Ring In the New

Seventeen years ago, I spent the first Thanksgiving away from home. (Hard to believe, I had spent every Thanksgiving at home until I was 28 years old.) That year, I headed out to Palm Springs to be with this new guy and his family. At the time, I was still contemplating my next move. But Palm Springs in November...that was a pretty nice selling point. He definitely had me there.

This year we headed out to the desert on the weekend before Thanksgiving and we traveled with two boys, four suitcases, two iPads, two iPhones, two MacBooks, and an iTouch. We left one cat behind. More complicated? Sure. But some things remain the same: The In-n-Out Burger stop in Moreno Valley. The deep, cleansing breaths you take as soon as the wind turbines come into view. The twinkly lights on all of the palm trees once you roll into town.

This time, we were far enough out in the desert (Rancho Mirage) that Dave was determined to take the boys on a big off-the-beaten-path hike on Saturday. When you put the word "big" next to the word "hike" my brain starts getting sour and cranky, so I opted out for the day. Instead I rented a car and headed to the outlet center for some hard-core shopping (some things never change; to each her own). Little did I know the treacherous conditions that the boys would face at "Ladder Canyon."

Fortunately, it was one of those things that I only had a chance to worry about after the fact, so everyone was fine and had a great time doing their respective things. I suppose to some people fighting the crowds at the Coach outlet is a lot scarier.

We've worked our way through a lot of restaurants in the desert, but one that remains the same is the Japanese teppan steakhouse that provides us endless hours of entertainment. After years of going there, we thought we had seen all of the tricks, until - surprise! - this time we had a new young chef who wowed us with all sorts of dazzling knife-and-fork feats. We were seated at the table with a bunch of happy-drunk Canadian golfers, and although they were not offensive in any way, at least one of them was self-conscious enough about being drunk (those Canadians!) that he insisted on slipping Dave $60 before they left as an "apology."

Standing at the koi pond outside Kobe

Riding on a little high from our newfound wad of cash (!), we headed up to El Paseo in Palm Desert, the Rodeo Drive of the desert. It was our good fortune that they had just finished the holiday decorating and they had a full-on "snowstorm" (big frothy bits of soap) in the middle of the street - making it the closest we would get to "cold" weather all week.

The next morning the sun was out, which meant it was time to dash over to Splashtopia, the massive water park at our resort. We didn't waste any time jumping right in to the lazy river and waterslides.

How many calories do you burn per hour on the lazy river? Because I could do that all day.

Anyway, it was somewhere around this point that I called my parents and then started to feel bad. They were out there suffering through a deep chill, while we were lounging around in the sun. But when you move across the country away from your family, you pay the price all the time. So you've got to have at least a few perks built in to make it fun, right?

Luke did a big report this semester on Palm Springs, so we headed downtown on Sunday night for a fancy dinner at LG's Steakhouse. (Quote from Luke's report: "If you stay in L.A., you can go to McDonald's. But if you go to Palm Springs, you can have a nice, juicy steak at LG's Steakhouse.") In honor of his report, we enjoyed a nice, juicy steak at LG's Steakhouse.

Every time we go somewhere, the boys always have such a good time that they insist that we HAVE to go back again REALLY SOON. We take this with a grain of salt, because vacation is fun. But there's something about the desert that it's just a given - Of COURSE you are going to go back soon. Because it's the desert, and that's what we do, year after year.

These girls

We LOVE these girls. Did I mention that we love these girls?

We are basically a boy-driven house, so when girls enter the picture it's a whole new ball game. Fashion. Nail polish. Taylor Swift. But somehow when it's coming from Helena and Antonia, they mix it in with their own brand of tomboy-ish-ness and it's cool - even fun - for the boys.

In fact, even though Antonia is just on the cusp of teenager-hood, she's still happy to mix it up with the rest of them...and she has earned Luke's ongoing admiration as an all-knowing arbiter of music and tween trends.

Now answer this question: If these four went down to the beach, fully clothed, without towels, which two do you think would be most likely to run in the water without abandon and get completely soaked from head to toe?

If you answered Zach and Helena, of course you are right. These two are living life without a care in the world, and loving every sopping wet minute of it.

On Sunday we brought our whole motley crew (plus Elizabeth, plus Luke's buddy Sean) up to the cliffside rocky beach for some hiking and exploring. True, it wasn't quite up to par with Julie and Eric's traditionally hard-core hikes. And true, Sean's survivalist gear was just a little bit more than we needed for this particular adventure. Nevertheless, a good time was still had by all - and at the very end we were rewarded with some dolphin sightings just off the coast.

Sunday night Elizabeth served us dinner on her pretty beachside patio. We also got treated to a concert from our young musicians...ranging from just a few notes on the trumpet (Luke) to a simple melody on the clarinet (Helena) to a full-blown concert-worthy flute recital from Antonia.

Monday the bigger kids went to the rock climbing gym (Luke's new favorite activity, which the girls were only too happy to join in) while Zach went to a birthday party. By the late afternoon we were all back together and the group unanimously voted to head back to the beach - albeit this time stocked with towels and swim suits.

Can you make out these four tiny blips in the water? They're all in there, happy as clams. My main wish for these four is that they continue to love their time together.

Guy Fawkes Day

I'm late for Halloween but let's just pretend we dressed up for Guy Fawkes Day instead (or at least Dave did).

How would you feel about running into this guy on the road?