MOM'S TRIP TO SEE BECKETT {ROAD TRIP}

What better time to take a road trip than with a 3 week old? I was really excited to have time off of work and have my mom in town for two and a half weeks. It felt necessary to show her all the best of CA. Plus staying in my house is the worst thing to me. I always need to be out and about. Our road trip brought us to Santa Monica, Joshua Tree and Palm Springs!

Driving down, In-N-Out stop. No road trip is complete without one of those big gas station stops… 

After five hours in the car with three kids under two and a half, we made it to Santa Monica! The drive was actually awesome. Beckett slept the entire time, Lydia and Brooklyn watched some iPad shows and I got to talk my heart out with my mom. The weather has been pretty crazy this winter: it was 85! We went immediately to the beach when we arrived….

After the beach we got dinner at the yummiest Mexican restaurant, changed and then hit the Santa Monica Pier. No matter how many times I visit down here it feels like the first time because of all the street vendors. There is such an amazing energy and excitement along the boardwalk, you can feel it in the air. 

The next morning we drove over to Joshua Tree. Visiting this national park has been on my bucket list since I moved to California and it did not disappoint! The joshua trees are so interesting and different looking than any other tree I have ever seen. The beautiful southern California sky looked like something out of a painting. Interesting, even though it is a desert, its at a higher elevation so it was dropped about 20 degrees as soon as we entered. It was 70-75 but with a cool fall like breeze. It felt magical up there. 

^^seriously, how cool are these trees!

^^a mini joshua tree!

Target with a Starbucks inside, a must on any road trip. We stopped in Redlands, my favorite part of the Inland Empire. If I continued to work down here I would have moved there for sure! We stopped at just a normal Target. It was interesting to see everyone coming in Saturday morning to get their things, etc and the weather was over 95 degrees! I just can't imagine living in that kind of heat. 

The last stop was Palm Springs. My mom really wanted to come here, its actually what inspired the trip. Palm Springs is one of my favorite places ever. I love the old Hollywood feel. It is straight desert and always hot, hot, hot. I also use to work here when I lived in LA in 2011. It felt like a vacation every time I would drive in. We had a really hard day with Lydia here so we didn't take too many pictures. We actually planned to stay another day but decided to head home because she wasn't feeling well. We did get to ride the Palm Spring's tram, another bucket list of mine. It was crazy to go from the desert so high into the woods and feel not only the climate change but see the scenery change too. In the evening we walked around down town checking out the shops, art and getting snacks.