Baby Shane: Our Big Vacation, Part 2

I took an entire week off of work to visit both of my brothers. Our big vacation started with Grandma Linda, Shane, and I driving down to Southern CA to visit my brother Kevin, his wife Kathy, and my niece Samantha. I was really looking forward to this trip since I had never been to my brother's house before and we so rarely get to see them. It was a 7 hour car ride and Shane did so good. I was really impressed that we didn't have one single meltdown or temper tantrum the whole way there!!

Kevin and Kathy have a beautiful house and yard. It was so nice to be outside on the patio enjoying the beautiful Southern CA weather. Samantha and Shane may not look like they are having too much fun in this picture, but they were!

Samantha LOVES cats and she let Shane help her line them all up so they could count how many she has. Samantha was being really sweet with Shane. He loves to be a big helper! She had over 70!!

ALL MINE!!!

The next day we went drove about an hour to go to the Los Angeles Zoo. We were really looking forward to it since Shane had never been to the zoo before. We left the beautiful 85 degree weather to venture into 100 degrees. Shane refused to sit in the stroller after the first 5 minutes and demanded that Mama be the only one to carry him. Then we walked really far up hill to get to the train, only to find out it was closed. It was smelly and hot and there were bees everywhere. Needless to say it was pretty miserable, we didn't take any pictures and left after having lunch...and a beer or two! Here is the only photo we had taken at the front gate...Samantha already looked miserable!

Once we got back to the house we busted out the slip 'n slide and Shane had fun pretending to shoot the hose.

The next day we went to the beach and it was wonderful! Southern CA beaches are soo much nicer than Northern CA beaches. We brought a couple other kids with us that day and they all had a blast digging holes and running up and down the beach. Shane even played in the ocean for the very first time. He LOVED it and kept saying "MORE, MORE!" I wish we could have gotten that on video!

My surfer boy!

Let's see if this sand tastes like the sand back home...

Shane's first sand castle

Uncle Kevin and Shane taking a break in the shade

Checking out the BIG hole the kids made

We got back to the house and all the big kids were really sweet to Shane and included him in all the fun they were having. They even took turns pulling him around in a tiny wagon. He thought it was great!