California 2009!!!

So we've been home for about a week and a half now and are just now getting these pictures put up. It's just amazing how long it takes sometimes to get back to the normal life when you return from a full week of vacationing and laying on the beach all day doing nothing. So we went to Newport Beach, CA for our week at the beach with Mallory's family. Every summer her parents rent a beach house right on the beach for a fun family trip where we all just get to spend lots of time together and just hang out. We spend a lot of the time on the beach and playing in the cold water (which I never go out farther than I can touch cause everyone knows of my fears of sharks, stupid movies and animal planet). Then we go to all these family favorite restaurants that are over there for dinners together. Two of the favorites are a little Italian place called Mamma Di's and a Mexican joint called El Ranchito. Just some of the best food ever. Mallory's favorite part of CA though, which I'm sure everyone can guess, is the shopping. We actually ended up going to the swap meet twice which was good cause everything is just so cheap there. She ended up getting a new luggage set that she found online that was 120 but at the swap meet I got the guys to give it to us for 70. She gets emberrassed from my haggling that I do cause I refuse to pay full price for anything, haha. Then she wanted to find a laptop bag cause I told her we could get her one, and it was perfect cause we ended up finding a perfect match to her new luggage set at another stand in the swap meet. So she was happy she got a whole new complete luggage set. She also found some clothes at the swap meet that were real cheap too. I think I've finally taught her all there is to know about bargain shopping and finding the best deal out there. Not much really for guys to buy there but some electronic stuff but it wasn't really cheaper than you would find at best buy or something like that so I didn't get anything except a cover for my iPhone to protect it. It just so happens that we were there over my birthday so I got plenty of nice gifts for my birthday and had the best birthday breakfast that morning. Newport doughnuts. There are no better doughnuts than the ones we get at the beach. They even beat krispy kremes. We went out that night to Claim Jumper to eat where I was treated to a steak and lobster tail dinner which was mighty delicious. Then we went to see Transformers 2 the next morning with my brother and his wife who are doing some sales in Rancho Cucamunga for the summer and we loved it. It wasn't as good as the first one (which not many sequals are), but it was still pretty good. We also saw The Proposal while we were over there which was very funny and also just happened to see it the same night I proposed to her last year when we were at the beach house. Aside from that it was just alot of hanging out with family and going shopping and hanging out on the beach. But I'm sure I missed some things that Mallory will post in the next post on our blog. We look forward to going next year and hate waiting a whole year to take another week long fun vacation.