Hi guys and happy Monday after spring break to you all! I know that some people are only just starting their spring breaks now (jealous) but my kids all had their spring break last week so here’s a recap post detailing our trip to the JW Marriott Starr Pass Resort & Spa in Tuscon, Arizona!

First some background info on how this trip came to be: back in January-ish, J & I were talking about trips for this year and any potential travel plans and obviously, spring break came up. The thing is, work is always busy for J but it’s especially busy during the first six months of the year so taking time off for a random week in the spring would be hard for him. I threw out the idea of going back to the JW Marriott in Los Cabos because pre-COVID, that was our favorite family vacation spot and a resort I was really familiar with. My pitch was that he could work in the hotel room while I take the kids down to the pool and he could pop in/out as needed and then join us for dinners or evening swims. This is actually something we’ve done before but flipped when I was still working at Stitch Fix. I didn’t take any time off but we still went to Mexico and I would work in the mornings while J was down at the pool with the kids so it was something we knew would be doable with just one parent supervising. But back in January, the Omicron surge was rampant (we were actually just coming off the heels of recovering from COVID ourselves) and J was a little nervous about potentially being stuck in Mexico if something crazy happened and the borders closed. So then we started looking at destinations that would have warm weather in end of March and Arizona came up .. one thing led to another, and we found ourselves booking four nights in Tuscon, Arizona. Then, a couple weeks later we were talking to some close friends from church about spring break and we sort of threw out – “Hey you guys wanna come join us in Tuscon?” And .. again, one thing led to another and we had some of our favorite people coming to spring break with us! I’ve never really vacationed with family friends before (other than one other family that we did San Diego with a few years ago and Tahoe with our little main social group of church friends) so I was looking forward to this experience.

Now, have I ever been to Tuscon? No. Do I really know anything at all about Tuscon? Also, no. Was I still ready/excited to just get away with my kids and spend a few days in a hotel with a pool? Absolutely.

day 1

We flew out on Sunday and spent most of the day traveling in airports.

We had one layover (I don’t even remember where … Vegas?) and after getting our rental car and driving to the resort, we arrived at just about dinner time. The nice thing about traveling with (somewhat) older kids is that they can totally entertain themselves in the airport. Gone are the days of chasing an unruly toddler up & down the aisles! Also- A’s headphones broke during the first leg of our flight so during our layover, I let her pick out a new set of headphones from the nearby gift shop. Of course she chose the crazy Disney princess one that had a crown on top of it LOL. #notsurprised

When we arrived at our resort, we bumped into our friends that we were spending spring break with – they’d arrived about an hour or two before we did. We weren’t sure how arrival/flight times for both our families were gonna pan out so we’d both made separate dinner plans for the first night but it still was nice to see each other!

day 2

Day 2 was when the real fun began! We had breakfast with our friends … table for 10 please! 😂 I love that the family we were traveling with also has three kids that are the exact ages as mine. Our oldests are born the same year but are in different grades because of what months their birthdays fall in; our middles are birthday TWINS born the same day; our youngests are three weeks apart. It makes for surprisingly harmonious mealtimes because every child has a buddy/friend to stay busy with while the grownups chat and eat.

After breakfast our friends set out to sight see in Tuscon a bit but my kids were SO excited to head down to the lazy river so that’s what we did! The lazy river is the most exciting part of this resort 😂 And it really is lazy! People take naps, just float around, drink, lay out …. all on the lazy river.

There’s also a water slide connected to it! The big kids went STRAIGHT to it whereas A took a little bit of convincing. But once she got a taste for it, she was unstoppable!

Our rooms directly overlooked the lazy river so it was convenient for J to pop out and see the kids having fun (or watch them for me from above while I run to the bathroom, etc). See if you can spy us in this pic he took from our rooms.

I got to enjoy a frozen margarita (or two… or three) and read my book a bit. It was blissful.

Oh and here’s a close up of my spring break press-ons! I’ve been saving this set to wear for this exact trip for MONTHS now but…. I feel like I sort of messed them up. They were originally a square shape that felt a little wide and bulky so I tried to reshape them to almond. But I don’t love how they turned out 😬 The good news is that for better or for worse, they stayed on the entire trip, though!

Sometime around lunch, our friends came back from exploring and joined us in the pool. Our kids had SO. MUCH. FUN. Vacationing with friends > vacationing alone … but only if you’re with the right people I think. (And we were definitely with the right people!)

They swam and swam and swam until they were all swimmed out and it was time to head back to our respective rooms for showers and dinner. Single file line, little duckies!

Dinner was at a Taiwanese-style noodle place and SOOO what we all needed after a day in the sun. The weather in Tuscon was hot (temps in the 90s) but the pools were not heated and there was a dry desert wind/breeze which made it chilly if you weren’t actively moving in the pool. Warm soupy noodles was just what the day called for!

Of course, A passed out HARD in the car ride over to the restaurant (as did the other 4-year old that belonged to our friends 😂).

