Henry's Adventure in Las Vegas

One day, Daddy put Ben's favorite train Henry in his pocket. He was cleaning up the house the night before he was going to Las Vegas for the MIX conference. When Daddy got up the next day, he brought Henry with him in his pocket! Silly Daddy!

When Daddy got to the airport, he reached into his pocket for something else, and he found ... Henry! So Daddy decided to take a picture of Henry at the airport:

Soon, it was time to get onto the airplane. Here's a picture of Henry looking out the window just before the airplane takes off!

After a long plane ride, we finally landed in Las Vegas. Henry was excited to be off the airplane. Here he is in front of the gate, D25:

We got into a taxi van to go to our hotel. Here is Henry looking out the window at some of the signs in Las Vegas. It was a sign for Defending the Caveman:

When Henry got to his hotel, the Mirage, he saw the biggest fish tank he had ever seen right behind the check-in counter. Look at all the fish!

Next, we went up to our new hotel room on the 5th floor. We opened the curtains and saw all the other hotels outside! The hotel that Daddy was going to for his conference was right across the street. It's called the Venetian.

It was the afternoon, and it was time for Daddy to take a nap before dinner. After he woke up, we went with Henry to go across the street. On the way out, they saw some dolphin statues. Here's Henry in front of the dolphins:

After they walked across the street to the Venetian, they saw a water fountain. Henry wanted to take a closer look:

There were also people floating around in gondolas. Henry wanted to have a ride:

Daddy and Henry went inside the Venetian. They saw lots of paintings on the ceiling!

Later, they went into a big indoor shopping mall. There were even gondolas inside! Henry wanted to say hello to the people!

Daddy was walking into the MIX conference when he saw a tiny model of the Venetian hotel. Henry wanted to take a closer look. Here's Henry flying over the model of the Venetian! It looks like he's a giant engine flying over the real hotel!

When Henry got to the conference, he went to the MIX Sandbox area where he signed up to give his own talk about Ruby, Ruby, Ruby! Just kidding. It was really Daddy who was giving the talk!

Daddy and Henry were getting hungry. It was time for dinner! They went to a nice restaurant called Canaletto. Here's Henry eating some oil:

Here's Henry drinking some wine:

After a big dinner with lots of wine, it was time to go back to the hotel for sleepy time. The next morning when Henry woke up, he had to go and check his email at Mix:

After checking his email, he had to go and eat some breakfast. It was some bacon and eggs with mushrooms!

After breakfast it was time to watch the opening keynote. Here's Henry watching Ray Ozzie give a talk about the future of Microsoft:

After watching the keynote from the overflow room (the place where trains had to watch the keynote because trains didn't actually pay to go to the conference), it was time to go play in the MIX Sandbox. Henry had a big surprise at the Sandbox. He made some new friends. Here's his new best friend, Roby the Robot (aka Channel 9 guy).

Henry had a lot of fun playing with Roby. It was a pretty busy day, and Henry decided that he needed to get a massage. OK it was really Daddy who needed to get a massage. But here's Henry sitting on the massage chair after Daddy's massage:

It was time to go back to the Mirage to get ready to go out to see a show. On the way out of the Venetian, Henry stopped to have a drink in the fountain, and to listen to the man playing the accordion:

It was a fun show called Mystere. They don't allow trains into the show, so Henry had to stay back at the hotel room to watch American Idol all by himself. He had a good time though.

The next day, Roby came over to play. Henry and Roby went outside to play in front of the Venetian. Here they are on a nice, sunny day:

When they went inside they saw the wheel of fortune game. Roby was too young to go into the casino, so we had to take a picture of Henry:

We went over to Daddy's talk about Ruby, here's Henry getting the computer ready for the talk about Ruby:

The talk was lots of fun - it wasn't really a talk, it was a conversation with some nice people who really like Ruby. Henry and Roby worked up a real appetite listening to Daddy talk to the nice people. It was time for a snack. Lucky for them, there was lots of ice cream to go around!

It was time for dinner! Henry, Roby, Daddy and some of Daddy's friends went out to eat at the fin Chinese restaurant in the Mirage.

It was time to go back to the hotel room so that Roby and Henry could watch Daddy hack on Dynamic Silverlight code. By the morning, Daddy had everything ready for his talk at MIX. Here's Roby and Henry helping to hold up Daddy's computer on stage just before his talk:

Once the talk was over, it was time to have some fun! Roby and Henry decided to go and play the Rock Band game. They didn't do so good since they were really little and couldn't play the really big instruments. But they did have fun watching other people play:

Roby and Henry realized that they were inside most of the time. They found out that the Mirage has a pool outside and that there was a big yellow thing in the sky called the sun. They went outside to have a few drinks by the pool. Here they are in front of the waterfall!

Now, a Las Vegas experience wouldn't be complete without playing a hand of black jack:

Daddy and a few of his friends decided to go walking around Las Vegas. Where did they go first? The Sony Store, where Roby and Henry watched Ratatouille on the 52" LCD TV:

They also walked around Caesar's Palace and had their picture taken in front of some of the big sculptures:

Finally, it was almost time to go home. There was one last picture that they took in front of the giant horse and dragon thing before they got on the plane to fly home to Seattle.

It was a fun trip. Henry had a great time. He made a new friend, Roby! But best of all, Henry was really happy to come home to see his most favorite boy in the world: Ben!

The End.

(written with some help from Matthew)

Comments

[Mike Sax]

John, that's an AWESOME idea! I can't wait 'til my next business trip.

[Chris Hardy]

Best MIX round up - hands down!

[Mike Bowler]

What a great story! I've accidentally taken one of my sons toys with me before and I wish I'd done something like this. He would have loved it.

[Ian Oxley]

Hope the Fat Controller doesn't find out! He's had a falling out with Henry before: http://www.tv.com/thomas-the-tank-engine-and-friends/the-sad-story-of-henry-part-1/episode/200875/summary.html

[John Lam]

Thanks! The cool thing that I did here was send the photos in real time back to my wife via email. Next time around it would be awesome to have a 'real camera' that can do this. Something like a bluetooth tether to my cel phone and some software on the phone to post the photos to a blog entry along with a short text message. This is totally doable, and would let me shoot higher quality photos than what my cel phone is capable of.

@Ian: Thanks for the link - will have to show that one to Ben tonight!

[Mark Haniford]

Henry likes Vim...that makes him OK in my book.

[Las Vegas]

I'm glad Henry had great time in Vegas and met a new friend Roby. That was a hilarious take on blogging and having fun with it. This post was definitely fun readingand makes me want to blog with some of my old toys now.

[Rich Claussen]

That was incredible! Lucky Ben!

[Joe Chung]

Gotta love Thomas the Tank Engine! My nephews love that show.

[software_developer]

Very.. very funny.
thank you for that post ..

[Charles Williams]

Where's the conflict in the story where Henry learns some 'life lesson?'

;)

Almost perfect Thomas the Tank Engine story....

In your copious spare time you could throw together a Powerpoint slideshow with the pictures and text and print it out to read to Ben.

Hmmm. I'll have to do that on my next business trip...