10 Best Things from a 3 Day Weekend

Good morning everyone! I hope all of you had a wonderful Memorial Day. We are so blessed to have so many men and women who have sacrificed their lives for our freedom. I am always appreciative of our troops, but even more so on a day where we remember what was given for us to be able to enjoy a day off of work, school, and to spend it with our loved ones. I wanted to share 10 best things from our three- day weekend. 1. I am loving our dog park visits with Elle. She has a blast running around and meeting other dogs, and Anthony and I get a nice mile walk in every time we take her. Fresh air, time together, and extra cardio for all of us! 2. Reunion with Beta Alumni! Anthony and I were both heavily involved in Greek Life as undergrads. This past weekend, his fraternity had an alumni and active members reunion. It was so great seeing all of his friends again, meeting some of the new chapter members, and being back on campus. Not to mention I was sweetheart for this fraternity, so they have an extra special place in my heart! 3. Meeting up with Beta’s new chapter sweetheart, Megan! A fraternity sweetheart is a female that goes above and beyond in her friendship and loyalty for a particular fraternity. She is the definition of sweetness, kindness, and I am so happy to have passed the torch onto her. 4. Poke Bowls! I am glad San Diego has finally caught onto the poke and sushi-burrito craze. In the past two years, four poke food places have opened up. The way the restaurant works is kind of like Chipotle. You pick a base layer of either rice, salad, chips, or a mixture, and then start adding layers of goodness ranging from various types of raw fish, to cucumbers and onions, to seaweed salad to top it off! I grabbed a poke bowl with a friend on Sunday to celebrate my birthday: layers of salad mix, salmon, shrimp, potato salad, radish, seaweed, and ginger sure hit the spot! 5. I finally got my tri-bike fitted. Since I’ve gotten my new bike, I’ve been told of the importance of getting it fit to your body size. Even though there are general frame sizes for everyone from a certain height range, the fit customizes so you are as comfortable and efficient as you can be on your bike. Especially with triathlon bikes, you will have to be in aero bars and you want to make sure your reach isn’t too far or too short. After my accident, some of the balances issues I had were attributed to how my bike was fitting me, so before getting back on the roads, I wanted to  make sure I didn’t have this problem anymore. Gregg from Pro Tour Fittings did an awesome job and made a bunch of adjustments in my seat, aero bars, and suggested for me to get a new crank for my pedals. I can’t wait to put it to work at Turbo tonight and then ride on the roads in a couple of weeks. 6. Playing fetch with these two. Elle is finally getting the hang of the game! 7. Uhm I have a big public announcement to everyone on this blog. CPK just brought back their strawberry shortcake dessert for the summer. This is not a drill. Go out and eat one ASAP and report back on how amazing it is!!! I can eat this dessert a million times over. 8. Anthony and I did a little bit of exploring in North Park this past weekend. I love their hip little coffee shops, restaurants, and this pretty wall of succulents. Can I have this in my apartment please? 9. Discovered this weekend that Elle likes popsicles! Finding little sweet treats to give to her and poor baby is teething right now, so the cold probably helped a lot in alleviating some of the pain in losing her baby teeth! 10. Summer sangrias and date night with this man. What more could I ask for?

What did you do over Memorial Day weekend? 

Favorite summer foods/ desserts that are coming back in season?

A Very Happy Belated Anniversary!

Hi. How’s it going? I hope you all are having a fantastic weekend and a relaxing Sunday! I have an online midterm I have to take this morning but as a form of procrastionation… my very happy belated anniversary shenanigans from yesterday! Anthony hates running. He use to be on his high school cross country team and quit to play tennis. But he’s done a few 5Ks here and here and I even weaseled him into doing a 10K once as my Valentines Day gift… So imagine how surprised I was when he texted me Friday night asking how far I was running Saturday morning and wanted to join me. He didn’t want to run the full 5, so he joined me on the last two miles! The little things he does for our anniversary, including starting his day at 7AM. After running and getting our day started, we went to brunch at a new cafe in Del Mar, called Pacifica Breeze Cafe. The food there was so good with no wait, with a patio view of the ocean, inexpensive, and not a lot of people, like most brunch places. I was reading on Yelp that the restaurant’s popularity is catching on, but I hope it’s not the case! Waiting for brunch is the worst. Trying to get him to take a normal photo is too hard so we’re just going to go with these goofy looking ones. The only sad part about this place was that they didn’t have pancakes, only waffles and french toast. I don’t know how that’s even legal, but it gave me a chance to try something new! Vegetarian hash- two poached eggs on top of delicious vegetables tossed in pesto sauce. It was weird eating vegetables first thing in the morning but also so good! Reasons why this restaurant got even better: this was their bathroom sign. An hour later after Anthony and I walked around the shopping area near the restaurant, I wanted breakfast number 2 since I had been up so early and just generally eat a lot. Honey grain bagel with pumpkin shmear. I’m telling you- it’s like Thanksgiving happiness on a bagel. After breakfast number two, we went to the beach and park right across the street!Paradise. When we asked someone to take this photo for us, she was like, “I hope you two enjoy your vacation.” Just when I thought I was starting to look more Californian! We ended up going to the Pumpkin Station in Del Mar, a fair and pumpkin patch. The first thing I saw when I walked into the fair were these amazingly carved pumpkins. Well… they put my silly, carved-in-30-minutes, pumpkin to shame. I remember Brandon told me not to go to the pumpkin patch in Del Mar because there isn’t much to do… and of course I didn’t listen. Besides pumpkins and taking a bunch of cheesy couple photos, he was right….  But at least we got some good pumpkin juggling photos in! Dessert meant frozen yogurt swirl from Costco. Then post-Costco exploring and nerding-out. So excited for the show to be back in March! Dinner was a religious experience. I heard so much about this sushi place in Pacific Beach called Sushi Ota. We ended up having to wait 15 minutes on top of a line because we didn’t make a reservation. By the grace of my hunger, someone didn’t show up to their reservation and we ended up getting to snag that spot! They even made the most basic of sushi, like the California roll, taste creamy and more fresh than other sushi places! Post dinner was a romantic sunset walk in Pacific Beach. It was the perfect end to our belated anniversary date. Oh and this guy playing cello makes me happy!

Good Food with Better Company

The weekend is definitely off to a good start when it starts with a mystery My friend Rachel is a House Advisor for our college and they have this tradition called the HA exchange. It’s basically a Secret Santa with all the HAs and she just got a gift yesterday in her mailbox… a pineapple…? We have company here for the weekend! Brittney is visiting from Long Beach. She is one of Claire’s best friends who graduated two years ago and is now working at Boeing… No big deal. We went to Villa Capri, a local Italian restaurant. It was the quietest we’ve ever seen Demi because she was famished. Snapped a quick picture of the bread before my phone got ripped out of my hands and 4 hands dug into the bread basket. Well… that was scary. You really can’t mess with hungry gal pals.  Bruschetta!I forgot what I got because it was a fancy Italian dish I couldn’t pronounce. All I did was point at the menu when the waiter came around, which is my life struggle whenever we go anywhere authentic. Lots of seasonal vegetables like peppers, zucchini, squash, tomatoes, and parmesan cheese to cover it all. We were all so happy to have good food in our bellies with even better company!

Have a great Saturday everyone! I’m off to do a belated anniversary celebration with Anthony :) It includes brunch so you know it’s going to be a good date.

Favorite type of food? – I usually always want either Thai or Italian. A little less Italian ever since I started eating so much pasta for carbo-loading.