The Desert in January

El Nino…what?!?!  We had one week of heavy rain and since then it’s been nothing but clear skies.  Lucky for us the MLK weekend forecast was ideal for a desert trip.  My Dad got us rooms at the Rancho Las Palmas, a resort I have been wanting to go to for a while now.  He is working a job out in the desert and had to work out there over the weekend and asked us to join him there to do a little pre birthday celebration for him.  The kids and I drove out Saturday afternoon.  Sadly Jake was in Wisconsin where it was a high of 9 degrees for work and wasn’t able to join in.  Lucky for him we were able to send him pictures of us swimming in the pool where it was a high of 78 degrees.  We arrived and immediately hit the pool.  They pool had two slides, lazy river, and splash pad.  A kids heaven right!!  Madden, Skylar and Papa cruised around the lazy river until dinner time.  By then Matthew, Erin and Lennon showed up.  Another plus was the kids got to hang out together all weekend.  It’s like Skylar and Madden’s dream to have Lennon around.  They just adore being the older cousins, especially Madden.

The next morning it was breakfast in the warm sun and right back to the pool.  Madden loved hanging in the shallow pool with Lennon, while Skylar went around the lazy river all morning.  We think she probably went around 20+ times.  After promising her 3 toys from Target, I was able to convince her to go down the waterslide, which she ended up loving! She and I went down it over and over again.  Now I’m just hoping she forgets about the 3 toys from target.  We were so shocked by how empty the hotel was.  There was empty lounge chairs all over the pool and we never once had to wait in line to go down the slide.  Don’t think we could of asked for a more enjoyable day by the pool.

Little do we know the Rossitto’s had desert plans too, so we were able to meet up with them for dinner one of the nights. 

The next day the weather wasn’t quite as warm as it was the day before so we decided to hit up the Living Desert instead of the pool, which both kids were stoked about.  Madden saw the camel and immediately asked to ride it.  We cruised around the zoo for a couple hours and explored areas of it that we hadn’t seen the first time we went a year ago.  

We had lunch on El Paseo and then headed home.  It really was a great way to spend the MLK weekend and I’m looking forward to our next trip out to the desert.