day five - happy 20 months!

For Matthew's 20 month mark, we decided to go visit the LA Zoo as they had a special Sesame Street theme with appearances from Grover, Ernie, and Bert. James lined up for the photo ops right when we entered the Zoo while Matthew and I checked out some animals nearby. The line up was about an hour long but it didn't seem that long as we got to explore some of the park by foot and it took Matthew a while to go from exhibit to exhibit as he got distracted by everything going around. As our turn approached, Matthew and I headed back to James so Matthew could sit in his stroller for some lunch that we had previously bought from Safeway. Surprise, surprise that James googled the closet Safeway to our hotel so we made it a routine every morning we were in Santa Monica to visit and pick up some breakfast sandwiches for the morning, pre-made sandwiches for lunch, and then some deli meat, cheese, crackers or bread and fruits for Matthew. It was actually a great idea on James' part to plan this as it saved us time and money with buying food before we did our excursions for the day and it was definitely a more healthy choice than what was offered at the places we visited. Matthew was very happy to see Grover and ran to him to give him a hug. After our one picture (we were only allowed to take one picture), we strolled him to see some animals in the kid's area. I'm not sure why this section was specifically for kids as the animals we saw weren't common at all. Matthew was happy when we first got there, but then almost immediately he became super fussy so it was our sign to put him down for his afternoon nap. He slept for a good two hours as James and I explored all the cool animals in the zoo. We saw elephants, tigers, chimpanzees, zebras, giraffes, and a whole bunch of other animals before Matthew woke up. This zoo is insanely huge! We stopped by the playground that they had in the Zoo and played there for quite a while before we left to go back near our hotel. This time we tried a different Korean Taco trunk that wasn't as tasty as the first. The first truck that we ate at last time was closed for some reason. We then stopped to watch some entertainers in the park before heading down to the Pier. We walked around and then head back to the hotel. It was a very tiring day as we were in the sun almost all day. I got burnt, and got a really ugly purse tan! It's gonna look lovely when I'm in Vegas next week! When Matthew went down for his sleep, I went downstairs again to try and attempt to get free wifi. Woohoo, it worked! We were given free wifi for the rest of the trip! I pulled the face time card with grandparents and they gave it to us.