The birthday bunch weekend

There were two candles on this cake – one for my dad and one for my “baby” sister.  Someone joined the 30 club!!!  As a birthday present, she got rear ended on the freeway on the way to my parents’ house.  Isn’t that nice!?  Sorry Bee 🙁

It was a super fun weekend for me though, packed with family time and good food.

My mom made a gluten free, dairy free chocolate cake, but instead of making the coconut cream frosting we always use she bought the Simple Mills frosting.  She (and I) have noticed inconsistencies with the solid portions of canned coconut milk which has made it annoyingly difficult to make the coconut cream icing.  Unfortunately, the Simple Mills one was not a big hit.  It was kinda bland and weirdly airy/fatty without much flavor.

Let me back up though, because we actually got there early Friday for some swimming and hanging out.

We lost track of time and six o’clock rolled around and we hadn’t even started dinner so I fed the kids leftovers from my parents’ fridge.  WHILE THEY WATCHED MOANA.  I mean…dream scenario for these babes much???

Oh hi blurry photo of my new favorite Ranch dressing.  I never buy Ranch because Kyle doesn’t like it (on account of that whole pickle/dill/zucchini food group that he won’t touch) so I was happy to get my hands on this as an appetizer.  The kids rounded out their dinner with raw veggies from the platter.

Then we took a movie intermission to bathe them so that they could then finish the movie while we ate (in peace) which it was so nice!  I may be coming around on tv, hahaha!

This quinoa salad had tricolor quinoa, black beans, tomatoes, corn, avo and this dressing:

We nixed the red onion and cilantro for different people’s taste buds.  😛

I swear I have this strawberry salad recipe on the blog somewhere because it’s my grandma’s recipe and we make it all the time.  I’ll see if I can find the link at some point…

My dad requested spare ribs and my mom somehow ended up buying enough for the whole neighborhood.  Not really a problem.

She also bought a ton of salmon because some peeps don’t do meat.

I had a lot of both. And then another serving on top of that.

This sweetie pie joined me after the movie finished up.

But we put the kiddos down before busting into the cake.

Sneaky sneaky.

Feliz cumpleaños!

The best part about this photo is not her legs hanging off the bed, but rather the knowledge that she started out with the Nemo pillow and somehow ended up on the other side of him.

No photos of my breakfast coffee or smoothie but both were goooood.  I think I make better smoothies at my parents’ house because I have more limited options and sometimes simple is actually best.

Both Saturday and Sunday morning I made myself a smoothie with fruit, slivered almonds, and water.  That’s it.  Saturday’s had frozen blueberries, frozen banana, fresh strawberries and 1/2 cup slivered almonds.  Sunday’s had frozen blueberries, frozen banana, fresh figs and 1/2 cup slivered almonds.  They were equally silky smooth, thick and creamy, and soooo tasty.  Maybe it’s because I skipped the ice?  Either way, I was very into them.

Here’s Saturday’s lunch salad, featuring leftover grilled salmon, a brussels sprout/kale/cabbage mix, avo, and miso dressing.

The key is to go wayyyy overboard on the dressing.

It could have used a crunchy nut too, but it was still great, obvs.

V took a nap while we played with P in the backyard…and then Kyle brought out some leftover birthday cake which P seemed interested in, so he gave him a try.  He liked it!  [Duh]  Somehow he forgot about the cake after that one bite – likely because we started making up stories with each other and when imaginary play comes into the picture everything else goes by the wayside.  The bigger miracle is that V went the entire weekend without even asking about the cake!  She’s usually VERY tuned into the dessert scene at birthday parties (or any party), but it never even came up.

It probably helped that they were occupied by the pool all afternoon.

My friend came over to hang too, and we blew up my dad’s new rafts that we gave him for his birthday and lounged the pm away.

Pacman’s swimming is coming along soooo well and he can now go from the steps to the other side of the pool all on his own.  It’s incredible how quickly skills progress at this age, like all of a sudden something just clicks.  And he was obsessed with doing laps back and forth and back and forth, diving for the light up toys at the bottom each way and then throwing them back down again, and repeating that at least one hundred times.  I was exhausted just watching him but he didn’t want to stop!!  And now Kyle is realllllly wanting to get a pool in our backyard.  Sigh.

My parents agreed to babysit the kids that night so Kyle and I could get out for a dinner date.

We went to Bowl’d in Albany, which came highly recommended (and yelp confirmed) as a place for great Korean food.

Highlights of the banchan for me were the spicy fish cakes, the kimchi, the seaweed salad, and the spicy tofu.  The spicy tofu was so good I would have gotten a whole bowl as a dish although maybe that would have been too much heat.  I added the extra sauce once it was gone to the bibimbap bowl.

Yummmmmm.  All the veggies with the drippy egg yolk just had me going back for more and more.  The squash was the best part in my opinion, but of course the bulgogi was amazing.

Kyle’s favorite was the jap chae and it’s also the one I think I ate the most of too.  It was just so addictive with those glass noodles and beef.  It seems like such a simple dish but when you think about it, it’s got so much going on.

And last, but not least was the Korean miso soup with seafood and tofu.  It’s obviously different from Japanese miso soup and I liked the subtle spice as well as the seafood in it.  That said, it was probably the one dish that I had the least of because the other stuff was SO so good.

We left stuffed for sure.  🙂  And came home to the kids in bed.  Best end to a date!