We went to visit Safari Park on the 28th.  There were lots of people there too, but It felt less crowded than Legoland as this place was so spread out.  Connor had spotted the tram early on, and so he kept asking for “Choo Choo”.  We tried to head over to do the tram ride first, but we enjoyed seeing the animals and the scenery on the way.  Logan enjoyed running in the wooden structures as he called them the “forts”.  The scene of the safari was beautiful from the upper deck.  We probably waited an hour at the tram station before we finally got on; fortunately the boys were doing fine and playing in the stroller while waiting.  The tram ride was quite nice and informative.  I tried to tell Logan to listen to the guide telling us the stories about the animals, but his attention span was short.  He later got interested in taking pictures with my camera instead, and I have to say that the pictures he took were not bad.  Connor enjoyed looking at the animals; he was waving to them as Stuart pointed them out to him.  Finally the last 10 minutes of the tram ride, Connor looked so tired that he eventually fell asleep laying on Stuart.  After tram ride, since Connor was still sleeping, we decided that I would wait in line to buy lunch.  Logan chose to stay in the stroller and he too fell asleep in a fetal position.  After the long wait to grab lunch, we woke the kids up to enjoy it in the beautiful outdoor eating area. 

    Since Connor had missed the end of the tram ride, he kept asking for choo choo the remaining of our stay there.  We managed to distract him to look at other animals.  By two something in the afternoon, we were tired from all the walking, so we started heading out and planned for our drive back to the grandparents.

   This is a video of the boys being silly with each other while waiting in line.

     We took our time in the hotel on the morning of the 27th as we read that Legoland is open at 10am.  When we arrived at the park, we then learned that the park had been opened for an hour (since 9am) and the lines of cars was very long.  We were all excited as soon as we entered, and we got in a line for the Safari Ride.  We waited around 40 minutes, but the ride was not too impressive.  We started strolling around the park, and the boys enjoyed playing at the playground and building Legos.  Logan built airplanes and guns quite quickly.  Afterward, I wanted to ride the Sky Cruiser, but we opted out as the wait was 1.5 hours long.  There was a holiday decorated area and even a snow playground.  Since our boys never played with snow, we waited in line for it.  While we were waiting, I tried to talk the boys into trying the sled, but neither of them were interested.  Logan wanted to throw snow balls and Connor wanted to play with snowman; thus we went straight for snowballs when it was our turn.  Both Logan and Connor had fun throwing.  Logan was polite, making sure that he would not throw when there were people in his way.  Once Connor slid on ice and fell on his bottom, he got a bit sad, so he and I moved onto the snowman area.  He enjoyed trying to put a peg on different parts of the snowman.  The entire playtime was only ten minutes, but we all had a great time playing with snow.

    Afterward, we moved on to the Miniland where there were tons of Legos built displays.  Surprisingly Connor was really interested in them; he liked to just lean on the fence and stared at them for a long time.  According to Stuart, Logan was interested in the exhibits, but shortly after, the remote controlled boats got his attention instead.  They played with the boat for awhile while Connor spent his time on all the displays.  We then moved on to the Star Wars areas that captured all three boys’ attention.  After that we broke for lunch but that took a long time as the park was very crowded everywhere.

     Right after lunch, we finally ran into the Merons.  Logan and Connor were happy and surprised to see Bar and Raz, but Logan’s first question was “where is Rohan?”  We just let the kids played with each other for awhile, then we migrated to the playgrounds for them to do some climbing.  There were just too many people that we pulled the kids out eventually for an ice cream break.  Afterward, Logan was interested to try the Royal Joust, so Revital, Bar, Logan and I got in line for it.  The 50 minutes wait went by fine as Bar and Logan had fun playing with each other.  They both enjoyed the ride very much; Logan immediately asked if he could ride that again.  During that hour, Stuart had taken Connor along with Guy and Raz to a couple of kiddie rides.  The first one was an airplane one that Connor liked and he tried to tell me about it afterward.  The second one was a ride that took them up and down while sitting with their legs dangling.  Apparently Connor did not like that ride and even buried his face on Stuart’s arm as he was scared.  He also said “no more, stop”, and he told Stuart that he did not like it when he was asked about it after the ride.

