California Dreamin' (Josh titled this one)

This past week has been a great one for our family. We took a 10 day trip to California and stayed as a resort in Indio (which I'd never heard of before...it is sort of by Palm Springs). The resort was fabulous. There were lots of pools, a lazy river to float in, tennis and basketball courts, parks (all covered by awnings so they didn't get too hot to play on), and beautiful paths and grounds for walking. It was the perfect get away for us with our many ages to try to please. The weather there was perfect (right about 9o degrees every day) and we missed all the rain we hear has slammed Utah.

We also visited a zoo which was awesome and had a lot of animals that our Utah zoo doesn't have. It was also located in the desert with natural desert surroundings so there were lizards and birds and (to my dismay) snakes wandering around the place (okay, we only saw one snake on the path, but that was one too many for me...and it was red so obviously it was deadly and out to get us). We forgot our camera that day so we have nothing to show off, even though there were some incredible plants and animals. Bryce particularly loved the Mexican wolf which was huge and grumpy. Aubrey loved the Zebra, we meet a zoo keeper at that display and the male Zebra yelled at the keeper (boy are they loud and big). The keeper told Aubrey the male was trying to protect his girlfriends who were a little ways away and she told everyone at the zoo that we saw after that that the boy zebra had girlfriends so watch out.

We went to a children's museum with lots of hands on displays that the kids could play with. They loved it, but Josh and I thought it was a bit of a let down. It was nothing to the children's museum here, which was what we were expecting. Still, the kids loved it so that was what counted.

One day we went to the movies (which we don't do often because 7 people cost a lot to take to the movies) and we saw "Up." It was really fun, and the kids could not get enough of the talking dogs.

Mostly, we just hung out as a family. Josh did all of the cooking (the condo had a full kitchen which was wonderful) so I got a break from that. We all had a fabulous trip, Gavin keeps asking when we can go back to California.

Parker playing tennis

Gavin navigating the ropes course at the Children's Museum.

The kids on the balcony of our condo, this is the gorgeous view we got to see every day. Down below there were often ducks that the kids liked to throw bread to (and Gavin tried to feed them paper, which they didn't care for)


Everyone enjoying one of the pools. We spent a lot of time swimming!!

Our family on the ground of the condo

This is a video of Logan at the pool. The first day he was really nervous in the water, but by the time we left he could not get enough. He would say "jumpin, jumpin" over and over until we stood him on the side. Then he would count "two, nine" and jump in.