California 2012

The very first day of summer break we loaded our little family into our car and started the 15 hr drive to Southern California to visit our families.  My brother in law Jon got an internship for the summer with a law firm in LA so we took the opportunity to go see them as well as Brian's family.

We were very excited to see everyone but I think Van was more excited about all of the swimming! (We swam every day but one).  We planned to stay in a hotel halfway and made sure it had a pool;)

Cousins!  They hadn't seen each other in over a year so they had to get reacquainted.  It didn't take long for Carson to decide he was enthralled with Van.  He LOVED hugging Van!  Van liked the first hug but then didn't really understand why Carson kept wanting more.  It was funny, he would look at me and say "get him off of me mommy".  HA!  They had some very sweet moment and not a whole lot of conflict so over all they did pretty well together.

On Sunday afternoon Jon and Amy offered to watch Van so Brian and I could have some alone time.  We wandered around and ended up at the LA Temple.  We came here over 7 years ago when we were dating and a grounds keeper told Brian I was a keeper and he should bring me back someday as his wife.  Mission accomplished sir!

More cousin time...

One morning we went to the Zoo.  The boys held hands most of the drive over there;)

I LOVED this baby orangutan.  He was my favorite part of the whole zoo.  I MAY have embarrassed Brian and Amy with my gushing over him but look at him! Seriously SO cute!

Lunch!

Carson was very happy when we finally let him out of his stroller.

More swimming (I told you we went every day).  Van actually got very brave, for him, and swam BY HIMSELF with a noodle!

Getty Museum..

Unfortunately we weren't great about taking pictures.  There were a lot of activities we did with Jon, Amy and Carson that were not documented (like Zuma beach for one) and we didn't take a SINGLE picture with Brian's family!  I'm pretty upset about that one.  I just thought Brian would take pictures and I think he didn't know where the camera was.  Van had a blast seeing all of Brian's family (so did we).  He got to see Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle Craig, Aunt Marsha and several cousins.  He loved the backyard at Grandpa and Grandma's house.  Probably because they have a pool and a "hot pool" (hot tub).  It was a LONG time in the car but totally worth it.