On November 2nd, Madison and I treated Anna to some Thai take-out, a fire in the fireplace and a private viewing of Madagascar 3...as if that wasn't enough we followed it up with her favorite kind of cake...a strawberry layer cake from Ralph's Bakery.
Anna's Official Birthday Weekend was postponed a week due to her helping to host a baby shower for our good friend Grace of Chris and Grace...so this past weekend we set out for a fun-filled adventure in Palm Springs.
About an hour and a half into your journey to Palm Springs there is a large outlet mall so we made our first planned stop there, but Anna didn't have much luck so after browsing Diesel and Saks Off 5th Ave, we hopped back in the car for the half-hour journey to downtown Palm Springs where we planned to eat lunch.
Never having been to Palm Springs we relied on Yelp to find us a good place to eat...and did it ever. It was this little sandwich shop that we almost wimped out on when we didn't see anyone eating there, but we mustered up the courage and Madison and I enjoyed one of the best meatball subs I have ever had...and Anna liked her thing as well...then we walked the strip a little more, but knew we needed to be back to the car in two hours as the little golf cart cop had chalked our car as soon as we pulled in so we knew the clock was ticking :-)
Then it was onto our hotel, about 12 miles away in Palm Desert. It was cool to remember you were driving through a desert as when you took away the buildings you could imagine just sand and shrubbery...and tall mountains. From downtown to the hotel we decided to take the back road(highway111) so we could go through a few towns on the way and see interesting stores like a huge estate sale store that consisted of 3 huge buildings. Each item had the name of the owner and the date it started selling in the store and price... kind of pricey, Anna was looking for vintage looking picture frames but none were cheap enough to spray paint and experiment with.
Our hotel room was spectacular. I had used some of our Hilton Honors Points to get us a room at the Homewood Suites...it had a fully stocked kitchen with pots and pans, living room and 1 bedroom with two queen beds. The bathroom was also huge...the only bummer was no bathtub...the room was built for handicapped individuals and due to the bike race adjacent from the hotel every other room was sold out...but we still liked it...
Just a few miles from our hotel was another famous shopping district called El Paseo...advertised as the Rodeo Drive of Palm Springs...Anna used some birthday money for a pair of pants at Juicy Couture and some make-up supplies at Sephora...it was a perfect night to be browsing the strip with temps in the low 60s letting you know it was fall in the Desert.
She wasted no time jumping into the little ropes course and making up her own game...
It looks like she is in some kind of mission impossible type movie..:-)
She did some art...
Went shopping...
Anna loved this cute store so much that she wants to recreate a much smaller version of it in our house... She is adding a shopping cart to her wishlist book for g-pa&g-ma Klein as I type this... What was really cool was that a lot of items were real products you can buy from a grocery store minus the inside contents so it's not that expensive to create, you just have to save the packaging of your normal grocery items...
Played the Harp...
Did a matching game where I called out what to do with each shape and then Madison followed the instruction, you can see there is a wall between Madison and me so Madison did not see what I was doing the whole time except to follow my lead...
This one is my finished product...
And this was Madison's...so close...she just didn't understand what I meant by "next to..." as in "put the yellow rectangle next to the red square...
If we haven't said so, Madison loves this Blue Motorcycle our neighbor a few doors down parks outside...she even goes and pets it occasionally...she of course she was excited to hop on this guy...
Not ready for this...
They also had a nice space outside to play games...
Inside there was a Volkswagon Beetle that allowed children's creativity to run wild...
And perhaps we have another engineer in the family...Madison loved building these ramps for the golf ball to go down...
And helping Mommy build this roller coaster for the golf ball (Daddy was not much help)...
Madison also got to practice her pizza making skills (this one I could do:-)...
Madison also enjoyed learning how a pulley works...
And Gravity...
Then there was this secret box thing where you stuck your hand in and tried to guess the tool...there was some dangerous ones like a hammer and screwdriver...
Madison is shaking her head at me as I was the last one to be ready to go... I got into playing this Simon says game...:-) It was fun.
And no trip to a Children's Museum would be complete without a few tears...these were caused by trying to squeeze through a spot that was a little too tight...but they didn't last very long...
Especially when we hit Cheesecake Factory on the way home :-)
All in all Palm Springs is a lovely place to take a day trip to if you have the time...it's a pretty drive and when you reach the mountain pass the mountains are littered with wind turbines which is pretty cool, but there is really only expensive shopping, a children's museum or gated communities with country club after country club...it really did feel more like a playground for the wealthy and retired...and we are certainly neither at this stage in our lives :-) But for a weekend getaway it definitely fit the bill and we probably will go back when we can take the tram to the top of the San Jacinto Mountains and play in the snow :-)
Sounds like a fun weekend! Happy Birthday, Anna!!
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