Viva Las Vegas!!!

As many of you know (if not all, because I'm not shy about it) I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE the FRAY...they are totally my favorite band. So, at the begining of the year my best friend and I decided to go see them on tour this summer. At first we were going to go see them in SLC, but then decided to make a road trip out of it and go to Vegas the night before they played here. So, we've had these plans since like my birthday (which was in February) and I have been anxiously awaiting the trip.
So, after working about 45 hours in about 3 days (it really wasn't fun) I was finally off for the weekend!!!

We left on Friday morning and got to Vegas in the mid afternoon. It was so hot there, I thought I was going to die! Good thing I left Cecil at home and we took Fort's car!

The concert was AMAZINGLY AWESOME!!!! We were less than 20 feet from the stage!!! It was so great!! I knew who all three bands were, which was awesome. A group called Meese opened for them, and they are really good...they recently were one of itunes "free downloads of the week" and I absolutely LOVE their new CD...so good...you should check them out! We all were trying to figure out how to zoom in better on our cameras and didn't really get it down until half way through Jack's Mannequin...so all our pictures of Meese are kinda crappy....sorry!!

And then Jack's Mannequin performed and I have been a fan of theirs since they were on OTH a few seasons ago with a song called "The Mixed Tape"...LOVE IT!!! The lead singer of the band, Andrew McMahon, was diagnosed with leukemia a few years ago and the band hasn't toured in about 3 years or so...So this was an amazing show because he's finally healthy enough to go back out and tour! He is CRAZY...in the slide show I have added there is a picture of him standing on the keys of his baby grand piano, he then started stomping on the keys!!! We thought for sure he would break it! He was all over the stage, but it made for a highly entertaining concert!!

And then my favorite part of the night, the FRAY performed!!!! It was awesome!!! I took some awesome pictures, which are all on the slideshow below! They are not only awesome to listen to live, but really down to earth guys that are pretty funny. The lead guitarist, Joe King, was performing the song "Happiness" and was talking before he sang. They performed at the Palms in Vegas which is the Playboy hotel (if you didn't know that...I didn't know that until we got there...but I've also never been to Vegas either...) and he began his story with "I know we're a band and like touring but they gave us each our own suite...is that really necissary?" and then he talked about going into his suite that had like 3 bathrooms and 2 showers, and one of them had 5 shower heads. "Why would you need 5 shower heads?" he asked after that and then said that the suite was probably bigger than his entire house...it was pretty funny. But yeah, the show was awesome. They performed "Heartless", which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was just an awesome show!

The next day, Saturday, we got up and jumped in the pool which was so much fun, except after about 20 minutes we decided that we really should get some sun screen, so we went to Walmart really quick and got some, but my shoulders still got nice and toasty red. They are still burned...I am not a fan! But, they could be SOO much worse...imagine if I hadn't put any on at all! That would have been horrible!
It was awesome because that night I got to go to dinner with a sister from my mission! She's from Vegas so she picked me up and we went to dinner. It was great to catch up and talk about the mission. I actually don't talk to a ton of people from my mission these days. Not that I don't like to, I just am horrible at keeping in touch with people.
After dinner, we went down to the strip...yeah, it was interesting and an adventure for sure...I don't necissarily think I ever need to go back to the strip again. You can't look up, down, or really any direction without seeing some scantily clothed woman or have someone trying to give you a "lovely" card for a prostitute. GROSS. I am not a fan. They call it sin city for a reason, that's for sure. The funny thing is that there was a religous group protesting in front of the Bellagio hotel...you know, like the ones up at General Conference or any large mormon gathering. They were holding signs that said "Trust Jesus" and they were condeming everyone to Hell for being in Vegas. Those people make me laugh, and also think. Everytime I have a run in with them it makes me think about my own religion and were I stand with my Heavenly Father, which generally leads to some good heartfelt prayers. It was interesting.
But yeah, that's pretty much my trip in a nutshell! Sorry it was kinda long!! Hope you enjoyed!!