Life with Jack & Zach: Palm Desert Get-A-Way

Dear Family and Friends,

Thursday, March 17, 2011 marked a major milestone of Steve and I being parents. Get ready for it...hold on...VACATION sans kids. Steve's parents watched our little boys for the weekend so we could get away for much needed R&R. Boy did we! It was bittersweet because I did miss the boys, but we also needed the time to get away to disconnect from work and parenthood.

We contemplated where to go and what to do. At the end of the day we didn't want routine, forget the schedule, bring on sleeping in. That said we opted not to go WILD. This was first time getting away since way before I got pregnant and personally did not want the fast life, did not want something that would take us traveling all day to get to our destination. We ended up in Palm Desert/Palm Springs for a nice long weekend, where it took us a big whoppin' 2 hour (not even) drive. We got to our hotel late Thursday, freshened up and headed out on the strip to stop for a night cap. Little did we know we entered a place where everyone goes to bed, closed up shop at 10pm. FINE BY ME! :) We headed back to our hotel and SLEPT, SLEPT, SLEPT in until 9am. Nice. The hotel did a fab job of using dark shades so even at 9am it looked like midnight. I slowly got up (ha...I wanted to treasure that moment), and got ready for a long day of hanging out.

Steve and I feel like it was what we called a weekend of being selfish, not putting the boys first, not having to do work around the house; we shopped and got pampered! We stopped to get breakfast and then made our way to get pedicures! Even Steve. Sorry no pics; I don't ever think of taking pics of us as I am always taking pics of the boys. But yep he got a pedicure too. Next...more food and shopping. Palm Desert has this area of shopping what is called the "Rodeo Drive" of Palm Desert; Coach, Tiffany, you name it they had it. We made our way to Coach and I got this cute little swing purse. Love it. We stopped into some other shops and picked up some items, work clothes, fun clothes, it was great. We even decided to do some shopping for the house, like a new bedding set for our room just so we did not have to figure out when to do it when we got home. We had a late lunch at Tommy Bahamas, yummy. After we hit the road a little more we made our way over to sample an appetizer at this Mexican Restuarant, had a great mango margarita and met some great ladies from Austin TX. Fun times. Later we headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. There is a great hole in the wall place called Cactus Jack's. Fab food, great people. We turned in early; I was looking forward to getting some shut eye. Sad to say but by the end of dinner I kept thinking I just wanted to go sleep.

Waking up at 8am Saturday morning, we made our way to get breakfast. We didn't do much this day other than just hung out. Palm Desert has this zoo called the Living Desert. The boys would love it. We saw Storks, Big Horn Sheep, Zebras, Giraffes, and this awesome outdoor train set that was located in the heart of the zoo. It was really neat. Heading back closer to our hotel we stopped at Canteloupe Jacks for a bite to eat and a cocktail, great place too. After zipping around town for a little bit and doing a little more site seeing we got ready for dinner. We were off to one of our favorite places, Roy's! Yum. Again, another early night. :)

We woke a little earlier only because we decided to take the long way home, up and around the mountains. It was certainly a great view and can only imagine how neat it would be live up that far.

Not a whole lot happening this weekend, but you know what -- we did just what any parent regardless of number of kids would do...disconnect and sleep in. I can tell you it was great seeing the boys. We got home just as they went down for their nap so we could unpack. They soon got all of our attention as they woke up...smiles galore!

Enjoy!