Long Weekend Recap

There was just no way I was going to be able to get this post up yesterday, so, yet again, we're a bit behind around these parts! 

This past weekend was such a fun, jam packed weekend.

My longest girlfriend Claire came to visit from D.C. with her boyfriend Albie. She hadn't met Leo yet, I hadn't met Albie, so it was really nice to finally introduce our important boys to each other. 

Friday after they landed, we met Joel at The W Hotel for happy hour before heading home to order pizza and play games. 

Saturday morning we were up early to hike Westridge. 

 

Poor Albie and Claire - they were totally thrown into life with a baby, but they were major troopers about it - and impressed with how much we shove into the day before noon! 

After the hike, we drove straight to Golden Road Brewery for brunch. 

Golden Road is such a perfect spot to spend the day. The beer and food are great, there's lots of stuff for kids to do (a few games, a train that zooms by, and lots of walking and crawling space), plus plenty of TVs for the first Saturday of college football! 

We made it home with plenty of time to watch the Hawkeyes game and spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out. That night I made chicken fajitas, we indulged in some S'mores, and went to bed on the early side. 

Sunday morning, starting early again, we hit the road for a day trip to Santa Barbara. 

We were up in Santa Barbara by 10am, which gave us plenty of time to walk the ocean, check out the sidewalk fair, and do a little antique shopping too. 

The weather was perfect, cool and crisp until about noon when the sun came out and gave us a perfect 70 degree day. 

 

Corks'n'Crowns is always the first place we hit up. It opens at 11am, and normally it's pretty quiet that early. 

On Sunday's they do a cupcake and champagne flight which I was reallllly tempted to go for, but stuck with a glass of sparkling rose instead. 

 

             

We are wine club members at Corks which means we get free tasting flights when we visit the shop, so we decided to try the beer flight as well, which we all really enjoyed. It can be a lot of wine, so finding a spot that serves champagne and beer (and cupcakes!) is always a crowd pleaser. 

For lunch, we decided to visit Les Marchands. They were only serving cheese plates, but allowed us to order lunch from The Lucky Penny, eat in their cute courtyard, and buy a bottle of wine from their shop. The best of both worlds. 

We each split a small pizza and sandwich, had a delicious bottle of wine, and then Joel and I hit the road so that Leo could nap on the ride home.

That night, once Claire and Albie got back to LA, we picked up Sushi and enjoyed another low key night at home.

Somehow, Monday rolled around, and after a long run to work off all of the indulgences from the days past, we decided to visit the Venice canals.

The Venice canals are such a pretty landmark in LA and really provide a pretty awesome and beautiful walk.

 

Since we were already in Venice, we had to take our guests to check out Abbott Kinney. If you haven't been, it's a really groovy street in Venice with tons of happening restaurants and shops. I'm not quite cool enough to hang there on the regular, but it's definitely a must see. 

We met a few of their friends for lunch, and then left everyone a little early to put Leo down. 

I cooked a big Italian dinner for everyone Sunday night, we played scattegories, and drank one of the delicious bottles of wine we had bought the day before. A perfect way to cheers to an amazing weekend.