The year 2017 has been awesome to us and we're making the best of it every day! Just a few days ago we were in Los Angeles for #WeAllGrowFAMILIA 2017 and were able to drive around one of my favorite compact SUV's on the market right now, the Mazda CX-5 Grand Touring. We had 2 full days to explore what L.A. had to offer and we made it to as many places as we could. Even though traffic was pretty bad, it gave me a chance to take in the nice interior and simply relax. After all, I love driving and it's my stress reliever. Ok, so here is how our trip to L.A. went with the CX-5.

The west coast is still fairly new territory for us and we're excited to explore it more as we continue to travel. L.A. has an appeal to the masses so we had to plan our days accordingly and always mindful of the traffic. As soon as we picked up our shiny new vehicle we headed straight to Santa Monica to walk the pier and just explore new places together, Ashley and I. It was an easy drive from LAX and we just wanted to sit down and relax (we woke up at 3AM). The sound of the waves, the mostly empty pier, and the breeze was a great way to start our day! We took some pictures, sat down to talk, and just took in the sights before heading over to Hollywood Blvd. One of my favorite things about California are the roads and how fun they are to drive on. We drove through some canyon roads on our way to Hollywood and the CX-5 handles great!






If I'm honest with you all, the walk of fame was a bit underwhelming and I was expecting something grand. The sidewalks were packed and dirty, kinda sticky in some places too. Lots of homeless people and the smell of marijuana may put some people off and Ashley and I agree that it's definitely not a kid-friendly place to walk around with kids. It may be best to only drive past the 3 short blocks the walk of fame spans. We were running close to the time of our meeting so we started making way out to Van Nuys. After touring the Munchkin headquarters and catching up with good friends, we head back to our first ever AirBnB! We went back to change clothes, get a jacket since it cools down at nighttime, and head out to meet with our friend Jorge from RealityChangers! He lives in San Diego but knows his way around L.A. First things first, FOOD!! we had to eat and ended up at a random chinese food place. We weren't sure were we wanted to go so we decided to go back to the Walk of Fame and actually walk on it and see the street performers. After hanging out around the Hollywood area we head over to Santa Monica to see what it was like during night time with all the rides of Pacific Park lit up.


After a day of going back and forth, meeting new friends and experiencing places, we called it a night and went back to rest. I was going to speak alongside Jorge at a panel for #WeAllGrowFAMILIA and had to recharge for a day full of awesome discussions and networking. The mornings in L.A. are beautiful and I felt great to be in a place where the parenting community shines. Our panel was one of the last ones and we spoke about building a parenting community and how to build, and maintain an organization. 

After it was all over, Jorge, his wife, Ashley and I went out for dinner and talked about random things and also some ideas and discussion over the state of YouTube and social media. We met just over a year ago but we've become great friends over that time. Dinner soon came to an end and we had to part ways but with some time left, we made it out to LACMA to see the Urban Light art installation and also drice through Korea Town and China Town.




That was the last adventure before we had to rest and be back at LAX at 4 AM. The Mazda CX-5 was fun to drive and I love that Mazda always focuses on the details as well as the driving experience. We're looking forward to going back to L.A. pretty soon!

Check out the vlog from our trip below!!


What are some of your favorite places in L.A. ?!