    The last activity we did there was a giant slide.  Bar and Raz wanted to try it, and surprisingly Logan was interested too and so was Connor, so Stuart took both boys to get in line.  I was quite nervous waiting for them as I wondered how Logan would do and hoped that Connor would be safe sliding with Stuart.  But it turned out that kids had to slide by themselves, so all of them had their individual bean bags.  While they were getting ready on top and I was taking pictures from the bottom, two women next to me were talking “Look at that little boy on the left, he is so little!  Wonder how old he is?”.  I answered their question, and their comment definitely did not calm me.  Fortunately they all did well.  Logan came down first, the girls, then Stuart and Connor came down side by side.  Connor did well, stayed sitting up during the slide.  They were all happy when I went to greet them.  By then it was close to 5pm and we had made plan to go visit the Tashiros, so we said our goodbyes to the Merons.  There were still a lot of things to do in the park that we could not get to due to the crowds, I guess we just have to return again in the future.

     Since the kids were so excited the entire day, they did not take a nap at all.  Therefore, they both fell asleep during the 15 minutes car ride to the Tashiros.  The boys enjoyed playing at their house while we chatted with Yoko and Emily.  When Greg arrived home, we all went out for dinner.  Logan chose to sit next to Yoko during dinner, and he was very good following Yoko’s advice to eat his dinner.  We all had a full meal and enjoyed the company; we finally said our goodbyes and returned to the hotel to end the late night.

     On the 26th, we spent the morning with grandma and grandpa, then during the boys’ naptime, we drove down to San Diego.  We checked in to the hotel, then started our little excursion.  We first went to UCSD to let Stuart re-visit his old school.  Stuart pointed out to us where his dorm and his classes were.  We took a walk inside the bookstore and picked up a few souvenirs, then walked around the campus too.  We then drove to the La Jolla coastline; we enjoyed a quick sightseeing there in the cold, and we managed to catch the beautiful sunset.  The boys were being a great tourists there while using their toy binoculars from Grandma.  Afterward, we found a cute little Korean restaurant on the second floor in downtown La Jolla for dinner.  It was nice and cozy to have a meal while looking out into the downtown lighting.

   The boys had fun staying in the hotel.  They enjoyed watching TV in bed, and I also loved cuddling with Connor at night.  It did take a little bit longer for the kids to fall asleep as they would get up if they heard each other or other people in the hallway.  The hotel was very packed as there was a high school basketball event.  However, we did manage to find a table in the mornings for breakfast, and the food was good too.

     We drove down on the 24th to see grandparents.  Both kids were so excited and kept asking if we were there yet as soon as we got in the car.  I texted Michelle and they were around 15 minutes ahead of us, but since we had stopped for a brief gas fill up and stretch, we never caught up to the Kaos.  The drive was uneventful and we made it to the house in total of 6 hours.  Neither kid needed any warming up, they both went straight into the house to see the grandparents.  Connor loved saying “Grandma” and his pronunciation was quite good.  They had fun playing with grandma and grandpa the rest of the day. 

    On Christmas morning we all slept in just a little bit later than usual.  Logan was excited to open presents, but we suggested opening their stockings from Santa first while we ate breakfast prepared by Grandma.  Logan and Connor enjoyed the little toys especially the stuffed animals, chipmunk and eeyore.  Logan wanted to name chipmunk right away, “Chip”, and Chip also ended up replacing Teddy as Logan’s buddy for the next couple of days. 

