Weekend Recap: Family Time in the OC

This weekend started out like any other weekend, after eating a hearty breakfast of pancakes (tag-teamed with Yona), Steve and I headed out to the dog park to give the doggies some exercise. Lulu had been having stomach troubles, so we didn't stay too long. After a couple of "accidents" at the park, we rushed home to give her a bath.

After cleaning up the house a bit, S, Yona and I got ready to spend the rest of the day in the O.C. with Uncle R & Aunt L. We headed down to South Coast Plaza to pick up some goodies for R since she was still recovering from her surgery. We did a little bit of shopping and bought some baked goods at Vie de France. We were planning to get to G & R's by 5pm but smart little me left my credit card at Barney's so S had to run back to go get it.

We got to Rosanna's and presented her with some of her "feel better" gifts... two giant balloons from the carousel at SCP and a Korres skin brightening mask. Then we headed down to Irvine to try out some Taiwanese food at Chef Chen's, at R recommendation. G ordered like a pro, although after a couple of minutes I finally realized he had a cheat sheet -- a takeout menu with dishes circled by R. My favorite dish of the night was the roast beef sandwich... served kind of "burrito style" with a hot, fried wrap. The pork leg shank was really good too -- but I immediately felt guilty after eating some. S really liked the kung pao shrimp which tasted very fresh and Uncle R ate almost the entire steamed fish by himself.

After the restaurant, we all headed down to Laguna Niguel to catch the sunset. We drove to the Montage Hotel and walked around the outside gardens, looking out into the ocean. Even though we missed the sunset, it was still very beautiful outside. I was particularly impressed with the manicured gardens and sitting areas while S was preoccupied with the abundance of bunny rabbits hopping around the property. Uncle R took a series of pictures of everyone, as usual.

After the beach, we headed back up to Irvine to get some frozen yogurt at Yogurtland. I was surprised to hear that this yogurt hot spot is popping up all over the place. The cookies and cream yogurt is good with extra oreo on top, but I also really liked the Strawberry tart yogurt. The brownie bites were a little bit mushy, like the mochi, and I felt it wasn't the right texture to eat with frozen yogurt.

So we were all quite full when we headed back to G and R's place to hang out and chit chat for a bit. Finally we left at about 10:30PM and I slept all the way back to LA. It was kind of like being a kid and exhausted after a day at Disneyland and sleeping on the car ride back!

So today we woke up pretty late and S picked up some duck liver pate from Le Marmiton in Santa Monica. We ate it with the baguettes we picked up from South Coast Plaza -- it was so good! We also heated up some of the croissants from Vie de France. It was a great brunch. After stuffing ourselves silly, we headed to Beverly Hills to check out couches at Crate and Barrel. I think it's coming to the end of the life of our couch and it's time to buy a sofabed. After all, it seems familial company is neverending here at our house. :D

So after a few hours of shopping we came home and watched back-to-back episodes of Denise Richards' reality show, It's Complicated. We ordered Papa John's pizza for dinner and ate pretty much the whole order (two pizzas). After dinner, we headed out to Trader Joe's to do some grocery shopping for the week. We're going to aim to cook lunch/dinner every day next week -- we've been eating pretty unhealthily lately. After buying some "healthy" food and planning out these "healthy" meals, I felt the urge to go running and burn off some of that thick Papa John's pizza crust I dipped in the garlic butter sauce, so I did a lap around the country club. I can't believe how out of shape I am -- I was burning read and soaked in sweat by the time I was done, and I didn't even run that much! I started a "workout" journal again and I'm going to try to keep tabs on my exercise activity. I just realized that this past year I undid about 2 years of working out... if you add up my gym membership and private training sessions that's about $7,000 that went to waste. =/

It's time to go to bed... it's late and I am waking up early tomorrow to drop Tofu off at the vet to get spayed. Poor girl will have her surgery tomorrow and stay overnight so I won't see her again until really late on Tuesday.