Someone please pinch me. I am still coming off of the high that was Girls' Weekend in Palm Desert. All of us are the "other half" of a big group of girls from high school. Some of us hadn't seen each other since our freshman year of college and some see each other on a regular basis, but either way, it had been way too long since we'd all been together, spending time laughing, philosophizing, catching up and reminiscing.
Annie and I drove to the desert on Friday afternoon and finally met up with Gretchen, Jenna (coming from Arizona), and Christina (coming from San Diego) outside the Marriott villas. I can't remember the last time I jumped so high. Girls, I'm still sorry if I knocked the wind out of you! I was so excited to see them and they were just as sweet and beautiful as ever.
We got settled into our gigantic 2 bedroom/2 bathroom/living room/kitchen suite and decided to enjoy a late dinner where Megan (coming from Huntington Beach) met us, just having arrived home from a business trip in San Francisco.
We enjoyed good wine ($21 bottle, yes!) and yummy food while playing the best game ever: each person got five minutes to bring us all up to date, covering the last, oh, ya know, SEVEN years. Well, of course five minutes wasn't enough and our catch-up conversation went until midnight when we closed down the restaurant.
On Saturday, we suffered through the heat and laid out by the pool. Snacks, magazines and girl talk made the heat seem a little less painful, but a few of us trickled away and enjoyed appointments at a local massage therapy center. Christina and I shared appointment times and agreed it was the best massage ever! It had been so long since I chatted with Christina and I know I'm not alone when I say how wonderful it is to listen to her positive and wise words. She's smart, nice AND gorgeous and not a wee bit cocky. More people should be like her.
What's a girls' weekend without a shopping extravaganza? After the group got cleaned up from massages and pooltime, we all walked up and down the steamy streets of the famous El Paseo Drive, the Rodeo of Palm Desert. Unfortunately, the city was dead and so were the shops because, really, who goes to Palm Desert in the middle of July?!? But we did relish in the fantastic sales at JCrew, Saks and other fine establishments.
After our sweaty afternoon, we got showered and beautified for our night out. I finally whipped out the camera and took some getting-ready shots.
Gretchen and Megan in the mirror
Annie doing her makeup thing
And then I just went all out camera-happy in the room.
Jenna and Christina ready to go
Me with Jenna
Megan, with her magical Monster in hand and Christina.
Me with Megan. We've been friends since elementary school!
Megan, Jenna, me, Christina and Gretchen getting ready to leave. Annie is playing the all-important role of photographer!
We finally got on our shuttle to get to the far other side of the property. The shuttle was constantly slow getting to us all weekend and I'd be lying if I said it didn't annoy me! We were late for our reservation at Mikado's, at teppan yaki restaurant, so instead, we were treated to waiting in the "your table isn't ready" section with a handful of other groups. All of them girls. Apparently, Palm Desert is a chick magnet of a location! Seriously, the ratio of girl groups to guy groups was like 4:1. Crazy. The place was full of bachelorette parties and we watched as this cocky threesome of guys hopped from group to group. They finally reached us and made it very clear that they were a-holes. There's always the spokesperson of the group who is usually a giant jackass. This was no exception. Mr. Jackass decided not only to insult married people (the nerve!) but make the incorrect observation that we all have the same hair. Christina told him we were from University of Wisconsin Law School. He was pretty floored by that false fact. He was also quite confused when Jenna flipped him off as we walked away when our table was called. Clearly, he's never listened to himself talk. We got a good laugh from their pathetic attempts to woo us. Whoop-de-doo!
All of us girls, "all with the same hair." What?! If anything, we all have complementing outfits -- we SO didn't plan these colors!!
Christina and Annie - seriously, how pretty are my friends?!
Jenna, Megan, me and Gretchen just before we finally got our table.
Finally at the big fiery table, about to order.
Jenna and Christina with an itty bitty bottle of something delicious.
The chef threw shrimp and gave everyone a chance to catch it in their mouths. I sucked at it and unfortunately saw many potentially delicious shrimp go wasted, meeting the dirty, slippery floor for their final resting place.
