Birthday Bloodies

Ah, another Monday. My birthday and family celebrations continued all through the weekend, and I felt like one lucky girl to be doted on so much in one week.

Saturday was my birthday part 2, this time with all our friends. In the late afternoon my girlfriends picked me up for a little daytime fun. There's a little spot in the shore town of Point Pleasant that we love; it has a cute coffee shop, a bunch of little boutiques and a really great handmade jewelry store that we're kind of obsessed with. Ever since we graduated college we've been going to Point on sunny spring/summer days to have coffee and pick out fun jewelry together, but I haven't been in literally years. It was a fun way to start the evening off! After a little girly time, we headed back down to Seaside to meet up with the rest of our friends at Chef Mike's Atlantic Bar & Grill for cocktails and snacks. I arrived to Matt handing me one of these.

Bloody Mary for dinner, anyone? ABG is one of my all time favorite restaurants, and it just reopened after Hurricane Sandy. It sits right on the ocean and has amazing seafood, so I wanted to start off there with some fancy drinks. Chef Mike keeps posting these crazy Bloody Mary pictures on Facebook and I've been dying to try one. The drink itself is great, but he garnishes it with pickled green beans (love), celery, giant green olives, pepperoncini, lime, tomato, mozzarella & basil, and a giant piece of peppered bacon (I had mine sans bacon, of course). It's like an entire meal in a glass.

They also make all their own infused vodkas. I'm not typically a vodka drinker, but I have to say the strawberry and watermelon cocktails were refreshing and delicious.

Yum, strawberries!

I didn't feel like eating a big dinner, so instead we ordered a bunch of apps and tapas to share. The sampler had Thai sweet chili calamari, dumplings, garlic shrimp, and crispy goat cheese with beets. Not a bad thing on the plate.

Matt and I also shared a plate of cumin scented falafel balls with creme freche.

I definitely want to go back for a full meal on a date night with Matt. The entrees coming out of the kitchen looked amazing.

We eventually left ABG and spent the rest of the evening bar hopping through Seaside and down the new boardwalk. It's not quite finished, but at least you can walk on it now (not like back on St. Patty's Day) and it's so nice to see everything opening back up, all fresh and new. You could still smell the paint on the walls in some places.

Midway through the night my sister Amanda and her boyfriend Justyn showed up from Philly. Love her! I was so excited to get to spend the night with her.

Mother's Day

As if Saturday night wasn't enough of a celebration, Sunday was filled with great food and more family time for Mother's Day. My second already. Crazy! I awoke to more presents from Matt and Riker, including some new beach stuff and a bunch of new plants for my home office, which I'm really excited about. Can't get enough greenery in a room where you have to sit and look at a computer all day. Then it was breakfast time.

Amanda, Justyn and our friend Adam slept over on Saturday night and we didn't have plans with the fam until the afternoon, so we all braved the Mother's Day restaurant lines to go get some food in our bellies. We ended up at a local favorite near the beach, Meg's Grill. The food is always fantastic, but for the holiday they had Lobster Eggs Benedict on special. Oh.my.god. SO GOOD. You know I'm becoming an Eggs Benedict addict, but this one took the cake - it came with an entire lobster tail and the hollandaise sauce was perfect.

I also had a few bites of Matt's fruit & yogurt parfait. We had a table outside and it was so nice to sit in the fresh air.

After everybody went home, we made our way over to Matt's mom's house for a MD party with the extended family. MomMom is in her glory when she's got her three great grandchildren on her lap.

The kids had a blast playing outside all day, and after seeing how much Riker loved playing with his cousins I think we're going to need to steal them for a weekend. His cousin Ernie is 6, and Riker adores him. He copies everything he does and it's adorable. His cousin Anna is only 3, but she loved pushing him in the swing and giving him different toys to play with.

Matt's mom put out a big spread for dinner, and I tasted a bit of everything except the steak & potatoes.

The pesto shrimp and parmesan cauliflower were my two favorites.

Dessert came in the form of cupcakes and fruit salad. I split a cupcake with my cousin Monica - strawberry frosting of course - and had a good serving of the fruit. The watermelon is so juicy and sweet right now.

It was a really nice day. I hope you had a wonderful Mother's Day celebrating with your loved ones, too!

Phew, that was a long and jam packed post. I had to get it all in now since I'm doing a little more work travel again this week. I head to Boston this afternoon for a few days and will be a busy bee until later this week. Catch you when the tide calms :)