Food, Family, Freakin' Awesome Weather!

Day One of our Southern Cali adventure. We made great time, had decent traffic and arrived at our nice hotel--only to find, they weren't quite ready for us to check in. No problem. I had not eaten lunch yet. My 3 boys stopped at In and Out Burger along the way to quiet their growling stomachs and I would rather starve. We figured with time to kill before check in, we would just hunt down some lunch for me. The reasons I love my iphone are complicated and plentiful, but the one I will mention now is the ability to find Vegan restaurants in any city, complete with a map and directions from my location. I looked up my choices, and much to my complete and utter joy found at least 10 choices within 4 miles. I picked this place: www.nativefoods.com. Heaven. Completely Vegan! For those of you who have never had the experience of only being able to choose one or two items on a menu, you won't get how excited I am by this. Those who have-- you'll undeniably get it! Imagine having a menu with at least 40! different choices-- all healthy, all tasty and all that meet your dietary restrictions! Yup, when I die, forget heaven-- I want to spend eternity there!
*For the curious (Emily) I ate a Enchilada Bowl complete with a sweet pepper popper for lunch. Went back for dinner (Oh yes, I did!) with Anne. I had a side salad, a bowl of steamed kale and tomatoes, a cup of zucchini-tomato soup and half of a pumpkin caramel cheesecake for dessert. (Anne had a reuben, Bill had a portebello and sausage burger--all of it--DELICIOUS!)


We got checked in and after a bit of a room shuffle (Thinking we would upgrade, but found it was really a down-grade with more square footage and then switching back to the original, nicer room) went on a walk with Anne and Q at Backbay Nature Preserve to try and get some kind of movement happening. It was so lovely to watch the sunset over the pacific (even though we couldn't see the water from where we were "hiking"). Romney was thrilled because he "discovered" the roof of the nature center which was complete with benches and a telescope. He watched the sunset (which he described as looking like a rainbow) all the way to darkness through the telescope. Those moments of innocent joy are happy reminders of why I wanted to get fit to enjoy the outdoors with my men. I wouldn't have missed his "discovery" for anything!

P.S. Did I mention it was 70 degrees today and that we ate both lunch and dinner outdoors?