Palm Springs Weekend

For Labor Day Weekend, we decided to head down to Palm Springs with Mike and spend the weekend by the pool.  It's funny because I grew up in southern CA, but I've never been to Palm Springs.  And it was a little weird to be so close to home without going home.  We called my mom to see if she would meet us there, but she had to work all weekend.

The first place hotel we stayed at had a gorgeous room!

It had a huge jacuzzi tub and a huge shower with a TV in the bathroom.

My kids spent the whole first night in the tub and the shower.

Then, the next morning before we checked out, they wanted to take another bath and another shower.

It was that cool.

The crowd at this hotel, however, was a little scary.

As we walked in at midnight with our little kids all holding their blankets and their pillow pets, we were drawing some unwanted attention.

I locked the door as soon as we got to our room.

The next day at the pool, the scary casino crowed had cleared out and we enjoyed a pretty much empty pool area.

Once the kids got too hungry to be able to stand it anymore, we packed up and headed to Quiznos (which Saxon refers to as his new favorite restaurant).

Then we went to check out the aerial tramway above Palm Springs.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but this was amazing!

The floor rotates and the kids thought it was the coolest ride ever.

Some of the adults were looking a little pale.

The view was incredible and we went up to 10,000 feet.

The weather on the bottom was 105 degrees.

The weather on top of the mountain was in the 60's.

We hiked to all of the lookout points first.

Then we hiked down to the forest to do the 1 1/2 mile nature hike.

We discovered from reading the signs that a "Jeffrey Pine" smells like butterscotch and vanilla.  It was a game during the rest of our hike to smell all of the trees.

(Left- Bridger, Right- Saxon)

Even Dalton wanted to smell the trees.

The air smelled like a mix of vanilla and pine.

It was so yummy!

Mike and Saxon:

Me and Saxy:

Love the cheeseball smile!

Speaking of cheeseball smiles, Bridger did this one every time I pulled out the camera:

So I told him to open his eyes, stop looking up, and give me a real smile.

Then I got this:

After about 10 minutes of failed attempts, we got this:

Nate got the most exercise of any of us because he was always carrying a kid...

Brothers:

They were pretty tired and hungry by the time we got to the bottom, but I made them pose on this bench because it says where we are.

DAY TWO:

We went to go see the giant dinosaurs from the PeeWee Herman movie.

But first, we ate at the dinosaur diner.

It was true diner food.

Mike ordered biscuits and gravy and a huge slice of pie!

The Wheel Inn Restaurant.

LOL

I'm not a huge fan of diners and homestyle cooking, but my turkey sandwich was really good.

Speaking of food, we decided to try out some new places to eat this trip.

We went into town and ate at the Papaya Bay Thai Restaurant on Saturday night.

We were starving, and the kids were grouchy.

The guy who worked there was awesome!

He helped us order, talked to the kids, and even served them their food and cut it for them.  Ha ha.  Some people wouldn't like that, but I was so grateful for the help, and my kids were much better behaved for him than they usually are for me.

Then he promised them that they could feed the cats outside if they ate all their food.

That was all the motivation they needed.

They ate all their food!

The next day, they begged to go back and eat Thai food again.

If you're even in Palm Springs...Papaya Bay Thai food.

 

Bridger getting eaten by a dinosaur:

Bridger with the robotic moving dinosaurs:

The robotic dinosaurs were a little weird.

For example, this knight in shining armor, jousting the dinosaur with the monkey on it's back...

We weren't sure what to make of that.

The highlight was getting to go inside the T-Rex's mouth!

But panning for gold/gemstones was  a close second:

Bridger found four bags of pretty rocks that he wanted to bring home.

We spent a TON of time at the pool of our second hotel.

It was like a mini-waterpark.

The slide was the best.

It had jets at the top so it would launch the kids down the slide :)

So, our first trip ever to Palm Springs was a HUGE success!

We loved every minute of it!