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 Report

Friday afternoon Joel's parents and brother drove up from San Diego. The weather all weekend was so summery which was a nice treat for them since March in Chicago is still pretty bleh. We grilled out Friday night, hung outside with the new bench, and watched football (losing my mind) basketball.

Saturday, Joel's brother Andrew left pretty early to get back home, but the four of us decided to go out for a hike.

The hike was hot and steep but Joel's parents did a great job. We rewarded ourselves with brunch at Coral Tree Cafe and then laid low for most of the afternoon. For dinner, we continued our burger tour with burgers and beer at Plan Check.

The burger itself was top three I've had in LA (1. Father's Office, 2 & 3 tied Umami/Plan Check). I wasn't a big fan of the fries, but they had amazing appetizers (crab dip was on points) and the best freaking dessert (doughnuts with bananas, whipped cream and ice cream), and a great beer and wine list.

We recorded the Kentucky game and stayed fiercely away from all TVs and social media throughout dinner. It was a freaking nail biter but I'm so glad Kentucky is still in. I'm really, really rooting for them to take it all the way. 

Sunday we went to church for Palm Sunday and before we knew it, it was time for them to head back home. Joel and I needed some time without the TV, so we hung on the patio for most of Sunday evening, played scattgories and listened to music to cap off the weekend.

Here's to a great new week! 

Weakend Report

Typo intended. I've fallen out of the habit of taking lots of pictures on the weekends and my Monday weekend reports are taking the hit! I'm going to seriously try and change that this week and get back to better posting habits.

So, this weekend while in real life was so, so fun....in blog life looks pretty dang lame.

Friday night we met up with a friend and had dinner at Pono Burger in Santa Monica which is never a bad way to end the work week.

Then, early Saturday morning we drove to San Diego to visit with Joel's family. His parents are spending the first part of their spring break down there and then on Friday will make their way up to us in LA.

We spent most of Saturday at Balboa Park which was beautiful, met up with more family (Hi Uncle Mark!) and just enjoyed the day outside. When we got home we watched basketball, made fish tacos, and had a pretty adorable bath time.

I took one picture of all that fun, but thankfully it was a good one. 

We hit the road early on Sunday to try and spend as much time with my girl Mallory as possible. She was in town visiting her sister, and cut out half of her day to spend with Laura and I.

The three of us, and Joel, had such a fun afternoon drinking wine and catching up on life events. I can't believe that I met both of these girls from this blog.....random blind friend dates that have turned into lifelong friendships.

I had to bail on dinner because my voice was about a 0 by the time they left, but I'm hoping that another day of pounding tea and honey I'll be back to normal.  And I'm going to work on the picture thing!

Long Weekend Report

I spent the long weekend with some of my most favorite people in the entire world. My mom, grandma, two aunts, and cousin all came in from Chicago to visit.

The weather was perfect (if not a little hot) and we spent pretty much every waking moment eating, drinking, laughing, and doing.

Their first day was a little hectic; the valet guys left my car running at lunch and then it died and from there thing just went haywire. We needed to catch a break and Milo and Olive delivered. Their food is always phenomenal - but we our order this time around was spot on, and everyone was in Heaven.  The atmosphere is casual and fun and it's a nice change of pace from your average restaurant.

If you are ever in LA, it's one of my all time favorites.

 

The next morning, our group hit the ground running. My grandma and Aunt Betty were staying with my cousin Cole who had his firstborn in October, so it was just the four of us.  Our first stop of the morning was the Santa Monica Pier.

 

We got to the pier around 9 which was nice because it wasn't overly crowded yet.

   

  

We hit some shops on 3rd St. in Santa Monica and then headed home to hose a lunch for more  more family come up from Orange County. My mom's cousins live in OC, so they made a day trip to come up to visit with everyone which was was so nice.

 

That night we ordered in pizza and babysat Nolan while his parents took advantage of all of the eager babysitters. 

After a Valentine's-themed breakfast, my mom, Gia, Joel and I went to Westridge to hike off all of those amazing donuts.

 

After the hike we freshened up and then went to M Street in Santa Monica for brunch. The weather was too perfect not to walk the beach to Venice so we left our car in Santa Monica and walked the mile to Venice Beach and Abbot Kinney.

 

Sometimes it really does take having visitors in to truly see how gorgeous LA really is. And Venice through a 15 year old's eyes is pretty hilarious. 

We went straight from Venice to Cole and Brianna's to visit with everyone, have dinner and play games. More of my cousins drove up from San Diego so we all had a blast catching up and telling stories. After dinner we played a competitive game of Heads Up, per my Grandma's request, which was as hilarious as you may suspect.

 

 

On our last day, we decided to take a drive up to Santa Barbara. Gia wanted to visit UCSB and the views on the way  never disappoint, so we took a little Sunday drive. 

 

We had a great brunch at Blush on State Street, then shopped around before turning around to head home. 

Joel had stayed home and cooked us all an amazing dinner of fresh ceivche, fish tacos, and corn salad. We watched the SNL awards and before I knew it, I was dropping them all back off at LAX.

These trips always go too fast and it never gets easier to say goodbye. I'm heading home in about 4 weeks which helps, but my house already feels lonely without them all.