A weekend revolving around food

What else is new, right?!?!  That's how is always seems to go in our house!

Friday

On Friday afternoon, I took the kids to 3 Brothers Bakery because I had read they were sampling their entry into the Nestle Crunch 75th Birthday Showdown.  Only 15 bakeries around the country were selected to submit an entry, and this bakery so close to us is one of them.  We had only been to 3 Brothers once before, when Clyde & Melinda visited in the summer.  They had seen the bakery on a show on the Food Network, and so I stopped in and grabbed them some giant cupcakes to try.  They were the biggest and sweetest cupcakes I had ever seen and tasted.  Leighton loved them, of course!

Leighton loved the pie.

Riley did not (me neither).  But she liked the milk!

And they both liked making milk mustaches and seeing the photos on my phone!

Even though I didn't like the pie, I would have still voted for the hometown bakery if I was on Facebook.  Maybe one of you can submit a vote on my behalf :)

Roy and I had a date night planned for that night (Thanks, Lindsey!!!).  Amazing, I know.  We went out when my Mom and Kirsten were here one night, too!  First time since Leighton was 18 months old.  And now again only a few weeks later.  Amazing!  Anyway, because we were planning to go out to a Japanese restaurant (Samuri) later, we didn't want to eat a huge dinner, but we wanted to eat a little something with the kids.  I did up some grilled cheese and veggies and then we had a chip tasting to go with them.

Let's talk about the grilled cheese first.  The kids had regular ones (cheddar for Leighton and mozzarella for Riley), but Roy and I had grown up grilled cheese, thanks to a friend's recent blog post inspiration!  I used some of the fresh rye bread I had just grabbed at the bakery, slathered it with pesto and added in some mozzarella, goat cheese, and caramelized onions.  So good.  Sooooo good. 

I had another for lunch on Saturday!

Now to the chip tasting.  One night when I was watching TV while at the gym, there was a commercial for a special contest Lay's is running to find a new flavor.  They are sampling three flavors and are taking votes (again, on Facebook!) to find their winner.  I happened to see two of the flavors at the store on Spring Break and saw the third last week one day, so I figured we should do a little tasting with the kids to see what we all thought.

Leighton and I both thought the Cheesy Garlic Bread were pretty tasteless.  The kids loved the sweetness of the Chicken & Waffles.  Roy favored the Sriracha, which the kids were brave enough to try but both found too spicy.  I think I's choose that one as my favorite as well.

After dinner, the kids got to eat their cupcakes that they had chosen while at the bakery earlier (they chose the rather tame and plain ones because they had sprinkles and a little topper they could keep).

Saturday

We drove out to Spring to go to Atkinson Farm to do some strawberry picking, like we did last April.  We managed to get some good ones to bring home, but we had to be a lot more careful with the ones we picked than last year because a lot had gone bad.  Luckily, we weren't in any rush and there were many perfectly good ones to be found!

Now I need to look through the recipes I made last year (here and here) with all our strawberries and pick some of them to make again.  And then it will be a search on Pinterest for some new inspiration, too!

After Riley's nap, we went to Mechie's at Wesleyan Plaza to help them celebrate their one year anniversary.  They were having free color-in t shirts and face painting and balloons/stickers/tattoos, so we wanted to check it out. On the way, Riley asked if we were going with Naomi and Hannah (since we always see them for ice cream), and she must have known something we didn't because we were pleasantly surprised to run into them there (and Brian was with them, too)!

We got the last two t shirts they had ... a perfect size for Riley, but a wee bit small for Leighton.  He claimed it wasn't too tight at all!

Sunday

We went to Sugar Land to Grimaldi's today. We hadn't been in a long time and figured it was time for our dose of the good stuff! 

So that was our weekend.  We ate.  A lot.  And lots of treats.  Oops!