The One with Joey's First Road Trip - Destination: Indio

What a memorable day we had yesterday! We packed more fun and games into 16 hours than should be allowed.

It all started when our friends Blake and Erica Bybee (plus don't forget baby Brooklyn) decided to take advantage of their family timeshare and booked a room at the WorldMark resort in Indio, CA. They invited us and a few other couples to tag along and spend an entire weekend hanging out and relaxing. We were down with the plan but due to extenuating circumstances, we were only able to make it up for one day out of the allotted three. That's okay, we came, we saw, we conquered.

We loaded the car with our designated dinner night resources, clothes, PJs, snacks, iPods, cameras, oh, and Joey!He was such a good puppy the entire two hour drive. He sat on my lap for a bit.
Then became a wee bit tired.
So he fell asleep in his bed the rest of the way.
Melts my heart I tell ya!
We drove past more windmills than I know how to count.
Indio or bust!
Indio is a beautiful oasis smack dab in the middle of the desert.Pets technically aren't allowed on the premises so we had to be fairly discrete about Joey's presence...Who could ever get mad at this cute face?First thing's first: pool time. Of course in our rush to get out the door I forgot my swimsuit. Blast. Luckily Veronica had an extra pair of shorts and a tank top I borrowed. Spanks!We took a few laps around the lazy river, waded in the wading pool, and caught some sun rays on our all-too-white-to-be-true-Californian faces.
I looked up and saw a palm tree and life was good.
Speaking of nature, I ran across a bunch of interesting flora while walking around. Like this. And this.
And this.
Back at the room we let Joey out of the secluded bathroom and let him sleep out on the deck. Funny story, so Chris had to drive Joey "off campus" to let him relieve himself and as Chris was walking him around a big ol' truck drove by. The truck stopped, backed up, rolled the window down and yelled, "Hey, is that a Shiba Inu?"
"Affirmative."
"Is it a male"
"Affirmative."
"Is he a purebred?"
"Affirmative."
"Is he fixed?"
"Negative. He's only 8 weeks old."
"I have a female and a lot of people want Shiba puppies so can we get our dogs together?"
"Uhhhh. Well, we signed a contract with the breeder that said we won't let him reproduce so I'm afraid not. Sorry!"

Shoot. We coulda made some extra cash had we not signed that contract.

So anyways, Erica and Blake got to cookin' their assigned lunch meal: creamy chicken and rice deliciousness. Here's the whole Indio party, from left to right: Blake & Erica (Brooklyn was sleeping), Melissa & Ryan, Veronica & Brian (Mariah was sleeping), Chris & the woman behind the camera, ME!
Then we went outside and played some Botchi ball. I won TWICE! See see see, that's totally MY yellow ball closest to the small white ball.
I was proud.
As the sun was setting we ate our frozen Costco lasagna then we headed back out for more good times.
The boys played an interesting rendition of ping pong.
Mariah wanted to get in on the action!Meanwhile I was trying to figure out how to blog from my phone so I downloaded an application from the Google Market, logged in, and posted. However, after I published my post and the list of recently published posts flashed across my screen, I realized none of them started with "The One with..."... I had just posted my "we're having fun at Indio, be back later" post to the South Pasadena Relief Society blog which I am technically an author of! Ahhhh! How embarrassing! Luckily, there was an internet cafe in the main building so I ran over there, logged in, deleted the post, and correctly posted on my own blog. I hope no one saw that post the 5 minutes it was live. And since it's a private blog it shouldn't show up on Reader or anything. Crisis averted. Hopefully. Sheesh.
We concluding the evening by playing a few rounds of Partini, watching some football, eating some cookies, candy, snacks and all things junk, and just hanging out. At about 10:30pm I nudged Chris and said we'd better skedattle. We were originally planning on spending the night, we had our PJs and everything, but the more I thought about traffic in the morning, the more I felt we needed to get home. And so we all decided to pack 'em in and move 'em out. We made it home by 12:30am and now here we are. Thanks for the great time Blake and Erica, let's do it again real soon!