August 9 is not my favorite day of the year.

But it's always better when it's on a jam-packed, picture-taking weekend to take my mind off the fact that my next birthday won't be for 364 more days.

(I really like my birthday.)

After the beach excursion and birthday festivities of the day before, we were ready to relax with Kris and Becky, who'd come down from Chris' hometown of Redding for their 3 year wedding anniversary vacation.

We decided to start the day off with brunch at the Mission Cafe, which the other Chris and his wife had raved about the night before. Not going to lie, I was a little skeptical by the looks of the place. But it was AMAZING. Becky and I got pancake breakfasts... best pancakes I've ever had, hands down, with a side of perfect eggs and bacon. All for $6. They boys got lunchish stuff like quesadillas and turkey clubs that they enjoyed too.

We decided to do some shopping, and Chris took us down to Practically Mexico to visit this outlet mall down there. Pretty much every store you can think of is in this place. Also pretty much? We could literally spit into Mexico from the parking lot. (Not that we would. I'm just saying.) Three of us found the Mexican/United States border fence at the back of the parking lot absolutely fascinating. (The fourth had to be dragged over.) We found it so fascinating we decided to do an impromptu wall photo shoot by the Practically Mexico wall.

When we lost interest in the wall, we hit the mall, in search of nothing in particular, just killing time before we met up with some others for dinner in Old Town.

(Just to give you an idea of how I am so not kidding about how close we were to the border.)

We went to dinner at the Coyote Cafe in Old Town, meeting up with the other Chris, his wife Mel, and Chris' sister Sarah. Kris really loves Sarah.
And he took this picture of me and the OSF. (Isn't the OSF a cutie?)

And I took this picture of cute Chris with the bokeh in the background.
Good food. Good peeps. Good times.