Girl's Weekend!

A while back, Michelle and I started talking about having a girl's weekend before I moved.  After lots of planning (on Michelle's part), it finally happened! 

We went to Santa Barbara, but I'll start from the beginning.  Megan came up from San Diego Friday night to a house full of pukies.  Kendall had been sick a couple days before, and Cami got sick on Friday.  But Megan's contact with the girls was minimal, since she got there after they went to bed, and we were leaving pretty early the next morning.  So of course, Friday night, Megan, Grant, and I stayed up way too late chatting, and then Saturday morning, the plan was to be out the door at 7:30.  Then around 6:30, Kendall threw up again.  So that threw us off a bit. 

By the way, if any of this is sounding familiar to you, it's because pretty much the same thing happened to our family back in April, right before I was supposed to go on the OPC Women's Retreat.  And once again, Grant became husband of the year, for encouraging me to go, even though I didn't really want to at this point.  I was nervous that I was going to get sick while I was gone, or that Grant would get sick while watching the girls by himself.  None of that happened, so that was good.

Anyways, we finally did leave the house, only a few minutes late.  We picked up my friend Ting, and then picked up Michelle, and we were on our way!

First, we stopped at Stan's Donuts in Westwood.  Friday night, I randomly saw some show that was talking about Stan's Donuts, and their famous Reese's donut, and I posted something on Facebook about it.  Michelle said that it could be our first stop on our way to Santa Barbara, and I didn't argue with her!  It was worth the stop, even though I didn't get a picture.  Basically, it's a chocolate covered donut, sprinkled with chocolate chips, and filled with peanut butter.  Delicious!

After that quick stop, we made our way to the Camarillo Outlets, where we all did a good bit of shopping.

It was almost lunch time, so we left the outlets, and finally headed to Santa Barbara, where we went straight to the Arts & Letters Cafe, where the food was delicious.

After lunch, we walked up and down State Street, which is always fun.  The weather that weekend wasn't exactly nice - it was cold and drizzly, if not raining, the whole time.  But that was okay.  If we got cold, we'd just hop in a store every now and then.  Here's Megan and Michelle taking a break in Anthropologie.

We finally made our way to check in at the hotel.  We stayed at the Hotel Oceana, and it was the cutest place ever!  I fell in love with our room.

After relaxing for a bit in the hotel room, we went out for dinner at the Wine Cask/Intermezzo Bar & Cafe.  After we left, I realized that we didn't get a picture there, which was a bummer, because it was so cozy inside.  But the food was great.  Since we had a kind of late lunch, we just ordered drinks and a few appetizers.  Hands down, everyone's favorite was the Gruyere-Dungeness Crab-Artichoke Dip served with Focaccia bread.  I can't even describe how good that was!!

We had to leave quickly, because we wanted to make the 7:15 showing of Bridesmaids, which was at a theatre close to us.  So we walked there, and it started to rain, which was awesome.  But we quickly forgot about the weather, because the movie was hilarious! 

When we got back to the hotel, we decided to get our picture in the lobby. 

Then we all had a cozy night's sleep in our super cute hotel room, got up the next morning and started getting ready for church.  But first, we went to the hotel's breakfast, which was kind of a trainwreck.  The breakfast was in the smallest room ever, and it was filled to over capacity!  People were bumping into each other, there were no plates, and forget about tables!  Finally, Megan and I saw a teeny tiny table open up, and we grabbed it before anyone else could.  Which meant that we were actually the ones who cleaned off the table.  So the four of us crammed into this tiny little two-person table, and as we were eating, the room really started to clear out.  By the time we were done, there was hardly anyone left, so apparently, we just hit it at rush time. 

We finished up, checked out, and made our way to church.  We went to the local OPC - El Camino Presbyterian in Goleta.  When we got there and when we left, it was raining the hardest it had all weekend.  So that's what this picture is all about.

The plan was to eat lunch in Santa Barbara, but since it was so dreary, Michelle suggested that maybe we should just drive south until it got sunny.  We knew it was sunny down here in the South Bay, so we were hoping we wouldn't have to drive too far.  Ting told us about Paradise Cove in Malibu that her and her husband had been to, so we made our way there.  It was a perfect suggestion!  It was right on the beach, and the food was awesome, although we did have to keep our eyes on those seagulls.  They were pretty aggressive.

And that was it!  It was a short, but super sweet weekend, and I'm glad we were all able to go.  I love my friends, and will miss them when I leave, so it was nice to spend this extra time with them.