We went down to southern CA over the weekend to help celebrate Grandma’s 70th birthday.  I was so traumatized after our last drive back that I was worried about the long drive again.  Fortunately it went well this time.  Stuart did such an awesome job that it only took 5 hours of driving time for both trips.  We drove down on Saturday morning; both kids had 2 naps each and we stopped once to have lunch.  During the drive, Logan was content looking outside and having snacks.  I ended up showing him videos only the last hour.  Connor was happy just hanging out when he was not sleeping. 

     We got to the grandparents’ house at a great time in the afternoon.  We spent the rest of the day playing with grandparents.  Logan and even Connor warmed up to grandparents relatively quickly.  The next day, Sunday, we played some more with the grandparents and had a stroll at a local park, then the evening we all met up at Proud Bird to have a birthday dinner for Grandma.  We had a wonderful meal with grandparents, Andrew, Julie, Trevor and Jake.  We then headed home to have birthday cake to wrap up the celebration.  The cousins got a chance to spend a little time together to bond.  It was a great evening.

     Besides spending times with grandparents on the last day, Monday, we went for another stroll at the local park since Logan loved climbing on the rocks.  In the afternoon, the weather was decent so we decided to go to Manhattan beach.  It was fun walking on the pier, then hang out on the sands.  This was the first time for Connor at the beach and he had a good time watching all the happenings.  Logan enjoyed watching the waves, chasing the pigeons, making sand castles and kicking up the sands.

     We drove back home after dinner on Monday.  Logan and Connor both fell asleep shortly after we started.  Logan woke up 3 hours later and got upset when I denied his request for videos.  But he did calm down quickly with the offer of snacks.  The rest of the way he was content just holding my hand and staring at the darkness.  Stuart finally decided to stop once at Gilroy to get some gas.  Connor woke up by the light at the gas station, but he stayed up just enough to have a bowel movement .  We got home at 1am and all of us were happy the drive ended.  After hanging out for a bit and saying hi to Scottie, Stuart and I did the bedtime routine for the kids and everyone went to bed soundly afterward.  Click here to look at some of our photos from this fun trip.