Saturday

I had an early wake up call to catch a 7am flight to LAX. My mom and her husband Dennis are flying down from Seattle, too, so we can all get together to celebrate my sister's birthday weekend. During the flight my camera was in the overhead compartment so I didn't get a chance to photograph the pear and airline peanuts that I consumed on the flight to LA. Exciting breakfast.

My sister picked me up at LAX and we headed to In-N-Out in Newport Beach by hear house. It was only 10:30 am Pacific time, but my stomach was asking for lunch!

I had a large iced tea with a splash of lemonade...

...and a grilled cheese with fries! Their grilled cheese is essentially a loaded cheeseburger minus the burger. So good. In-N-Out is one of the few fast food restaurants I truly enjoy. Their ingredients are all very fresh and they hand cut their fries in each store and cook them in 100% vegetable oil.

When we arrived at my sister's house I met her cats Snickers and Bruno. Here's Snickers peeking out from behind the bushes in her yard.

And here's Bruno flashing his blue eyes for the camera.

After relaxing for a bit we met up with my sister's husband Tom, my mom and Denny for an afternoon of exploring the Balboa Island area. We started with a walking tour around some fun homes right on the water.

One home had quite the jungle theme, including a ferocious dinosaur in their front yard.

Then we hopped on a ferry to further explore Balboa Island.

We walked down a pier and enjoyed the sunshine.

Then stopped for gelato! I had a small cone with coconut and mango. YUM. I ate about 75% of this cone. I exercised some self control and threw away a portion of it to save room for dinner.

The Florida girl in me got chilled to the bone from the gelato so I popped into Peet's for a small decaf drip.

And guess what happened to my dinner photos???? They disappeared off my memory stick! I have NO CLUE how that happened. It happened to me once before when I made protein pancakes. So strange. Anyway, we went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner and I had a vegetarian enchilada plate with some chips & guacamole, iced tea and 1/2 a glass of Dos Equis. Dinner was excellent.

I was SO TIRED by the time we got home that I didn't have the energy to blog. It was 10:00 pm, which means I had been up since 1:00 am. I had nightmares all night long, which is a sign that I was overly tired. Stay tuned for our adventures on Sunday!