Our Anniversary AKA New Year's eve AKA My Penguin encounter

The Man has been teasing me for a week that we had an appointment at 1:00 on our anniversay (which just so happens to also be today, New Year's eve) and that it would take about an hour.  And I, for the life of me, couldn't think what it could possibly be.  Couples massage?
At 12:40 we got in the car and he started driving.  We chit chatted and just generally enjoyed being together when he pulled into the Living Planet Aquarium...
I almost cried.  There would only be one reason for him to take me there.
I have been in love with, and even slightly, okay maybe more than slightly, obsessed with penguins since the age of 15.  Should I date myself and tell you that this means I have loved them for 17 years?  That's over half my lifetime already.
And it has been my dream for the past 17 years to someday be up close and personal with a real live penguin.  The chest high blow up penguin I have hidden under our bed hardly counts.
The aquarium has gento penguins.  Gento penguins are easily frightened and have huge personal space issues, so we weren't allowed to touch them, but we got to sit in the room with them for an hour.  And they still interacted with us.  Yeah, this was SO much better than a couples massage!

Every penguin that wandered in was fascinated with the fray on West's jeans. 

And the tab on the back of his shoe.  This penguin, Ghost Rider, is the black sheep of their penguin family there. (Every family has one).  He wasn't afraid of anything.  After he was done chewing on West's shoe, it went for the underneath of his leg, and kept on going until he bit West's leg.  West tried really hard to hold still, but it kept biting harder and harder until he finally yanked his leg up.  The penguin ended up hanging from his jeans because he wouldn't let go! Brian, the penguin guy, finally had to shew Ghost Rider away. I SO wish I had gotten it on video.

 In this video Ghost Rider hates the squeegie that they use on the floor.  He knew that the squeegie was kept behind the door, so he kept "an eye on it".  He'd keep going back to the door and burrying his beak  there and just watching the squeegie.

At one point Ghost Rider was hiding underneath the bench, I have to admit, after what he'd done to West, I was a little nervous to have him out of sight and underneath me.

These two penguins are one of the two established mated couples at the aquarium.  We got to see them bow to each other which is a courtship move and then they stood and "held hands", which with the personal space issues that they have, is as much contact they'll stand, and they only stand it with their mated partner.  I have another video here that shows them "fighting" with each other, because one of them got too close, but they don't actually touch other because that would be getting too close.

I love my man for making this dream come true for me.  Love him.  I can't even express it enough.  That he cares that much about me to want to do this for me. Dreams do come true.  Even if it means almost feeding your man to a penguin.
The aquarium is building a bigger center, and they're going to expand in their penguin center.  My favorite type of penguin is a rock hopper penguin.  Guess what they're going to be getting? I can't wait!
You can also check out the aquarium's website and watch the penguins live here.

Every year we're going to take a picture on our anniversary, holding the picture that we took the year before.  It's going to be fun to see how we change year to year, and to have the depth of pictures grow in each one.

New Year's Eve in Sin City or Happy 1st Wedding Anniversary to us

Well... what do you do to celebrate your first anniversary because you never had a wedding (yet) but it's not only month end at work, but year end too so I can't even have the whole day of New Year's eve to go somewhere to celebrate? (Like a BEACH). Well... for two people who hate being cold, and for the fact that it is solidly in the middle of winter, our options for driving somewhere were extremely limited. So we did the only thing we could do... drive south to Vegas. Neither of us gamble but we booked a show and left for a weekend away.

We saw fireworks going off from five of the seven casino tops. I love fireworks! We walked the entire strip (in heels, never again) and now know, if we ever hit Vegas for New Year's eve again we know what are game plan will be, and it won't be walking the entire strip.

The next day we played tourist. We checked out the aquarium at the Mandalay Bay Casino: And checked out the pawn shop from the History channel's "Pawn Stars". I felt so incredibly star struck just by being at that tiny little pawn shop. Pathetic on all sorts of levels but it didn't stop me from taking a picture of myself trying to look tough like they do in the opening of the show ;p I think I need to work on my tough guy look... Drive thru weddings??? Do you want fries with that? We checked out Jimmy Buffet's Margaritaville for lunch (hello amazing nachos!).

I seriously think the funnest part of our weekend was chilling at the Rio waiting for the Penn and Teller show to start. We found a little bar nitch and got to play chess on a touch screen table. I want one of those! Even if West did keep beating me...What's better than taking a picture of the Penn and Teller light up poster?
How about taking a picture with Penn himself? He made fun of me for dropping my coat on the floor (hello, I didn't want it in the picture!) and was super nice. I'm 5'9" and was wearing 5 inch heels... I STILL only go up to his chin! That dude is TALL!
And I would highly recommend the show. Loved it. It was mind blowing!

And our last stop of the trip the next morning before heading to St. George to collect the circus from Grandpa and Grandma's... was back to the pawn shop. It had a line down the block the first time we went so we didn't go inside... but wait for first thing Sunday morning and... you get to walk right in, no lines :). And look! We saw this episode:
A huge thanks to the parentals for watching all the circus over New Year's eve for us. Jay got her guitar for her birthday and Brynn got one from her dad for Christmas, so Grandpa was showing them a thing or two.
Happy anniversary to my man. I didn't believe in soul mates... until him.