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.

Weekend Recap

It feels remiss not to take a second to recognize that hundreds of families are waking up in Florida with the worst weekend recap imaginable.

The unthinkable happened again, and these families truly have to bear the unbearable. I'm so, so sorry. My heart breaks for them, the victims, the survivors, us, them.....This is a scary world and with each passing day, seems to get scarier. 

The fact is that we are not safe. We are not safe at school, we are not safe at the gym, we are not safe at church, we are not safe at dinner or at a club. How are supposed to stomach that? 

I know we cannot live in fear, so I will try hard not too - and I hope the same can be said for you too.

My goal for today is to try give an act of service for my neighbors. I'm going to finally donate that bag of clothes that has been sitting in my closet. I'm going to let someone go ahead of me in line tomorrow. I'm going to buy a drip coffee for the homeless man that sits outside of Starbucks. I'm going to say hello to every person I walk by on the street.

It has to count for something.... and as President Obama said yesterday in his speech:

 "To Actively Do Nothing is a Decision"

So let's do something. 

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 This past weekend was exactly what our little family needed before all chaos breaks loose on Wednesday (we leave for a month in Chicago)! 

Friday morning we started off with swim lessons, which I've shared before, is my favorite activity of the week.

Not only does Leo love it, he's getting better each and every week and he also takes the most amazing afternoon nap! 

 

When he woke up, him and I walked into our little downtown area, Westwood Village. We picked up some groceries for the weekend and then met Joel at a fun and fast taco spot, TLT Food. 

I really like taking Leo out to restaurants but we do have to choose wisely! We like to go somewhere that's loud (or outdoors) and allows us to get in early and get out fast! 

 

And if you follow me on snapchat (tshields622) you probably saw that Leo realllly likes to scream at restaurants! Thankfully the couple sitting next to us thought it was hilarious.  

 

Recently the best part of taking Leo out to dinner with us (minus the fact that someone else does the dishes) is that he gets to try all of the food we order. It's been fun finding out what he likes (avocado, any cheese, bread) and what he doesn't (chicken in sauce).

Leo and I won't be with Joel on Father's Day, so we had our own Father's Day on Saturday.

 

I set this little table up while Joel loaded Leo into the car for a quick day trip up to Santa Barbara. We left the house about 8:30 which timed up nicely with Leo's morning nap.

 

We got up to Santa Barbara at 10am and walked through our favorite antique shop. We were on the hunt for a few things (a leather ottoman and new art for above our couch) which we didn't score, but we found a really cool vintage globe that we had to scoop up. 

We took a breakfast break in the car for Leo and then took a long walk along the water.

It started to drizzle, which felt like a sign from above to find a wine bar. 

We popped into our favorite shop "Corks'n'Crowns" and had the entire place to ourselves. To me, there is nothing more perfect than a chilly, gloomy day when you are in wine country. It honestly makes me giddy.

I set Leo up on the floor with a blanket and toys, the staff put on the James Taylor pandora station, I had a glass of champagne (Joel a delish Pinot Noir) and we just hung out. 

We were happy hanging alone, but eventually two couples strolled in - both from Chicago! - so we had fun chatting with them, re-joined the Corks wine club, did a little wine shopping and then made our to lunch. 

We went to Les Marchands which I would highly recommend if you find yourself in Santa Barbara. They have a tiny but knock out (and always changing) menu with walls and walls of amazing wine. 

(Sidenote: Did you watch Somm or Somm 2? One of the guys Brian McClintic is the owner!)

 

We had an outstanding lunch - we split the chicken sandwich and brussels spouts salad and we basically licked both plates. 

After lunch we made one necessary stop - picking up sandwiches for dinner at Metropolis - before driving back home to LA.

It was Joel's perfect day, and he truly deserves nothing but that. He's an amazing, amazing Dad (and husband) and we are beyond proud to call him ours. 

Sunday morning, Joel and I each got in long runs, Joel (11) and me (4.5), and then spent the rest of the afternoon packing for our trip to Chicago! 

LONG gone are the days of light packing. 

I'll be gone for a month, and let's just say, it truly looks that way.

I snuck out for a mani/pedi during an afternoon nap, and then we made this cheese fondue in the crock pot! 

We had it with a bottle of Chard that we bought in SB, and cheersed to weekend very, very well spent. 

Valentine's Day Weekend Recap

We had such a packed and fun weekend.

Friday afternoon was kind of a doozy....Leo was fussing, and I had been feeling a little run ragged, so when Joel randomly came home around 4:30 - I took my chance to escape for a bit. My girlfriend and I met for drinks outside, which turned to dinner and before I knew it - Joel had given Leo a bath and put him to bed by the time I got home at 7:30pm.

Not only was it so refreshing to just get out of the house on such a whim, but it also gave me another opportunity to see that Joel is a pretty amazing Dad and Husband. He happily pushed me out the door, never called with concerns or questions, and actually enjoyed the few hours he had with Leo solo. 

Ok, but the real fun started on Saturday.

We loaded up the car around 8am and drove about 90 minutes north to Santa Barbara. We made a pit stop in Montecito but after waiting in line for thirty minutes for a croissant, feeding the baby in the car, and Joel taking work calls, it just didn't work out the way we imagined, so we loaded back into the car and decided to go right in Santa Barbara for a much needed walk.

The weather was a lot colder and muggier in the morning than we were expecting, but Leo had fun looking out, and it was nice to not have the sun beating down on us during the walk. 

Our favorite spot in SB is Corks'n'Crowns, so we stopped there first for a glass of champagne after our walk. We sat out on the patio and just marveled at our favorite city. 

 

If it wasn't for Joel's job, we would move up there in a hot second.

Leo only lasted a bit before he was ready for a nap, so we stuck him in the stroller and went for lunch at Metropulos - the best deli ever, and had sandwiches outside. 

After lunch, we ventured to a new-to-me spot called Santa Barbara Wine Collective. It is a beautiful spot - and we ended up spending the rest of our afternoon there.

              

Leo had such an absolute blast being outside and being constantly held. He honestly had a twenty minute giggle fest that had the entire restaurant in hysterics. It will forever go down as one of my favorite memories, and I was able to catch a little video of it, so if I figure it out I'll try and post it on here later. It was just too sweet. 

It was such a relaxing, low key day spent with my boys. I had dreamed about taking Leo up to Santa Barbara when I was pregnant - and to finally live it out was pretty amazing.

We left pretty early, and made it home in time to make dinner at home (salmon burgers), give Leo a bath, and watch the dunk contest. 

Sunday morning, Joel was up at 4:30am to go for a long run in the mountains with his friends. They did ten miles before the sun even came up.

I was on Leo duty in the morning but when I crawled out of bed to go get the baby, I had this sweet surprise waiting for me. 

 

Once Joel came home and we had breakfast, I went out for my own run. Part of the LA marathon ran right by our house, so I ran along side all of the awesome runners for 3 miles before Joel and Leo met me and we cheered on some of the athletes. 

That afternoon we made some major changes to our living room. We moved around a ton of furniture and cleared out a bigger space for Leo and all of his things. 

It's not totally picture perfect, but I'm going to try and take a few pictures and get them up here this week. 

Overall it was a love filled, productive weekend - and I hope it was the same for you!