You look like a monkey and you smell like one too...

My friend Karen's birthday was last weekend (Hollar at my sistah Aries!) and we celebrated by going to the zoo. I hadn't been in years, it's no secret I'm an animal-sadness weenie and I usually get bummed out watching all the animals in captivity. We had a blast, though, we went early in the morning (totally not my idea...I may have been very sleepy eyed at the beginning) which seems to be the ticket. The animals were super active and awake at that time of the day, the crowds were mellow and life was good!Nothing wrong with actually riding the animals, unless your husband tries to throw you off, that is...

Some nice photo-bombing by Alex...


Let's check out some animals!
Lisa and I channeled our inner "Three's Company" pose at the flamingos:

Leigh and I practiced skiing on the incline people mover:
We all were obviously a little into the photo cutouts:
Robbio:

Birthday girl Karen:

And finally, Leigh and her all time favorite animal:Baby Bennett was just at that age where he was really enjoying looking at stuff. He was too cute when the big fluffy fake panda came up to say hi:
At one point I had the bright idea to see how many people we could shove into one of those tiny little photo booths. The answer: 5. Our resulting picture was a wah wah wah letdown but we laughed and laughed. Here's us cramming in:
And the final result, you can only see one of poor Jason's eyes, Leigh was pretty squished, Bennett was traumatized, Karen's eye was the focus and I look like a fuzzy bank robbery picture in the back left:

The petting zoo was the best!

Oh yah, and we saw some animals that day too, I forgot to mention:

POW #29 the "no, seriously", edition

This week's Picture O' The Week was one of those perfect place at the perfect time events. A few years ago when we were in Nebraska visiting Rob's extended family, we were driving around the farm roads trying to find some family's house or another...I'll be honest, I'm always pretty lost there - the long dusty roads all look the same! No wonder most of the directions people give you are like "turn left at the big white barn and then a quick left once you see a big herd of cows". Ha!

Anyhoo, as we were driving down one of these particular farm roads we came across a church called Bethany Lutheran...named after moi, I'm sure. The church had a warning sign out in front, I would assume, to warn people to slow down for church traffic. But, the way the sign was worded was priceless. And of course we had to take a pic. Please to enjoy:

More Santa Barbara Road Trippin'

The last morning in Santa Barbara we got up early and went for a walk/job along the coast. We found some killer stairs that took us up to a great view of the ocean - there was no one around and it was a beautiful, marine-layered day.

After getting some good exercise, we pigged out on breakfast along the beach then packed up our gear and went for a drive around town. We stopped at the old Mission to walk around - it's so beautiful there! Definitely bigger than our San Diego mission...it apparently was partially destroyed in an earthquake and was rebuilt in the last century.

After sightseeing for a while, we hit the road and drive up a beautiful winding road through the Santa Ynez Valley. All the lush green rolling hills were dotted with oak trees - it was gorgeous!

We stopped in Solvang and walked around for a few hours. It's a cute little Danish town, you literally feel like you're in Europe. We grabbed some Danish pastries for the road after sampling just about one of everything they made, slurp!

Making a phone call:
We bought Rob a new pair of shoes: Ok, not really.

As a contrast, Santa Ynez is like an old western town. We stopped for lunch at Grappolo's, a killer Italian restaurant next to an old town saloon. Apparently, ladies are welcome!

The food at Grappolo's was so authentic and amazingly delicious! You could tell it is a local favorite - the head of the Firestone family rolled up in his Bentley for lunch...perhaps he heard the Warrenski's were in town. :) We rolled out of there with full happy bellies and were grateful we had carb-loaded for the crazy drive home. Of course we hit several accidents and gridlock up the wazoo, have I mentioned I hate driving through L.A.? But it doesn't matter, we still had a great trip. Good times, we'd go back in a heartbeat.

Heading up the coast

Rob and I went to Santa Barbara last weekend for a quick little getaway. We had such a blast, it was such a great little romantic weekend! The drive up was glorious, we decided to drive the long, scenic way up hugging the coast the whole time...once we got off that stupid 405, that is. Have I mentioned I hate driving through L.A? Because I do.

The sun was shining, the top was down, and all was good with the world. We made pretty good time, too, and got there in 4 hours! We checked in and immediately went down to the pier for lunch. Our hotel was in the cutest little neighborhood, just far enough off the beach and State street to make for a quiet, nice walk.

Lunch at Longboards was great - we even saw dolphins! We ate our weight in seafood and enjoyed a post-drive cocktail.
We enjoyed dorking around the pier for a while...
We walked all around town that first day and enjoyed looking at all the shops on State Street. We stopped in for a quick beer at a bar down the street from our hotel and were stoked to find they had Trivial Pursuit questions to keep you occupied. But then we saw they had a contest advertised for a "Cruel Prawn". Apparently if you eat 5 of them in 15 minutes, you'll get your picture on the wall. Of course we were intrigued and had to try one. HOLY CRAP, one was plenty! They coated it with thick habanero paste which for the first 20 seconds actually tasted quite delicious. And then the pain set in. For the next 15 minutes we were in pain central. Seriously. That stuff could have peeled the paint off a wall. I love spicy food but that was over the top. Glad we didn't go for 5 or my belly would have been an unhappy place. Not to mention the buckets of sweat that would pour out. Whew!For dinner, we had been eagerly anticipating a Cajun restaurant The Palace Grill highly recommended by a friend of mine. Holy crap! Laissez les bons temps roulez, for sure. We stuffed ourselves silly with the best spicy creole food around...it was phenomenal and not to be missed next time you're in Santa Barbara. Rob was pretty stoked on his jalapeno martini:And I enjoyed my food coma:

What a fun day...we packed a lot in! Tomorrow: Solvang and Santa Ynez valley!

More pics from our day:

POW #28 The "Give me your best snotty teenager look" edition

I've been missing my brother a lot lately - even though he lives in Alaska, somehow it makes it better to know he's at least on the same continent. But, he's in the Middle East right now as is my step-brother Jon...that's too much worrying for us, for sure. I think about them all the time and pray they're safe.

This POW is in honor of my brother - my Mom recently scanned this old picture to me and it cracks me up. I'm thinking we're probably 16 and 17 respectively and dressed up for some holiday function, clearly (I swear, I'm like Colombo with my mad detective skillz). I remember Mom was behind the camera and said something like "kiss your sister" to which we responded with these lovely mugs. hahahaha, classic! Cracks me up. I miss you, Chris!

FORE!!!!

We went golfing today and branched out from the standard 3 courses that we usually frequent. We went to the fancy Rancho Bernardo Inn and...I'm just going to say it...I got absolutely WORKED by this course.

The day started off beautifully, it was sunny and just slightly breezy - perfect golf conditions, plus the course is gorgeous. Happy times, good form, all is well.Then, the golf rage set in. I don't know what happened but my game totally fell apart. Still had a great time, but I was an absolute golfing hack today - Robbio pulled it together on the back 9 and held his own. Me, not so much.

The funniest part of the day is we were paired with two Japanese guys who barely spoke any basic English. They were really nice but communicating with them was basically just a matter of hand signals and lots of smiling. Any time they approved of one of our shots, they would yell "SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAWWWWWWW" really loud, which I guess means "great shot!". But, it would crack us up and make us giggle to ourselves each time, particularly when it was most certainly NOT a great "shaaaaaaawwwww".
It was bunny central too, and we all know how I'm partial to the fluffiness. Watching the wildlife salvaged my game, fo' sure.