thosecoolkims – Page 78

We love a great restaurant…

We made plans to finally have a long overdue dinner with Carrie’s best friend, Carrie and her husband, John. She suggested Ketchup, and as soon as we saw the pics, we were IN! Besides the fact that Carrie is a complete ketchup addict, this place was all white and red – and very modern! We couldn’t wait to check this place out. Here are a few pics from their website:

(We sat right about where this picture was taken from)

The restaurant didn’t disappoint, although it was quite a scene. Ketchup is located right on the Sunset Strip. Ed kept sayin’ that he half expected the paparazzi to show up because it seemed like some celebrity was bound to appear. No celeb sightings for us though…

The place wasn’t just pretty, either. The food was pretty good. We ordered some fun stuff – the Ketchup Fries, which were basically 3 different types of French Fries with 5 different ketchups. The Fire Fries were Ed’s fave, the Sweet Potato fries were surprisingly Carrie’s fave, and the Parmesan Fries weren’t bad either. We can’t quite remember all 5 ketchup types, but they were pretty delicious. We know there was a classic, a chipotle, a mango and one with ranch. We also ordered mini Kobe beef chili dogs to share between the four of us. The two dogs came out and they were the funniest little miniature dogs we’d ever seen. They were literally “bite-size”. That was fine by us though, as we needed to save room for the main course…seafood plates served with lobster mashed potatoes. The meal was some serious over-indulgence, but it was worth it!

Next, we were off to the L.A. County Museum of Art for a Muse event. Carrie used to work at the museum, so lucky for us, she was able to hook us up with free tickets. (Thanks, Carrie!)

The event was featuring some 60s & 70s SoCal art from their permanent collection, along with some colonial Latin American art. It was okay – we all agreed we’d seen better there, but Ed was excited because one of his favorite bands, Los Abandoned played. They also had art projects that you could make on site. We love those LACMA events!

All in all, we thought it was an excellent night!!!

Eric turns the big 3-0!

We went out to Perris today to visit my lil’ bro & the family to celebrate his birthday. I can’t believe my little brother is thirty years old! It’s pretty amazing to think that he is appoaching his 10th wedding anniversary and has 5 children at his age! I’m an extremely proud big sister – he is a good guy and a great dad…and I am happy to see him so happy in his life.

It had also been too long since we got to spend some quality time with the kids. They were as cute as always. They just love their Uncle Ed:

Ethan can be such a stinker. He runs and hides as soon as he sees the camera come out. But we managed to get a half-picture of him in the backyard:

And Miss Ella is growing…she gets cuter everytime we see her!

We also got a chance to look through Kendall’s sketchbook. At just 9 years old, she’s got quite a thick book, and she is so smart! We got a real kick out of this chart she made:

We know its kinda hard to see, but she has listed that she is 50% white, 25% samoan and 25% “chinees thai”. That kid just melts our hearts. She really does.

We went to the Fair!

On Friday night, we decided that it was a good night to go to the fair. Neither of us had been in years, and it sounded kinda fun! We went after work and hung out for a few hours.

All of the fried food is pretty overwhelming, and we did indulge in a Deep-Fried combination plate of artichoke hearts, mushrooms and zucchini, but after that, we knew we had to save room for two fair favorites: corn on the cob and ice cream!

After all of the food fun was over, we cruised through the “Carnival of Products” where they are selling anything from beef jerky to backyard spas. We looked at kitchen gadgets, got our rings cleaned and even passed by this very high-tech booth:

The Personality Analysis Machine. It just takes a moment. But it looked a little too high-tech for us, so we went on.

There were also very amazing pieces of art in one of the exhibition halls. The photography in particular was really astounding. There were a few photos we would have totally bought. We were happy to be so pleasantly surprised!

Next, we really wanted to go on the big super-slide. We’re proud to report that we did it – and Carrie won the race! There was a very enthusiastic spectator at the end who complemented her on her super-slide racing pizazz.

In all it’s glory, the Euro Slide:

No more carnival rides for us really, we almost went on the ferris wheel, but those carnival rides cost like one trillion dollars!

Finally, we went to look at all the gardens, fruit and veggies and livestock. It was fun to see the categories…things like “Most Unusually Shaped Vegetable” and “Biggest Cucumber”. We saw such cute sheep, chicks, and a whole litter of sleeping piglets! So cute!

That was our trip to the fair…

(We really liked all of these stuffed monkeys too. )

The end to a perfect weekend!

After many hours on the road, we’re too tired to write a whole lot but man, what a great weekend it was! We took a completely different way back home, taking the 166 through a podunk town that time forgot called Cuyama and down the 33 through Ojai. Driving up to Morro Bay yesterday was all about ocean views and mock-Danish villages, but today was all about isolated plains and grand mountains. And we do mean isolated….we’d go for miles without seeing any sign of life! We went from the most John Steinbeck-ish moments…big rusted tractors and roads lined with orchard trees…to curvy, pine tree lined mountain roads…and back again to the coast! It was hard to believe we were in California the whole time!

Just a few pics of the signage we captured today (Carrie’s got a thing for cool signs):