Weekend BlogLog - July 24th

Here is my half way mark picture - me and the bun at 20 weeks! 

My little sister came in to town for a week. On Wednesday night she came over to stay with Ricky and I. Lauren and I went to my new favorite Italian Restaurant in Alameda for some delicious pasta with cream sauce, pancetta and mushrooms -Yum!!! We then played games with Rick and enjoyed some pillow talk for awhile. 

On Friday morning I headed down to San Jose to my dad's house so we can have some traditional Oustad Family Fun. Lucky for me I don't work on Fridays any more so I got to spend the day with Lauren, Dad and Terry. We spent the day like a typical Oustad day would be spent growing up. We piled into the convertible and headed down to our all time favorite beach Twin Lakes in Santa Cruz while blaring our family favorite - the Beach Boys. 

Growing up we spent many of our days in the sand at Twin Lakes or in the water with our wetsuits, boogie boards and skim boards until the sun went down. We would then head in and eat dinner on the beach. That was my childhood and I loved every second of it.

We were cruising along, listening to our music, snapping pictures for our blogs enjoying life and sitting in traffic. All the people around us were getting a kick out of our music and all the picture taking. I know they were assuming that we were tourist who had never seen Santa Cruz before but little did they know we were just enjoying life and our favorite family activity.

We spent some time laying in the warm sun at Twin Lakes and walking along the beach. For obvious reason I didn't go in the water (there is no way my wetsuit would fit), although the waves were huge. As you can see from the picture, the waves were way above peoples heads on the shore. They even had red flags out telling people not to go in because of strong tides etc. 

After a few hours in the sun we headed to my new favorite place - Samba Acai Cafe. Acai bowls are a favorite thing to do in Santa Cruz. This new place has fancy Acai bowls with different kinds of fruit. However, I haven't been able to have a real Acai bowl since I have been pregnant because it has Guaranara in it which has lots of caffeine. I introduced my family to this new delicious treat and they loved it. The Brazilian there made me a special Acai bowl with coconut flakes, coconut milk and pineapple in place of the Guaranara. It was good. 

We then cruised down to 41st to do some shopping at the surf shops. I had been wanting to go there for a while now to get Rick's birthday present. Lucky for me and him I guess, they had just what I was looking for. Rick is now the proud owner of a new Indo Board with a big blue wave on the front of it. Finally he got a birthday present. On our way home we stopped off for some Mexican. It was a wonderful day!

On Saturday we spent the afternoon in Livermore with the rest of the family for a BBQ with Loo. It was fun to spend the day with all my brothers and sisters (except for Mariah and Justin) and the family. This time we didn't BBQ steak which is what we have been BBQ for the last 30 years or so. We branched out a little and BBQ'ed some hamburgers and Sausages. It was all delicious and a nice day to spend outside on the patio.