Oops! I’ve let too much time go by since my last La Jolla Life post! We’re currently on Week 7 (what!?!) of our summer adventure, so I have a lot to catch y’all up on. We’ve had visitors, explored more, and had several Disneyland excursions, but I’ll save those details for some other posts! Here is a summary of some of the other Cali “adventures” we’ve experienced.

I’ve been spending some time with Louis’s coworker’s wife and daughters while we’re all here for the summer. They have been so sweet to let me “hoard in” on their mother-daughter time! A couple of weeks ago, we spent the day exploring the Westfield UTC Mall and Mt. Soledad. The malls here are basically all outdoor due to the year-round beautiful weather, and I can’t complain!

We explored the various shops and ate outdoors at their food court. The mall even had a Tesla store, which doesn’t mean much to me. However, that is Louis’s current dream car as it is apparently masterfully engineered and electric. Naturally, I had to take a picture of the store front for him, and we have since returned to explore the store and dream of future purchases.

After we had our fill of the mall, we drove over to Mt. Soledad. This “mountain” holds a memorial for veterans and offers an amazing panoramic view of all of La Jolla and San Diego.

As you can see above, it was a rare overcast day in La Jolla. However, the views were beautiful, and the memorial was very touching. While I will always be a Texas girl at heart, I do love the terrain here. The hills (mountains? cliffs?) offer so many wonderful views regardless of if we’re sightseeing or simply driving around.

Another activity that often occurs when I’m with “the girls” is hairstyling. Below is their youngest daughter’s creation with my hair on the left. She kept saying this was The Princess Style. I also got to try The Princess Jasmine Style and The Princess Belle Style. On the right, I’m proud to claim that fishtail braid. 🙂

Louis and I have also tried a few new restaurants since my last post. The first “restaurant” is none other than Krispy Kreme!

We each sampled their glazed donuts because, to us, that should be the heart of any donut establishment. Louis also tried a chocolate iced with sprinkles, while I opted for plain chocolate iced. Overall? Meh. The best part was the cute hat that Louis is modeling above. Now having tried Dunkin’ Donuts (YUCK.) and Krispy Kreme (meh.), I can safely say Shipley’s FAR surpasses any other donut chain. Honestly, that is one of the reasons we are most excited about going home to Texas. 🙂

Another California restaurant we sampled is Islands. Their main menu item is their burgers, but they offer other American food as well.

Their tag line is “Fine Burgers & Drinks.” I think they mean ‘fine’ as in high quality, but to us, it meant ‘fine’ as in yeah…it’s ok. Hah! Our burgers weren’t terrible, but they weren’t anything to write home about either. (I guess they were notable enough to blog about though? 😉 )

After Islands, we decided to branch out and try…wait for it…another burger place! Just kidding! This place does offer burgers, but they have several other options as well. Stacked is a trendy, cool restaurant located in Fashion Valley Mall. The coolest part about Stacked? Each table has an iPad on it, and that’s how you place your order! Everything from drinks to dessert! You can even request for your drink to be refilled from the iPad! The entire meal, I kept saying, “It’s like we’re living in the FUTURE!!!”

The iPads were so awesome and so simple to use. You just “drag and dropped” whatever you wanted to add to your entree, and swiped it to the right if you wanted to remove it. You could also drop things next to your entree if you wanted them on the side. We were even able to pay by simply swiping our credit card on the iPad attachment. If this is the way of the future, waiters and waitresses better start looking for new career paths! Our burgers here were delicious, and we hope to return here before we journey home! The mall it was located at is amazing, too! It is the mall pictured in my intro photo at the top of this post, and it was gorgeous to walk around as the sun was setting.

Another fun thing I wanted to add in this post, is a plug about the Aggie Network! I mentioned how I ran into an Aggie I know at the San Diego Zoo. Since then, I met a sweet Aggie here on a mission trip at our hotel, AND we saw a car with a Former Student Century Club member decal on the back of their Tahoe. I creepily left them the note below on their windshield. Even though they had no way of getting in touch with us, I still wanted them to know there was another unit of the Aggie Network staying at their hotel! Too much? Oh well. The Aggie girl I met at breakfast, said she actually reached out to them as well, and that it was a sweet couple that graduated in 1958! Looks like they’ve been carrying on the Aggie Spirit for quite awhile! Gig ’em!

Finally, I want to give a shout out to all of the landscape artists and gardeners around La Jolla. All of the greenery, succulents, flowers, and general beauty around here is stunning! I keep seeing a particular black succulent that I affectionately coined “the Louis plant.” I said if he was turned into a plant this would be him because it is so beautiful and unique, and his favorite color is black. 🙂

The outside is black, however the inside is a vibrant fuchsia. They grow up on a tan stem, which makes them tall…also like Louis 🙂 Their scientific name is the Aeonium arboreum Zwartkop, and they are also known as “Black Rose.”

Ok! Whew! That’s a long summary for now! Look for more posts soon including details about other experiences we’ve had here! Thanks for checking in…I’ll try to post more this week!