A full day with old friends (Day 6 in California)

We woke up to my friend Alice knocking on our hotel door. Olivia has been sleeping great in her pack-n-play while I sleep in the bed in the same room, however, she woke up at 5:30am but luckily went back to sleep cuddled in bed with Sofia and me until Alice's knock! It was 9am and Alice took Sofia with her to her parent's house while Olivia and I got ready. After we were dressed, we headed over to Alice's parent's house which is just a few miles from where we were staying. We hung out at her parent's house and visited with her Dad and saw her Mom briefly before we returned to the hotel. Alice, Joe and their kids Grayden and Audrey would be spending one night in the hotel so we could spend the whole day together. Alice and I became good friends through our kids. Grayden and Sofia have known each other since they were just a few months old and we spend nearly every day together in DC. Now they live in Honolulu and love that we were able to spend some time together, although we're hoping to get over to visit them before they had back to the mainland. It's been great watching our two kids grow up and they played very well together and included Audrey.

Alice and her family spent the two previous days at Legoland and brought a Lego dinosaur kit for Sofia's birthday present. Sofia has never shown an interest in Legos, but as soon as she got it, she opened it up and started putting her dinosaur together! She was a lot better at it than I expected too! Sofia gave Grayden a few dinosaurs that we got at Target (she picked the same three she has) but he wasn't that into them. I think Audrey liked them better. I'm thinking his dinosaur-loving days are about to arrive though!

We ate lunch at this great little hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant called Casa de Lago. It was inexpensive and delicious. After lunch, we returned to our hotel, changed into our swimsuits and swam. It felt great! Olivia was super tired but pitched a fit when I tried to lay her down instead of allowing her to swim. So, she swam for about 30 minutes and then I laid her down. She slept like a rock and we were able to continue swimming thanks to Alice's baby monitor. Sofia and Audrey pretended like they were alligators and crawled around on all fours, growling and trying to eat us.

After swimming, we headed over to Boccoli's for an Italian dinner of salads and pastas. It was great and was just what we all needed. However, we ordered one of their "famous" strawberry shortcakes and it was amazing! I'm not usually a strawberry shortcake fan, but this was incredible! I could have eaten one all by myself! After dinner, we headed back to our cute hotel, got the kiddos ready for bed and hung out for a bit before going to bed.

Sofia and Grayden

Our little fish

At dinner

Waiting for their spaghetti to arrive

The littlest spaghetti eater

Yum!

Love the look of determination on her face!