Bruxie=Yum!

Bruxie: Deliciousness in Waffle Form.

 We love to visit The Circle in Old Towne Orange. Not because of the antique shops or pleasant old school charm(I lived in Old Towne my first 19 years of life-I'm over the charm Ü)...we like the food! In the last few years so many new restaurants have moved into the old shops, I can't even keep up with whats where. We've only been to a few because we are way too set in our boring culinary ways(kids love Red Robin what can I say?)...but sometimes we get an itch to try something new.

The girls had been bugging me to try Bruxie...how I could resist...I have an unnatural love for food that can be held; burritos, taquitos, food on sticks, cupcakes....so I was in.

Bruxie has been open for about 6 months and has been very popular. Being next to the college doesn't hurt either. They serve everything on an amazing crispy-on-the-outside-but-soft-on-the-inside waffle. 

How do they do it? Don't know. Don't care. Just want more.

This has a lemon creme with berries. Oh.sweet.heaven.

The breakfast sandwich was fabulous too...egg, cheese and crispy chunks of bacon. I ate half of mine two hours later..still fabulous.

They serve chocolate with a splash of milk. Rich!

  Meeting friends for breakfast made the morning even better!

  This little girl "FaFa" must be the most loved cat around!

You Capture: Summertime

Swim lessons. A summer favorite. 

Last year: hesitation, some tears and a non-violent sitting protest in refusal to jump....

This year was different:

Day Trippin'

The Otellio's don't take day trips much(so this is a long post). We've been to Sea World a few times and see a movie maybe twice a year. Usually we hit up local parks or just consider our weekly Costco trip followed by some frozen yogurt a family outing.

However this summer we made a little list of some stuff we wanted to do. 

#2 was Ride a Train

So we did!

We got on at the Santa Ana station and rode the 28 minutes to San Juan Capistrano. 

 The nice train man hurried us along...

We made it...

 The Los Rios Historic District has amazing adobe buildings, shops and little restaurants.

 Yes, I grabbed me a cup...cream behind the counter and no stirrers at 9:45am? Hummm? Oh well...coffee is coffee (for the most part) in my book. 

An old house.. 

I had bought a Jasmere (like Groupon) deal for Zoomars...$18 for us to get in 3 baskets of veggies for the animals and 2 kiddie train rides.

  We LOVE guinea pigs and my kids have always wanted to hold a rabbit. So when they saw a 20x20 pen filled with both running a muck they were in heaven. 
I'm anti-pet stores, circus' and can barely tolerate zoos-so I'm a little sketchy on the care ALL these little guys get-they looked happy and willing to be man-handled my dozens of kids though. What can you do?

We LOVE piggies!

I LOVE goats!

The pigs were sweet.

So were the ponies.

Emus are a bit creepy, but made awesome sounds.

A big cow:

The llamas win for best fur:

A $6 bag of dirt magically had "precious" gem stones in it while panning. I could have sported $12 for the bag that had a "real" arrowhead in it, umm. no.

Juliet thought it was awesome, I suppose that is the real point. (and I should grumble about the $6)

After Zoomars we headed to the the Los Rios Historic District to check out the historical sites...

(yes, I think this hilarious)

We had lunch at a little family owned restaurant that is in the old train depot...they also hold a Murder Mystery Dinner Theater there...it's really a beautiful building.

After lunch we walked by Mission San Juan Capistrano. Abigail went there in March on a field trip and Brad went the many times as youth, as did I. We didn't go in....Juliet will just have to wait four years until 4th grade so she can go too.

 We aren't getting into heaven anytime soon:

We saw a few photo shoots going on around town, there are SO many great spots for them!

Los Rios Park is fairly new. There isn't much shade, since the trees aren't mature yet. But the weather was great and the girls played until it was time to board the train to head home.

Here comes the Amtrak!

Abigail had a brief moment of panic when she read or heard something that said "this train runs non-stop to San Luis Obispo." (which is about a 6 hour drive away)..panic..almost tears. Even the "it's ok we have money to get home or someone can get us and we'll always keep you safe" speech wasn't helpful. Until they announced our stop was coming up. End of panic mode...thank goodness.

We were home by 3:15pm after stopping at 7-11 for some Slurpees. Later that night we went to Souplantation for dinner, stopped at a park for a while, then went home and all watched Kicking and Screaming (we love Will Ferrell-even in clean form)...I'd have to say it was just about the BEST.DAY.EVER. for us people anyhow.

♥