Indian Wells (Indio, CA)

If I had better internet connections, my pictures would be in the right places... but for now, just scroll to the bottom.  Sorry!

Attending the BNP Paribas tennis open has been a "thing" for Aaron the past few years.  We were only a few hours away in Vegas and it's a cheap (professional) tournament in the beautiful Palm Springs weather.  Aaron missed it last year because we had a beautiful baby girl the same weekend.  This year, we made it a family trip.

We had no problem parking the bus at the tournament.  I dropped Aaron and the kids off at the front gate and then used the RV parking across the street.  It's typically $20 to park a car, but the RV parking was wide open and they didn't charge us anything.  It's amazing how many RV parks and motorohomes there are here in Palm Springs!

We sat through one tennis match before everyone was too hot (actually, Roma and the baby didn't even make it that long.) So we found a perfect place in the middle of the arena with shade, grass and big screens to watch the games all around.  All of the kids ended up there eventually, although I give props to Ben for sticking with Aaron for a couple of hours.

Around lunch, we left Aaron to meet up with some of his buddies and headed back to the Indian Waters Resort.  We made these reservations several weeks ago and figured we'd camp it out, if we didn't have an actual trailor or rv (or bus) to sleep in.  We paid about $40 a night for a full-hookup grass site..  It's big and has plenty of room for another car or tent, if the kids chose to sleep outside.  It beats any other $100+ hotel room in this area, for sure.  And right now, the rates are even higher because of the tennis tourney.

This resort is so nice.  Two big heated pools, a spa, two pool tables, ping pong, tennis courts, work out room, laundry, nice heated bathrooms with big showers, shuffleboard, bean bag toss, game room with tv, movies and books to read.  It's been fun to hang here and put our feet up while Aaron does his thing down the street.

Yesterday was kind of a bitter-sweet day for me.  I mean, it was a really great day.  The kids and I had so much fun together, playing games, swimming, picnicking at our site, just enjoying the sunshine and breeze.  I loved mingling with the older residents (many of them have been here since December and just park it all winter long..)  Everyone was so complimentary about the kids.  And I have to admit, they were so well-behaved and sweet.  We swam and played until dark and then showered and changed into pjs and slippers before we headed back to the bus for bedtime.  Everyone was exhausted, so we cuddled up and read together.  And the four littles were asleep in the first chapter.  Ben and Luke wanted to wait up until Aaron got back, but I didn't have it in me, I was just too tired.  As I finally laid down and closed my eyes, I couldn't help but think about how perfect this day had been, except for the fact that Aaron wasn't with us.  I know I could HANDLE my kids on the road, and I know they would absolutely love our experiences, but if Aaron isn't with us, there will always be a sadness about it.  We need to decide exactly what we want to do and why before we buy another house.

Today Aaron is back with us and we are headed to the beach... we are so close to our favorite camping spot on the beach that we just couldn't start driving north until we've seen it.  Carpinteria, here we come.