Monday, June 18, 2012

What I did on Father's Day

A little bit of this..
My other brother was on a hike for boy scouts, so besides him it the whole family went surfing with my Dad.


My attempt at surfing. I did stand up .25 seconds later!

...  and A LOT of delicious unpictured french toast followed by relaxing around the house.

A requested dinner of lasagna, salad, and garlic bread:

and a homemade Father's Day Card from all of us.

Happy (a little belated) Father's Day!

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Day Trips from Dana Point to Malibu

This Tuesday is my Mom's 50th birthday, and my Dad secretly organized the "Five Days" of celebration for her. In other words, my whole family was told to completely clear our schedule from Friday to Tuesday. The plan was everyday we were going to surprise my mom with a new activity to celebrate her birthday.

Friday started with a beach bonfire at the Portuguese Bend Club complete with hot dogs, hamburgers, salad, and smores (lots and lots of smores).

Saturday, we went down to Dana Point to meet up with some of my mom's college friends at the Dana Point Harbor Beach. One of the families is obsessed with stand up paddle boarding and had about 6 boards and paddles, so they brought them all to the harbor.

Sadly there are no pictures, but I absolutely LOVE stand up paddle boarding. It was more of a core workout then arms (surprisingly) since the harbor water was completely still. With no waves or currents, learning to SUP was super easy. It wasn't hard to keep my balance, but then again I purposely chose one of the bigger boards that could have floated an elephant. I really want to try it again at the beach, so I'm going to look in to renting boards this summer. After the beach, we went to family friend's house for dinner.

Sunday, we drove up to Malibu to meet my grandparents at their friend's beach house. The place was beautiful and right on the water. I'm a tad of obsessed with beach side houses/condos (I kinda mentioned it during my post about the bike ride), so I took a few pictures of the house. It's small and cozy, but the location makes it crazyyyy expensive so we were all excited to have a chance to spend the day there.

main bedroom

second bedroom with terrible lighting in this picture

actual master bedroom turned living room (side with desk)

other side of living room

luckily it got sunny with the hour after we got there
We got to the house around 12, and decided to all go for a walk on the beach to get out our dog's energy and to take a peak at the other houses on the beach.
Spiral staircase to the beach from a neighboring home
We came back to the house, and had a really delicious lunch. Wendy is honestly one of the best cooks ever, and she always goes full out for any event. We had steak sandwiches, potato salad, roasted corn salad, and salad with strawberries, raspberries, dried cranberries, and pecans with a homemade raspberry vinaigrette dressing. Everything was delicious, but the actual salad was amazing. I usually find fruit to precious to put in veggies, but I totally forget how delicious the mix can be. To top it off, the whole meal was eaten on the balcony.

Lunch with a view
After lunch, we had a beach day and went swimming in the ocean and took a longer walk to the adjacent more public beach (the house was on a public beach too but didn't have public parking so it's pretty empty). Dogs were allowed on the beach so Roxy was having a better time than all of us and running around like a crazy person. She only slightly slowed down when she ran into the water and was hit by a wave--it took her a second or two to figure out how that happened.

We finished up the day with homemade birthday cupcakes. They were carrot cake with white chocolate  cream cheese frosting and had a mango gummy on top for fun. Oh, and they were delicious.
Day four of activities included a trip to the Getty Villa, but I need to grab a few pictures from my mom's camera in order to write about it. Actually I'm hoping to update this post too with a few pictures off my brother's camera too, but if I don't finally post tonight it won't happen.
Yay for hitting publish! Good night!


Thursday, June 7, 2012

Lunch Date and Body Pump

Remember how I mentioned I joined the gym a week ago? I realized that I am terrible at working out unless I have a running buddy or strict schedule, so I've made it my mission to go to at least a few workout classes a week. The gym just recently added Body Pump to it's schedule, and I finally got up the courage to try it this Monday.

Even though I always mean to, I never really do any strength training. Even if I get around to it, it's never more than 10 minutes which meant an hour long strength training class was really intimidating. Luckily I went with my friend Sarah and used 5 pound weights instead of the barbell for the exercises (I know that's a little sad, but baby steps!). While it wasn't as fun as a class like Turbo Kick Boxing, it went by really quickly and I did enjoy it. I'll probably try to challenge myself a little more next time, and my goal is to go two times a week and work my way up to doing it with a barbell.

One of my other summer goals is to try to cook more (practice makes perfect and I am currently in need of a lottt of practice). So on Tuesday, Sarah and I got together to have a little lunch date! We decided on making chicken curry salad after inspiration from one of my blog posts from last summer.


We healthed it up by using greek yogurt, chicken breasts, curry, sliced grapes, raisins, and lime juice. After deciding to make it an actual salad we added some avocado and dressing.

I'm planning on going to to the Turbokick class tonight and hopefully finishing up the work for my internship early today. I've been seriously terrible at time management and need to spend tonight starting my application for studying abroad.

Once I get more details on that, I'll be sure to write a blog post with all my plans regarding that ;) Bye!

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Weekend highlights

Since I'm not posting regularly but keep taking a bunch of pictures with the intention to write a blog post, here's some of the highlights of my weekend:
- I joined the gym! I finally feel like I'm working out again and went to Zumba on Thursday, Turbo Kickboxing on Saturday, and ran 3.5 miles on Sunday.

- Scott came up for the weekend on Friday, and we headed out for one of the first beach days of the summer! This was doubly exciting because I may have gone on a bit of a shopping frenzy the last few days (the excitement of my first paycheck of the summer was a little dulled after I realized I nearly spent all of it) and brought a brand new bikini from TJMaxx.
- On Saturday my little sister had her prom! I was feeling a little invested in helping her get ready after shopping for 6 hours on Wednesday for the dress. Jessica had a friend do her makeup, but I take full credit for her accessories and hair. It's amazing how easy it is to curl hair when it isn't yours.

I claim bragging rights as the older sister.

- I had a baking extravaganza/date on Saturday with Scott. We decided to make fettucine penne alfredo with chicken and garlic bread for dinner. While grocery shopping, I bought the biggest watermelon ever and was dying with excitement to eat it. We tried to make the pasta just a little bit healthier by using non fat milk for more than a half of the sauce. I'm also proud of myself because I cooked the chicken breasts (olive oil with lemon juice and garlic) for the first time and it actually turned out really well!
PS that was one of the best watermelons I've ever had. I'm so excited for more this summer.

- I had a lunch date at Yellow Vase! I managed to convince Scott to take me there since it is probably the most girly cafe in the world. Think flowers, cupcakes, yellow trinkets, and fancy sugar cubes. I ordered a panini with hummus, avocado, chicken, and mozzarella.


I've also had a pretty good week so far too with trying new workout classes and recipes, but I'll post about that tomorrow!