Escape to Palm Springs

We recently got back from what turned out to be a very well-timed trip to Palm Springs, in southern CA. Though we were only there less than a week, even those few days were a welcome little diversion from the winter weather we had left behind in Portland - actually, we were lucky we made it out on our morning flight, and our saving grace was spending the night before at a Portland airport hotel.  Don't get me wrong, it was definitely fun to see the kids happily playing in the snow...

and warming up with hot chocolate...

...but it sure was nice when in less than seven hours, we were doing this instead...

We did have some delays and snags during the first half of the trip, the worst of which was the kids catching a stomach virus, but we got through that by doing lots of laundry and watching the Westminster Dog Show on tv. :-)

 Once things settled down, we really tried to take advantage of the sunny and perfect 80 degree weather as much as we could. We visited a few new places that we hadn't seen when we flew down a few years ago (like the desert zoo and botanical garden), and just enjoyed the great pool and patio at our rental house. All in all, we were grateful to have a little getaway in the middle of winter - so nice to not have to deal with multiple layers of clothing or extra rain gear, if even just for a few days!