Jenna, however, was a champ.
After dinner, the plan was to head on over to Costa's and dance... but we ate too much and our tummies were too full by the time our dinner ended at 11:30 so we headed back to the hotel instead. I guess we went from High School Girls Gone Wild to High School Girls Gone MILD. But, as it always does, everything worked out and we spent the rest of the night in our PJs in the living room, dishing about boys, high school and jobs. By 2:30, we conked out and checked off another successful day all together.
Annie winds down with a magazine.
Christina gets "in touch."
Jenna and I veg out on the couch.
The next morning, we packed up, talked about how awesome our weekend had been and headed out to brunch. But before we left... a picture!
Annie gives thumbs up to a fantastic 2 days.
We got to the main JW property and Jenna found herself enchanted with the tropics birds on the way to the restaurant.
This guy was chatty! He kept saying "waaaaaaater." Thirsty AND chatty!
Jenna IS the Bird Whisperer.
We made it to brunch! We had a pretty table that overlooked one of the lakes. We could see black swans and ducks! A duck even joined us at our feet:
Some of us opted for the big breakfast buffet and others ordered off the lunch menu. I think we were all pretty stuffed!! Here we are after enjoying our meals, realizing we didn't have too many more opportunities for photos!! Panic set in and we got camera-happy again!
We got back to our cars, traded lots of hugs, and made big promises about meeting more often for girl getaway weekends. We all drove off and that was that.
WRONG.
Annie and I decided to check out the killer sale at JCrew on El Paseo one more time. We shopped for about 45 minutes and when we got back into the car at about 2pm to leave for good, we noticed we both had messages from Christina. Poor girl left a bracelet in the hotel room AND on her way back to reclaim it, noticed her car was overheating. Ugh.
We met our pal at a Mobil station off the freeway. Good thing she hadn't gotten very far when she turned around to go back to the hotel. And even better that Annie and I were still in Palm Desert! We arrived at the gas station to see the hood of her Jetta up and a swarm of men of all ages helping out our damsel in distress. This is when it pays off to be cute when having car trouble. Tons of nice people helped, but there wasn't much anyone could do after many attempts to cool down the car. So, AAA towed the car to a mechanic place -- the only one open at 3pm on a Sunday! -- and we waited there for a while.
But "a while," I mean 5 hours. At 6pm, the really nice mechanic guys, who stayed an hour and a half after the shop closed and official store hours were over, they determined they couldn't fix it and the problem was more complicated than tweaking a couple parts here and there. We had waited for 3 hours and kept each other semi-sane by thinking about dream cars and warding off a gigantic cockroach that scurried around the floor (ew gross!), but even by the end, we'd lost our minds and just decided that the car would be towed to the dealer the next morning. After flip flopping on decisions about where Christina goes -- back with us or stay overnight, stranded in the hot desert with no car and no for-sure knowledge of when she'd have one again -- Christina chose to drive back with us.
First we stopped back at the hotel and were able to get into our room. As we searched for the bracelet, I found my bra that I had apparently left on the floor! I never do that kind of stuff! And then Annie looked up on the TV and there was the bracelet. Yay! The car may be a failure, but at least we had success back in the hotel room. And total bonus that I found something I didn't even realize I'd lost!
Finally, our journey back to 80 degree weather began. We made pretty good time -- about 2.5 hours. We were beat!
It all worked out okay and Christina has some car woes ahead of her, but Annie and I were just so glad we could be there to help her. But whoa, what a way to end a fantastic weekend!
And it WAS a fantastic weekend! We had such a great time and we're SO getting together again in the next few months. This weekend made me realize how lucky I am to have these girls in my life - some back in again, after a long geographic-separation. And while we don't all live in the same town, or even state, we're not THAT far away from each other that we can't have quarterly gatherings! Here's to many more girls weekends! If that were a toast, Annie would definitely hook it up much better. ;)
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