We drove down to SoCal on 12/27.  It had been awhile since we drove during the holidays and we had forgotten how busy the traffic was.  We made it to the grandparents after 7+ hours of driving.  As soon as we settled in, we started opening the presents grandparents had for us, and it was like a second Christmas as we all received many.  We then had the dinner Grandma prepared for us.  After dinner, the boys broke into their first toy, ie. remote controlled bumper cars, and they were entertained by that for quite a long time.

   The next few days we wanted to hang out and spend time with the grandparents.  We did have a couple of outings during the day.  Grandma and us went to the movie to see Coco.  This was the first time for us sitting in a theater with recliners and it was definitely a plus.  We also enjoyed the movie and some of us shed some tear toward the end of the movie too. 

   On another day, we decided to check out the Griffin Observatory where the boys and I had never been to, and Grandma came along with us.  When we arrived, we realized how crazy busy this place was.  We drove a long time looking for parking and Stuart finally decided to drop us off.  It turned out that he could not find parking even down in the hills below, so we figured that Grandma, the boys and I had to tour the place on our own.  The boys were very disappointed that daddy was not there, but we did our best to look through the exhibitions.  We skipped the planetarium show due to the timing of it.  The one thing the boys were quite interested in was measuring our weights in different planets; we had a good laugh from that.  When we went through all the exhibition rooms, we were ready to walk out to meet Stuart at our drop off place.  The phone reception was very poor; but Stuart and I managed to communicate periodically.  It turned out that they closed the road and he could not come up to pick us up.  So the four of us had to eventually walk down the hill to find him; fortunately the walk was better than I was worried about.  When we finally saw Stuart waiting by the car, the boys ran all the way to him and we all were so happy.  Poor Stuart was driving around so much and was feeling guilty not able to come back to us; he wished he could have go back in time and picked Santa Monica for our outing instead.  I think the observatory was nice and we just have to find another non holiday day to return.

    The grandparents also treated us to dinner out a couple of the nights.  The boys really enjoyed spending time with them.  This was a nice trip and it was good to see grandparents doing well.