After dinner, everyone headed back to our room (or one of our rooms, since we had two connecting rooms) for a kids’ movie night.

day 3

Day 3 we decided to break things up a bit (for us) and join our friends on their morning sight seeing excursion. We all piled into our respective rental cars and drove over to the Saguaro National Park to look at some cacti! The back of our resort actually was connected to this national park so it wasn’t a far drive at all.. and everywhere you looked, it was just miles and miles of cacti & dirt 😂

Two tiny besties

And then there was a visitor’s center for the park that we checked out too.

We looked around, shopped in the gift shop a bit … then YOU GUESSED IT – headed back to the resort for more pool time! I don’t have that many pictures of the bigger kids because I literally had no idea where they were half the time. LOL. They only popped up when they were hungry and wanted a snack or needed to use the bathroom.

After swimming, we did the shower/heading out for dinner routine again. The dinner spot for this day was a creole/cajun restaurant that Yelp gave SUPER high ratings to so we were excited to try it out! Unfortunately, they only had 5pm reservations available for a party of our size (which is kind of early) and we weren’t super hungry for dinner. That said, we all pretty much demolished our food so I think that’s a testament to the restaurant.

Of course, A knocked out in the car on the way there.. again. If you haven’t figured it out, this pretty much happened every single day.

Okay, here’s where things took an unexpected turn 😂 After dinner, everyone went to their own hotel rooms to put on jammies/get ready to play video games together in our kids’ hotel room. Well, as we were getting ready after dinner, one of my kids says that the water in the toilet won’t go down. Basically, the toilet in our kids’ hotel room (that’s connected to ours) overflowed. With poop water. Which is 🤢🤢 SO FREAKING GROSS. We called Front Desk and asked them to send help, took all the towels/robes from BOTH of our connecting rooms to try and soak up the water, and even then the poop water was overflowing to the point that it started spilling into the room itself. Needless to say, we were NOT going to be using that room and J was NOT happy about the situation so he went down to talk to someone who could help make things right for us.

We’d reserved two connecting rooms and they didn’t have any more of those available so the only thing they could give us was … the luxury suite! On the top floor 🤩 The bellhop who helped move our luggage told us that room (plus one other) has THE best views of the entire resort. I took a picture the next day and he wasn’t lying!

Anyway, that was an adventure that I wasn’t expecting. I’d say that all’s well that ends well BUT the new “luxury suite” they gave us also didn’t have great plumbing. One of the sinks had a hard time draining so if you brushed your teeth, you’d have to stare at the spit up toothpaste swirling around slowly in the sinkful of water. Gross. After our experience here, I don’t think we’ll be back to this resort but our stay overall was fine for what it was.

day 4

Day 4, I started the morning like I did every day of my vacation (and I know I haven’t mentioned it until now but I forgot to) – the gym! I got up at basically 7 am (or earlier) every morning and spent an hour in the gym stretching and doing cardio. It was a good way to keep my blood pumping for an otherwise pretty lazy vacation!

I’d also like to say that since I’m usually awake at 5am when I’m at home, most of this trip I’d wake up thinking “geez, I’m so well rested, what time is it?” only to see that it was 545 am or 630 am or something like that. So getting to the gym at 7 wasn’t too hard of a thing for me to do (in case any of you are wondering why I’d want to do that to myself on vacation).

After the gym, I went to my room to get my kids and we all headed down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast with our friends again. We all ate breakfast at the SAME hotel restaurant every day – the deal was too good! The kids could do an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet (with ALL the good things like pancakes, waffles, bacon, etc) for $10 and the littlest ones under 5 got the same buffet for FREE.

Our friends surprised their daughter with BTS TICKETS at this breakfast … it was their last day with us in Tuscon. They were headed to Las Vegas later that day for the concert! She was super excited and it was so sweet 🥺

Because they were leaving in a few hours and I was going to be without the help of two additional adults this day, we opted to spring for the bougie private cabana so that J could work poolside. It was shaded, had TV with cable, extra outlets for computers/devices, and snacks. I loved it 🙂

A also loved popping in & out of the tent curtains.

The other mom and I were also able to steal away to the spa for massages on this day before her family loaded up and left Tuscon. It was a WAY nicer spa than I was anticipating and that’s probably my one & only regret of this trip – that I didn’t get to spend longer in the spa. They had a jacuzzi, steam room, private pool, “quiet room”…. it was so nice. They gave us in & out privileges so I COULD have stayed as long as I wanted but since our friends were leaving, if I spent all day in the spa that would leave my kids alone with J who was technically still working and I felt bad.

After our massages, it was time for our friends to say goodbye. One of my kids cried because they were sad our friends were leaving… I won’t say who but it was a he 😂

We spent the rest of the afternoon in the pool. Work slowed down just enough for J to swim with the kids a bit and we both tried out the water slide (tons of fun, I wish they had bigger ones!) before it was time to get ready for dinner. My kids always get SO tan when we go on vacation. I used to tan like that when I was a kid too but now as an adult, I pretty much stay pale and just go through varying shades of white 😂 It’s not for lack of effort though!

