The Peppermill

   Since moving to Reno we've been able to do a ton of activities as a family for free, because of the community sponsor of most of the activities. One of the latest freebies (Sept.) we got was a free night at a local casino (The Peppermill). They just sent us a free coupon in the mail welcoming us to the neighborhood.   It was a nice getaway for the family. The kids have really enjoyed all the activities we've taken them out to do, and a night at a casino resort was no exception.  This is the first casino I've ever been in and had always heard how dark they are inside. At first I thought that this one was different because of the large bank of windows around the casino, but they are dark blue and two sets of them, so by the time you get all the way in it's pretty dark.

  One surprise we found in our room, were treats on the dresser and a stocked fridge. These were just the regular treats that you take and then get charged for, they were all set on pressure senosors so if you even removed them you automatically got charged for them, whether or not you put them back. Upon finding this out the kids were all threatened within an inch of their lives if they took anything off of were it was and all precautions were taken to make sure they couldn't easily get to anything (for example moving the conveniently placed end table away from the dresser so that some climbing would need to take place.

  The room was also fairly nice, we thought we might end up in some hole because of it being free. The kids how ever didn't allow for any better night sleep than usual. They wouldn't sleep in their own bed so each of us had at least one kid to kick us in the back all night long.

  Along with the free room we were also given a $40 food voucher to use at the restaurants. The restaurants were all located in the middle of the casino area and at first we tried to find a way to get to the restaurant without going through the casino, but in the end we just walked through the middle of the slot machines (we heard that casinos flip if you take kids through the gambling area, but apparently that only applies to Vegas because Reno didn't seem to care). We decided to use it at the buffet since we would get a better selection and would be able to find something that the kids would eat and get full off.  Needless to say it was the worst food any of us had ever eaten, good thing we didn't pay for it. I don't think anyone ate their fill of food and especially wasn't satisfied with their meal. One up side of the meal was the entertainment we provided for everyone around us with fighting the kids to stay in their seats and try to get them to eat. We did get complimented on how well the kids were behaving (sometimes when people tell us this I wonder how horrible of kids they're around to think that ours are that well behaved when their not minding).

  The highlight of the whole visit for the kids was swimming. You'd think that having a swimming pool at the apartment, that they got to go to several times a week, they'd be sick of swimming, but not these guys. The nice thing about the casino pools was that they were heated a lot warmer than ours. They kids actually swam in the water for hours, instead of just playing on the pool edge like they do at the apartment. The only reason we stopped swimming was because they were practically falling asleep in the water. They did however make their demands that they wanted to go swimming first thing in the morning before leaving.

  Adahleigh was more than happy to show off her backstroke.

  The other nice thing was we basically had all the pools to ourselves, there may have been a dozen people total in the three pools and two hot tubs (Adahleigh being the talker she is made sure to harass most of the people that were there though). The highlights of the pools was a fountain in one and a waterfall in another.

  Keisha even enjoyed splashing around the whole time.

  This is probably one of the best pictures we have ever gotten of Charles' grin, He definitely wouldn't of had such a big grin if the water was cold.

  Here's a view from our floor of the pools we enjoyed hours in.

  Once everyone was getting ready for bed, they made sure to get their bed jumping in. Adahleigh would jump from the chair to one bed and then leap the giant gap between the beds.

  Charles tried to make the same attempt (from one bed to the next), but the gap was just a little too large for him.

  He then moved to chair to jump on the bed, he was able to make that jump most of the time.

  All in all we really did enjoy our stay, especially since it didn't cost us a dime (unfortunately for the casino we weren't a good investment as far as giving out a free night).