    Logan was so thrilled when we were finally ready to open presents.  He went to look for ones with his name on it, opened it up quickly, studied what the gift was, then placed it nicely down on the table, and got ready for the next one.  He continued to pile up his presents into a stack and was pleased with the height of it.  Connor, on the other hand, did not really care to open his presents, he actually said “no” a couple of times.  He enjoyed handing presents for grandma and grandpa, or us, and helping all of us opening them.  He also liked cleaning up, bringing the wrappers into the trash bag.  After the fun hour of opening all the presents, the boys started to look through all the fun gifts from grandparents, us and their friends.  Logan enjoyed putting together a GI Joe toy (with the help of Stuart) and played with the Mobigo game from grandparents for a long time.   Connor liked his backpack, and played with the pots and pans set for awhile then onto a toy cashier from Yvonne.  Connor liked his backyardigans books from Dora so much that he even put them inside his blanket to go to sleep that night.  I am also a big winner for presents this year as one of my presents was a new touch screen laptop that I am using now to type my blog. 

     I happened to accidentally turn on the movie digest feature on my camera while I was taking pictures of our presents.  Here is a video of it.

    On Christmas evening, Andrew, Julie, Trevor and Jake came over to celebrate with us.  We had a nice chat catching up with everyone, enjoyed opening more presents, then had a wonderful dinner prepared by Grandma.  After dinner, we had tea and desserts while the boys playing with some new toys and Grandpa/Andrew playing with Grandpa’s new TV golfing game.  Logan and Connor also played a couple of silly games with uncle Andrew which they they had a blast doing.  We finally had to take the boys to bath, so we said goodnight to everyone and ended the wonderful Christmas Day.

BTW, the rest of the photos will be added to the photo album after Stuart helps me set up the apps on this laptop.

     The Tsaos invited all of us over for a holiday get-together tonight.  We arrived at their house at 4 something, and our boys were drawn into the movie showing, Pocahontas, immediately.  Later, the Changs and the Kaos arrived, and some kids migrated up to Peyton’s room to play.  Brandon and Peyton shared their toys nicely with everyone.  Logan loved playing with one of Brandon’s airplanes and he had us watch Teddy for him while he played with it.  Connor was more interested in eating snacks initially; he practically filled himself up with crackers and salami.  We then had a nice sit down dinner prepared by Dave along with some side dishes from Ted and Julie too.  All the kids ate their dinner relatively quickly, including the slower eaters too (Logan, Mckayla and Peyton), as they all wanted to return to playing. 

     After dinner, I was watching Connor, Mckayla, Brandon, Marcus and Peyton playing in Peyton’s room.  The kids were serving me a big meal with the toy food from the play kitchen.  They all played well together with just a couple of instances where I had to intervene as Connor was fighting for a toy with Marcus and then later with Peyton.  We then took a break for another highlight of the evening, ie. decorating the gingerbread man.  Robyn had made the cookies ahead of time, and prepared icing and toppings for the kids to use.  All the kids jumped right in to decorate with some help from the parents.  I was impressed that Logan did a great job remembering the designs from yesterday, and neatly drew the eyes, mouth, sleeves and pants with icing.  As soon as Connor was done decorating, he eyed me for permission to start eating the cookie.  Both Logan and Connor enjoyed eating the cookies (Logan even licked the icing) while some kids saved their cookies for later.

    While the kids returned to play upstairs or watched Polar Express, the adults had a chance to have our dessert, the chocolate mousse cake that I prepared.  Connor was the last one still engaged in the movie, and at some point, he looked over to us and asked for ice cream.  When I denied his request, he suddenly started crying sadly that I had to go over to give him a big hug.  We did a quick gift exchanges for the kids, then it was time to go home to end the night.  Thanks to the Tsaos for a wonderful evening and Stuart enjoyed his special beer.

     Tonight we attended a dinner party at Nilo’s house.  We were prepared with toys to entertain the boys as this was a higher grown-up-to-kids ratio party.  The entire evening, Logan was very content playing with his little plastic soldiers, and later watching the phone during eating.  Connor was good just hanging with us while we talked with others, and he ate well too.  I had a good time meeting some people, and also catching up with Nilo, Stacy and Tina.  We also had a chance to meet the new baby Sawyer.  Toward the end of the evening, Nilo and Tina tried to bribe Connor with presents and chips to eat in return for a picture with him.  Connor was persuaded by this argument.  The kids finally started to get silly about 8pm, so it was our time to say thanks and goodbye.