Family Vacay- Rancho Las Palmas

We planned a last minute trip to the desert for a final family vacation before school starts!  We finally stayed at Rancho Las Palmas- Gary and the kids loved it, I thought it was good.  It's really pretty, the rooms are nice (if you are staying in a poolside room, we got THE BEST one, and if we stay there again, I'm requesting it...2415...views of the lazy river, splash pad and water slides; a gate into splashtopia right by our patio door; so relaxing to sit out on the patio at night and watch people on the lazy river), lots of pool activities, good location.

Ella LOVED the lazy river (her favorite thing) followed by the water slides (which we had to force her to try and then couldn't get her off).  She did NOT like the splash pad (I have to admit, it was kind of lame) and neither kid cared much about the pool.  Everett LOVED the splash pad, hated the pool, hated the water slides (he was too short anyway), was indifferent to sometimes liking the lazy river and LOVED the beach/sandy area.  The beach area has tons of sand toys, is always shaded and has a beach entrance to the lazy river so it's definitely one of the best spots in splashtopia.

Gary is a big kid so he loved it, but I'm on the fence.  Everything is spread out so you essentially spend the ENTIRE day running around behind your kids as they yell, "now I want to jump in the pool!  now I want to go down the water slide!  back to the pool...no wait, I want to play in the sand...now I want to go around the lazy river 1.3 times...now I want to play in the splash pad...back to the lazy river...back to the beach...4 more times on the water slide"...and it goes on and on and on all.day.long.  And even better, each kid wants to do different things at different times...it's exhausting!  I prefer to just lay by a pool where I can see everyone from my nice comfy chair or we can all play in the pool together in one place. :)

splashtopia...

Then went to my very favorite Mexican place, Las Casuelas, for a few margs!

Ella has kind of always been obsessed with mariachi bands so she wanted to take a picture with this guy at the restaurant (he also sang her a personalized song about how she loves guacamole!)...

The kids slept in the same bed for the first time ever and shockingly, it went great!  They both slept through the night!!!

The next day, it was back to splashtopia for a full day of swimming and running around, and then we had dinner with grammy and pop pop!  After dinner, we went back to splashtopia and relaxed in the lazy river- it was SO nice with the sun going down.

We left bright and early the next day because Everett was not feeling well.  He threw up in the car 3 or 4 times!!  I ran out of clothes for him and finally had to put him in pjs.  Soooo, the trip home took a little longer than expected since we kept having to pull off the freeway to clean up vomit.  The completely stopped traffic on the 91 didn't help either, but at least by that point, our backseat looked like this. :)