Everyday Beach?

Pretty cool coincidence: Our friend Julien's work transferred him out here to Southern California, and now he lives 45 minutes north of us in Malibu. On Saturday, we drove up there for an overnight visit, which was some of the best fun I have had in a long time. Julien is a pretty funny guy, we enjoy his friends and best of all, he lives in a rustic place on top of a hill in the middle of gorgeous nowhere....that just happens to be a 10 minute drive to the beach. It's pretty great.

We spent the day playing on the beach:

 Dan redeems himself by taking a better picture of me.

Ever the modest one, Julien shows off his guns.

We played lots of games including a petanque tournament, which is sort of like bocce. Dan and I came in last, but I was surprisingly good at it. Then Dan and Julien began juggling the heavy balls, and one clonked on Julien's nose, breaking it for the 14th time in his life. He didn't seem all that bothered. That's Julien for you.

We drove up the PCH to this cliff to watch the sunset.

 We couldn't see the sun, but the view was still pretty dope.

Eva and her sister, who was visiting from France. It was pretty cold by that point!

 Julien telling Dan about all the colors in a sunset.

True Malibu love.

We headed back to Julien's pad.  We ate a whole lot of food: a delicious dinner prepared by Hoa and Julien and dessert by moi. We sat under the (many) stars, listened to the crickets and drank wine until we were too tired to keep our eyes open anymore.

 View from Julien's place: the morning after. Yes, that is the ocean over there.

We headed back early the next day because I was hosting Ladies' Club, which is a monthly get-together of the girls in our circle of friends out here. Every month, we have a different activity planned by the host, and being that I am the only one who lives on the west side of town, I planned a beach day. We had a small contingent of us (Suze, Emily, Sandy and June) come down to Santa Monica to eat some Bay Cities Italian sandwiches, dip our toes in the water, suntan and catch up.

 Suze, Sandy and June

This weekend kind of rocked. I mean, I felt like I was on vacation the whole time, but no, this is basically my life now. I can live with that!