWeddingPictures?authkey=4CEzzEDiyFs

Pictures of our apartment

Here are some pictures of our apartment. I didn't take one of the living room because I want to wait until we have a couch and it looks a little nicer, but these kinda give you an idea.


Kitchen

computer office/guest room

Bathroom

Updates

The pest control guy came on Monday to take care of our little "friends". Apparently we also had a little bit of a cricket colony living in the walls of our patio. So, since Monday we've had quite a number of additions to the roach and cricket graveyard outside. Today, I had the wonderful task of sweeping them all out of our outside closets and the patio-maybe I should have taken a picture before I swept them out to show how many there were, but that would have been gross. No more roaches in the house though, and the black widow is dead, so I'm happy about that. Our dishwasher is working properly now thanks to a replaced part, and we have a microwave. Now we just need a couch and to get enough motivation to finish putting together our dining table and chairs. So far I put together one chair, but it's fairly wobbly so I'm afraid to do more in case they all turn out crooked.

The move to Nevada

Well, with the current trend in blogging recently, I thought I'd try my hand at it and let you all know what's been going on with David and I recently. As most of you know, we moved to Henderson, Nevada on Monday the 21st. Needless to say, it's not very much fun moving and unloading boxes in 105 degree heat. We've had a couple little problems with the apartment like one of the toilets not flushing correctly and the brand new dishwasher not working properly(Sears is supposed to come fix it on Monday). I've encountered a lot of new bugs that I'm not used to. There is a black widow spider currently living in our outside storage closet (but they only spray for bugs on mondays, so we're waiting on that), and many lovely cockroaches and crickets all over outside. We had a couple of roaches in the apartment that caused some freaking out, but we bought some raid spray that we sprayed all around the doors and windows and that seems to be doing the trick. All in all though, the apartment is very nice. It is a condo conversion so it has brand new everything-paint, carpet, granite countertops, light fixtures, stainless steel appliances, etc. We finally got our cable modem in the mail today, so we now have internet (it was hard being without it for a few days). I've also realized my dependence on having a microwave-we still need to get one because they didn't have one included in the unit. Anyway, I will try to post some pictures of the apartment once it's a little more organized.