A kid-free weekend with The Rolling Stones

Last weekend my husband and I took a kid-free trip! Yes, we headed out without any of our children in tow. For an entire weekend! When I say it I still can hardly believe it. My wonderful mother-in-law flew across the country with the express purpose of watching the baby for us while my mom graciously agreed to take the older three kids for the weekend.  How lucky is that?!?

On Thursday morning my husband and I got everyone to daycare and school, packed up the truck and headed to Southern California. Living in the Wild West, we’ve gotten pretty good at long road trips. It’s a good nine-hour drive down to Southern California from where we live. I know some people cringe at the idea of such a long drive, but it was actually a nice excuse for us to spend the entire day together, just us. The drive was uneventful, we listened to music of our own choosing, talked to each other without interruption. No one cried. No one screamed. We stopped when we wanted to stop. We ate where we wanted to eat. (Actually, we ate mostly candy and junk because WHY NOT!?)

Our purpose for going to Southern California for this weekend was to attend Desert Trip, a three-day concert featuring Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, The Who and Roger Waters. We left our kids at home so we could go to a rock concert. Look at us! We’re so hip!

We rented a house, and do you know what we did during the day, before the concert started? We did nothing! Nothing at all! We sat at the house, ate, drank and hung out with each other and our wonderful friend who flew down to join us Thursday night. The three of us were totally carefree! 

The first night of the concert The Rolling Stones didn’t go on stage until close to 10 p.m. If I’m being totally honest, this is approaching my bedtime. I usually prefer to be in jammies, preparing to climb into my bed by 10 p.m., but this night we were at the polo grounds in Palm Springs waiting to see The Rolling Stones. The weather was beautiful, the music was outstanding.

We didn’t get back to the house until almost 2 a.m. Because I’m the mother of a 7-month-old and am still nursing part time, I had to fire up the old breast pump before heading to bed. So it was after 2 by the time I finally climbed into bed. I’m pretty sure the last time I saw 2 a.m. was the night I gave birth to Baby No. 4 (and even then, I took a nap while in labor because I love sleeping that much). 

But we were kid-free. So do you know what we did? We slept until 9:30 a.m.! And then we sat on the couch in our jammies, eating and drinking until it was time to go to the concert the next night. It was like I was living someone else’s life! It was glorious.

We had an easy drive home, again enjoying the time to have adult conversation. And after a few days away, it was wonderful to get home to little squeals and happy hugs from all the kids.