Our Honeymoon

Yeah, so I'm finally getting around to blogging about the Honeymoon 2 months ago...my bad!

We decided to save money and just stay in California because we wanted to go to Hawaii in the summer (which we already bought our tickets for...yay!!!). Before Cody went on his mission we stayed at a lovely resort with some friends in Indian Wells, so we decided to go back there (alone this time! :). It was a great choice. We got a killer deal because of Karly and other Marriott connections, so we got to stay 4 nights at the Renaissance Esmeralda Resort & Spa. The weather was gorgeous, and we enjoyed laying by the pool and walking around in the sunshine. The Resort was pretty dead, so we had the place to ourselves.
The second night there we ate at one of the restaurants at the Resort and the food was amazing! They have fire pits around the pool area, so most nights we snuggled there after eating or soaking in the jacuzzi or exploring or whatever. For most of our time there, we just hung out and enjoyed not planning the wedding! It was very relaxing.

The third night we took the Palm Springs Aerial Tram. I think it's the second largest tram in the world or something. It was really cool. You go straight up about 2.5 miles, so we started in the warm desert and ended up in the snowy mountains. The trams rotate, and the views are incredible! We watched the sunset and had dinner at the top of the mountain, checked out the views and rambled around the lodge. It was very interesting.
I can't stress how much we loved the Resort! It was so peaceful and beautiful and I loved the shampoo and our room was spacious and it just rocked. I highly recommend staying there!!!
Our last full day there we went to The Living Desert. It was very interesting, and we spent the whole day there! We saw an animal hospital, butterflies galore, wolves, birds, giraffes, zebras, meerkats, too many plants to remember and even an LGB Model Train Display that was awesome. If we made a collage of the 280 pictures we took, it would look like this -
So, I picked my favorites -
I loved the giraffes, and the butterflies! There was a butterfly garden, where they just floated around, nothing holding them in...it was just an open air garden with the butterflies' favorite plants. Then there was an exhibit of butterflies, where they were inside a netted tent and we even got to see them hatching and hold one that had just emerged from it's cocoon. It was magical in there...so many butterflies and hummingbirds! I loved it!

That night we had our splurge dinner and went to Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. Cody LOVES their steaks and just everything there. It was delicious. The concierge had told them it was our honeymoon, so we had a special corner table and they put rose petals on the table...it was very special!
We drove home on Thursday, and took our time, stopping at the big dinosaur park and outlet malls. We passed the mountain we had rode the tram up, and it's huge! I had to get a pic from the freeway. We are so lucky that we had such a nice time and got to do so many cool things. It was a wonderful Honeymoon, and I just had the best time hanging out with my husband, just the two of us!