vacation fun, part 5.1

ok, i’m back!  the thought of having to go through 769 photos from palm springs and select the ones for this entry led me to procrastinate for many days.    but here i am with more than a few photos to post from the last week of our vacation.

i think i’ll do this in three installments to keep this from being the longest entry ever.

alright, so we drove over to palm springs on a tuesday afternoon.  being that we were at the circus and chuck e. cheese’s only the night before, and i had left the task of packing all five of us til the very day we were leaving, and that task of packing all five of us always falls on me to accomplish, we left much later than originally planned.  but no worries, we were on vacation!  the nice part of this trip was that we didn’t have to contend with airlines in order to get to our destination.  which is my very least favorite part of traveling.  i do enjoy the actual flight, it’s the transporting all our baggage, going through security, and dealing with tsa (is it just me or are they the most incompetent people ever?!  and THEY are the ones who are supposed to keep us safe in the airports?  oh please.) that make flying so unenjoyable.

anyway, back to happier thoughts…  we made it to palm springs (it was actually rancho mirage- a town about 10 miles away) a little tired but ready to begin our newest adventure.  we didn’t want to cram in to a hotel room for five days, so phil found us a vacation rental home that was still linked with the hotel so that we could have comfortable living space, but still have access to the hotel’s pools and other amenities.

pulling up to our three bedroom/two bath home right on a golf course…

c’mon in!

phil took some pics of the house before the kids gave it the ‘lived-in look’.  here’s the living room.  the kids totally loved watching shows on that big flat-screen tv!

the next morning, we ate breakfast out in the back patio and enjoyed the view.

the view that came with the house:

thankfully, it wasn’t TOO hot the week we were there, but it definitely felt much warmer than the coastal weather we have at home.  so we checked the forecast and tried to plan outdoor activities on the less hotter days.  our first outing was to the living desert- part zoo, part botanical garden where palm trees and cacti peacefully coexist.

the kids were fascinated by this enormous train/town replica.

here comes the train!

the directory…

we checked out the zoo first.  the poor zebras looked hot.  but then again, don’t they come from the desert?

it was in the 90s that day, but mikey didn’t seem to mind!

checking out the camels…

mikey discovered a camel statue nearby and found him to be more interactive than the real ones.

mikey gave this goat a good brush-down.

trying to keep lauren’s baby fair skin from burning…

phil and i are so addicted to kissing these baby cheeks!  thankfully, lauren indulges us all the time.

we saw the giraffes next.

giraffe lovebirds.

we were all getting hotter as the day wore on, so here’s the last animal we saw before heading over to the botanical side.  phil said, “take your picture of that ostrich and let’s go!”  so here it is:

like i said before, there were lots and lots of cactus in the desert.

round ones…

pink ones…

and even ones with flowers.

happily, there were other things growing there, otherwise seeing cactus after cactus would’ve gotten really old really fast!

the kids were all troopers and had fun despite the heat and so we did get around to see most of the living desert before we decided to call it a day.  this little one hung in there even though she missed her morning nap all week!

time to follow this face back to the van!

and i had to take a picture of this tree as we were leaving.  really pretty with all the yellow flowers, but the strange thing about it was that its trunk and branches were bright green!

more fun in palm springs coming tomorrow!