Losing Money, Gaining Weight

These two things are easy to do in Las Vegas!  Lurking around every corner are numerous ways to lose money.  The only way to enjoy being in Las Vegas is set a strict budget ahead of time and stick to it.  If you want to gamble a little, decide ahead of time how much you are able to lose, then quit when you reach that limit.  Then it's like spending money on a movie or a day at Disneyland and you don't get into trouble.  The problem with Vegas however is that if you don't find other things to do, the temptations of the casino, especially the slot machines, are ever present.  So we decided that we'd spend one afternoon seeing a film.  The Descendants was showing at a hotel complex a short walk from our hotel so we ventured down there.  We were alone in the theater for a very long time and in the end, only about 5 other people joined us!  It was nice to watch a film with no one sitting in front of us while being able to rest our feet on the seat back in front of us!  The Descendants is a beautiful film, a real tear-jerker, and we all loved this wonderful film.
The other thing that is easy to do in Las Vegas is over eat!  You can spend a lot of money on food in Vegas but you can also get really good deals. We had stumbled on a Travel Zoo deal that offered a 4 course meal with a glass of wine for $30.00 a person in a lovely restaurant that was about a 15 minute drive from downtown.  What a meal we enjoyed!  The food was beautiful and abundant.  Our appetizers were meal size and we were all very happy with our choices: Flat bread covered in roasted chicken, melted cheese and caramelized onions for me, mini-hamburger sliders for my dad, mini-sloppy joe sliders for Doug and a huge plate of calamari for my mom!  Salads and main dishes followed and three of us had enormous steaks while my dad worked through a huge plate of shrimp scampi and pasta!  My mom's filet was the size of a softball and our ribeye steaks were melt in your mouth perfect.  At this point we were all stuffed to the gills but dessert awaited us!  This course was a total train wreck!  Classically American in their size and calorie count, we could not believe what the waiter set down before us!  Doug had the only civil dessert of the bunch, a beautifully prepared Creme Brûlée.  My mom ordered a deep fried peanut sandwich that you dipped into chocolate sauce.  It was the most decadent dessert I have ever seen!  My father and I indulged in deep fried oreos accompanied by a chocolate sundae!  I could not believe how crazy these desserts were!  I didn't quite finish mine but also could not believe how much I had eaten!  It is easy to understand why many Americans are overweight...too many people eat like this as a habit rather than as a special occasion.  Even the waiter was impressed that we "killed the entire meal"!  It was a real treat to enjoy such a dining extravaganza!  Good thing we ended the evening by heading downtown for a walk!