Bellagio Conservatory Celebrations

We decided to treat my mom to brunch and sightseeing for her birthday this year.  Since her actual birthday fell on a Tuesday, we figured we would celebrate on the Sunday before to allow ourselves more time to enjoy.  We spent the morning at Mon Ami Gabi for brunch, had some yummy food and made our way over to the Bellagio Conservatory and Botanical Garden to check out all the decorations for Christmas.

The Bellagio decorates for every season using fresh flowers for a majority of their decorations, which is just amazing!  The best displays are definitely during Christmas and fall.  They make sure to change it up every year, so you never really see the same exact thing, which is nice!  When we entered, Nolan absolutely fell in love with the bears.  It was perfect, because he recently has learned the word "bear", so he kept yelling it over and over once he saw these fun polar bears made out of carnations!

We made our way over to the HUGE, gorgeous Christmas tree, and Nolan was again excited to find a Choo-choo train that was running.  He had never seen one of these before, so he took a lot of time figuring it out and would point excitedly when it would come back around the corner.  He also gets super excited when he sees Christmas trees, wherever we go during the holiday season, so this large one was just so overwhelming for him!  

After realizing my camera had died on me, we stopped to snap some photos with our phones, and getting Nolan to look our direction while all of this was going on was nearly impossible (but who could blame him!?)  These were the best we could get!

Finally, we made our way to the penguins, which Nolan loved even more than the polar bears!  He's recently been watching the Madagascar penguins and loving them, so he recognized what these were right away!  He posed for some pictures with his new friends, and then continued to watch them for the next 20 minutes.  There was an igloo with penguins that would pop up from the top and pop out from the side, and this was by far his favorite moment of the day.  He laughed and laughed every time they would pop out, and whined when they took too long to come back out.  

We finished our day by walking through the snow tunnel, and said goodbye to the Botanical Garden.  It was a great day and I think we all had a good time enjoying brunch and the Bellagio!  Even though it's something simple, it's a blast to enjoy the festive decor and especially see how Nolan reacts to all these new things!  So much fun!