California Weekend in Review

For those of you who have made the rounds and perused our families' and friends' blogs, you've seen that we spent last weekend in Los Angeles. I had been out there all last week for work and Vivian and Marielle met me on Thursday for the actual weekend. We stayed with Viv's cousin Leah's family and got a chance to see Viv's Aunt, Uncle, Grandmother, and their respective families. In addition to rendering our likenesses in Wii gamespace, we also managed to have a nice dinner out with our entire extended LA family, visit Disneyland, and simply relax with family.


We had a lot of fun at dinner at one of Viv's Aunt's favorite restaurants. It was great seeing Marielle get to see everyone. Viv and I are always telling each other that we love the fact that on both sides of our family we are getting to see relatives more often. I love that Marielle's earlier memories will include so many people.

On Saturday, we went to a brunch buffet with Goofy and friends at Disneyland. Marielle got to meet quite a few Disney regulars such as: Goofy, Pluto, Mulan, Chip & Dale, Wendy, and Baloo. She recognized a few of them, and we were relieved to find that she wasn't terrified of any of them. In fact, she seemed to like the giant bobble-headed characters (like Goofy) even more than the people in wigs and costumes (like Wendy). We spent the rest of the day hitting up all the key attractions at Disneyland and California Adventures. The kids had an awesome day.

We had really been looking forward to this trip because we've been curious to see Marielle play with Lacy and Anjali. This visit was Marielle's first time meeting little Anjali, and the last two times she's seen Lacy, there was only time for them to sit next to each other while we all met for dinner. Marielle had fun tickling Anjali's feet and rocking her in her bouncy seat. Marielle and Lacy are similar in a lot of ways. They are both little balls of energy. Like Leah says in her latest post, they spent most of their time "parallel playing." This was probably a good thing because together they'd be a force to be reckoned with. Lacy introduced Marielle to her Disney Princess figurine set and they watched some Dora and Backyardigans together.