We had reservations at this very popular steakhouse in Tuscon – it was voted best of Tuscon for several years and we were VERY excited. I got dressed up 🙂

The restaurant was in a really … strange area? J warned me – don’t judge a book by its cover! But it was sort of in the middle of nowhere in a random strip mall that had apartment complexes all around it. Odd.

And are we at all surprised that A passed out? She didn’t wake up for a solid hour.. which kind of worked out because the restaurant was running way behind on reservations so we ended up waiting for awhile even though we had a reservation at 630.

By the time we actually sat, ordered, and our food came … WE WERE STARVING. The food was good but J & I both think House of Prime Rib here in SF is better so .. you know. It’s not like we’d travel to Tuscon again for this steak.

I’d say that out of the entire meal, the rolls were actually the best part. They were buttery and flaky and REALLY good.

Then we went back to our rooms and the kids watched another movie in their jammies before calling it a night.

day 5

This was our last day at the resort; we thought we’d have time to swim some more in the morning since our flight wasn’t until the afternoon but with our room change, the resort wasn’t able to accommodate a late check out like they originally said they could. #annoying. So we just all hung out in the hotel room after breakfast until it was time to head to the airport. I tried to read on the balcony but the sun got unbearably hot after three minutes 🙃

Then it was time to say goodbye and head home!

You know, the thing I noticed IMMEDIATELY after landing in the Bay Area was how the air smelled. It smelled striaght up sweet. Like flowers and trees. There really is no place like the coast 😍

thoughts & tips

So this wasn’t a part of my recap post that I was originally planning to do but someone DM’ed me on IG and asked me to share my thoughts on traveling with kids, particularly 2 kids versus 3. I am not a big travel-person… I actually hate traveling and it wasn’t until a few years ago that we actively started taking our kids on vacations. I’m probably NOT the right person to ask for advice on this but here is what I’ve learned from the last few years:

• If you have three kids, sometimes you won’t be able to fit everyone into one hotel room. I know, for example, Hawaii does not allow 5 people to stay in one room so if you have three kids, you will HAVE to book two rooms. Which is expensive 🙃 However, we generally prefer to book two connecting rooms regardless when we travel because with three kids, it just makes it easier to have one space that’s dedicated to them, and one space that’s dedicated to us (plus the extra bathroom is nice too!)
• I don’t think rental cars are affected much if you have two kids versus three … you can fit a family of 5 into any car that you could fit a family of 4 into (expect for maybe a sports car?) but one thing to consider is the amount of luggage you have. I am also sort of a chronic over-packer so that probably doesn’t help.
• Speaking of luggage, we have a lot as a family of 5 😂 All of us except for A had a carry-on size bag with all our things for this trip. A had a big check-in size bag because we had to pack her floatie and we put all our family’s liquids into her bag, too, since it would be checked in anyway. When the kids were little, it was definitely a little harder to manage all that luggage. We’d get a luggage cart balancing all our bags that J would handle, and I’d have to wrangle the three kids alone. But now that they’re older, it’s totally not an issue. Everyone carries their own bag except, duh, A – but she’s probably very close to being able to manage her own bag in the next year or so.
• Flying on a plane with three kids is also different than flying with two but NOT THAT DIFFERENT, IMO. When it was just our older two kids with us, J would fly with both kids and I’d sit separate (since most planes sit three in a row). We considered it a little mini vacay for mama 😂 That didn’t always work so well since inevitably, kids want their moms so sometimes we’d do 2 and 2 on the plane. That wasn’t really a favorite for me either since I hate talking/sitting next to strangers. Now traveling with three kids, I actually sit with two kids so that I am not next to any strangers and J sits with one child + a stranger. Which kids we’re each sitting with changes depending on mood/need. This trip, I sat with the younger two on the way to Tuscon and then swapped out for the older two on the way back home.
• The thing you have to remember if you’re trying to compare traveling with two kids versus three is that unless you’re literally having your babies back to back, by the time your third kid is born your oldest one WILL be somewhat independent/able to handle themselves. Other than number of luggage bags and potentially needing a second hotel room for certain destinations, I don’t think much changes from 2 to 3 kids. If you’re a family that loves to travel, you’ll most likely travel and make it work no matter how many kids you have, you know?
• Lastly, this advice doesn’t really have anything to do with traveling but I always tell mommy friends who are debating on having that third baby that if they’re even thinking about doing it, they should do it. Nobody ever regrets having that one more child when they’re old and grey. And in my personal experience, having three kids is/was WAY easier than having just the two. The older two play with each other and are helpful with the baby (versus when you have two kids, it’s often a toddler and newborn – both of which are very dependent on you and needy). There is a bit of shifting from man-on-man to zone-defense juggling happening when you’re numbered by your kids but honestly, as a SAHM most of my days I was outnumbered with just two kids anyhow so adding the third didn’t make things any crazier in that aspect. Hope that was helpful for anyone who was curious!

Tell me, how was YOUR spring break if you had it!? And if you’re just now on spring break, what are your plans for this week!?