The Most Special of Weekends

I think I'm still high off of this weekend. The past few days have included so many special moments and I feel just so fortunate to be blessed with such wonderful family and friends who show such love and thoughtfulness. How's that for the start of a blog post? ;)

So let me take a step back a minute. My birthday and Mother's Day typically fall on the same weekend every year, so it's always an extra special couple of days for me. Matt is such a great husband that he makes a big deal out of both days rather than skipping one or the other since they fall at the same time. This year was no exception, but we had an extra special surprise in between as well.

Birthday celebrations started last Thursday night (my actual birthday) with cupcakes from Crumbs Bakeshop at my office in the city, followed by mini cupcakes and ice cream sandwiches from my favorite ice cream shop at home with my boys. And birthday presents of course!

Sugar overload!

One of my favorite perks of my job is that we get our birthdays off. I love that! I didn't take my actual birthday off since it's my weekly day in the city, so I took Friday off instead. I spent the morning with Riker, then spent some time at my in-laws, and then dropped Riker off there so I could have a few hours of "me time." I got a bunch of annoying phone calls crossed off my list which I've been procrastinating on, and then it was time for relaxation.

Starbucks, a prenatal massage (using a gift card I've had for TWO years, crazy!) and then a movie and a nap back at home. I can't remember the last time I took a nap. It was glorious. Just as I was about to lay down, the doorbell rang - which annoyed me at first, until I answered it and was greeted with a beautiful bouquet of roses from Riker (aka Matt). I adore getting flowers unexpectedly. And they are still in bloom in my bedroom 4 days later.

The festivities continued that night with a birthday dinner with my best girls at one of my favorite local Asian restaurants. Can't have a bad evening when I'm with these people!

***

On Saturday we had plans to go to a surprise graduation party for Matt's mom, who went back to college two years ago and is getting her degree next week. We were looking forward to an afternoon with the family, but were totally shocked when we walked in and everyone yelled "surprise" to US. We were super confused and thought they had mistaken us for Matt's mom, but nope...our families had gotten together to throw us a surprise "sprinkle" for baby girl.

I honestly couldn't have been more shocked, and was so overwhelmed with how thoughtful and generous it was. The theme was also super cute (and you know how I am about themes) - it was a tea party complete with fancy tea sandwiches, salads, scones with homemade lemon curd and jam, and about a million desserts.

Not to mention pink flowers and decorations galore. So adorable!

They even had favors for everyone - bags filled with jars of local raw honey and homemade jam from our favorite local organic farm. My sister-in-law is so talented - I would've just stuffed the goodies in a plain bag, but she glued on pink bows and little sparkly jewels. So cute.

We have a most amazing family and I am thankful for them every day.

What a wonderful day it was, not to mention we came home with a car full of baby girl clothes, blankets, stuffed animals, books and other necessities that I haven't had a chance to go buy yet. Such a big help!

As if the weekend wasn't already filled enough with celebrations, on Sunday we got to spend some extra time with Amanda and Justyn who spent the night at our house after the party (which gave us plenty of time to start talking about wedding planning since they just got engaged!! Woo!). Matt also surprised me with a few sweet Mother's Day gifts, after which we met up with his parents to spend the afternoon on the boat - our first boat day of the year.

It was 80 degrees and sunny, and a great day to start the boating season.

I honestly can't imagine a more perfect couple of days. I went to bed Sunday night feeling like the luckiest girl in the world, and am hanging onto that feeling all week - through the work stress and the sore hips and the tired nights as I try to get everything ready for the baby's arrival in just 4 short weeks. We have so much to be thankful for.

Speaking of sore hips and tired nights, this girl is off to bed to get some rest. Enjoy your evening!

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 :)

Birthday Beauty

The rest of the weekend here consisted of a little home redecorating and then a party with friends and family. Matt's been wanting a new summer quilt for a while and I've been wanting some art for my new office, so on Sunday morning we took a trip to HomeGoods to pick up some house goodies.

We ditched our wintery down comforter for a white warm-weather quilt, and I love it. Now if we could just get some consistent warm weather, that'd be great.

Around lunchtime we drove over to Heather & Kevin's to celebrate a special little girl.

Avery is turning 1 today! Look at those big blue eyes. She's such a beauty!

Heather planned a ladybug-themed party and it was adorable. Everywhere you turned there was something red and black.

Heather's sister even made ladybug chocolate covered pretzels - um, so cute. And delicious.

The weather was chilly but still sunny, so we spent most of the time outdoors watching the kids play in the backyard. The heat lamp came in handy!

The kids were so cute running around playing with each other on the swing set and other toys. Riker had a blast. It's so fun now that he's walking and can run around with the older kids.

For lunch we had sandwiches from my favorite spot and all kinds of salads (including my Mediterranean Couscous Salad, yum). I didn't snap a pic of my plate but I ate half a grilled veggie sandwich, some couscous and some pasta salad. Carby! And it didn't stop there...

I fully planned on not  eating a cupcake, even one of those super cute ladybug ones. But then out came a tier of fun flavored ones, including Corona, Mexican Chocolate and, my personal fave, PB&J.

They were the same cupcakes from Avery's big sister Delia's birthday party last year, and I haven't had one since then. I caved. And loved every last bite. So good!

Aren't they the cutest little family? Love them.

And now it's back to reality and on the veggie wagon again. And the work wagon - speaking of which, it's time to go wake up this child of mine who is totally oversleeping and is going to make me late. Eek!