Newport Beach

We went on another beach trip last Sunday, and I'm a little delayed in posting the pictures. Before you know it, I'll be posting again about our latest adventure this coming weekend (I don't know what that is yet, but get excited! I'm sure there will be pictures!).

We ventured over to the all-too popular Newport Beach. We still managed to have a good time, but we both agreed that it was too crowded. Granted, everyone is on summer break, families are on vacation, yada yada yada...it was still too crowded. We spent 40 minutes circling the town, looking for parking. We finally pulled into a metered spot on the road. After putting in some dimes and nickels, we were enlightened that the machine only takes quarters. Good thing we had our laundry coin bag with us! (Ugh). So, we put in our quarters...then we come to find out that the meter only accepts up to 1 hour of parking. 1 HOUR?! We loaded up Maddie, our lunch and our beach bag, trekked over to the beach, and looked at our clock. We had 45 minutes left.

There is always time to lather on the sunscreen!
Anyway, we ate our lunch, played in the surf and the sand, fed the meter one more time, and walked around the town for a little bit. After our time was up, and we were done wasting our precious laundry money, we ventured over to "Fashion Island," which is a ritzy shopping mall in the area. It was fun to wander around and let Maddie stretch her legs for a bit before the car ride back home. The mall overlooks the ocean, has a few beautiful fountains and a very large koi pond with stepping stones that walk across the surface. Maddie was ready to walk straight onto the water surface, if only I would have let her!Finally, our trip home brought us en route (purposefully planned by my pizza-loving-husband), to a Papa Murphy's pizza store. That's right! All of you NWesterners have no idea how fortunate you are to have these stores just a few miles away from you at any given time. The closest one to us on the east coast was over 400 miles away! Needless to say, it has been a looong time since we enjoyed our favorite pizza, and Brant was none too quick to plan our driving route to end up here. :)

So, that makes our beach trip totals up to 5 in the short time we've lived down here. I'd say we're doing pretty well for ourselves. :)