My Mother's Day Weekend

On Friday Joe brought me home an early Mother's Day gift. Those of you who know me know that I love my vodka! LOL Before Hana my signature drink was a Kettle One (or Grey Goose or Belvedere) and soda with a lemon. After Hana, I somehow upgraded to a very dirty Belvedere martini, I still love a good vodka soda now and again though. Any who, the bottle of Belvedere that I got for Christmas in '07 just ran dry. LOL!!! I used to go through my vodka MUCH faster than that! These days I have only one every week or two. So Friday Joe brought home a bottle of Chopin, which is made in Poland and it's a potato vodka (he is Irish!). Apparently it's a bit more expensive than my beloved Belvedere so he thought I should give it a try. I guess since I go through it so slowly nowadays he doesn't have a problem paying more for it! Dare I say that my wonderful husband made me (hands down) the best martini ever? See how cloudy it is? Yumalicious! To make: add lots of (good) vodka, olive juice and olives to a glass rinsed with vermouth (I hate vermouth, but Joe insists on rinsing the glass with it. He says it's not a "martini" without vermouth).
The Perfect Martini:

Hana sported a ponytail for the very first time yesterday. Can you believe she finally (barely) has enough hair to make a ponytail? There's still not enough for piggy tails though.

This morning I was treated to my very most favorite breakfast restaurant of all time; Benedict's. If you haven't been, go, and have either the Eggs Benedict (hence the name) or the Eggs Cordon Bleu which is basically the Eggs Benedict with asparagus on a croissant. OMG! I had the Eggs Cordon Bleu. Hana (as always) was such a good girl. She had all the old ladies oohing and aahing over her and her big bow. Yes, she wore another ponytail, this time with a bow! She really is such a well-behaved little girl. I think it's because we've always taken her everywhere we go. She knows how to act in a restaurant, at the store, etc. Well, she does so far anyway! Here's Daddy stealing some of my Mother's Day smooches:

After a spectacular breakfast, we headed to the outlet mall to do some shopping. We got there a little before it all opened so we had some time to waste:

We left the stroller at home so we had to rent a Kiddie Kruzzer. Hana loved it (and it looked like a lady bug!).

And her Daddy had a blast pushing her around in it.

Can you believe I didn't buy a single thing for myself?! Joe even forced me into the Coach store and I did not find anything I really wanted - and they were having a pretty good sale! Lots of purses were 50% off, but none that I really liked. He just got me one for Valentine's Day that's big enough to carry all my baby necessities, so I'm set for now. We did, however, get him lots of new and desperately needed work shirts, a few ties and a couple pairs of shoes (not at the Coach store! LOL). Hana Grace saw Nana's flucy new fishing shoes on Dian's blog, so she decided she needed a pair to match. What do you think, Nana?

I heard Ninny even got herself a pair!

After lots and lots of walking and shopping (and sweating) we decided it was lunch time. What were we in the mood for? Well, Mexican, of course! The line at Uncle Julio's (my all-time fave) was atrocious, so we decided to give Cristina's a try. Um? Move over Uncle Julio's? No, no. I did not just say that! Did I think that? Um...

That, ladies and gents, is a lightly-battered, pan-fried chicken breast covered in a creamy cheese sauce with diced tomatoes. Served with boracho beans, Spanish rice, grilled veggies and sliced avocado and tomato. It was AWESOME! Now, it may have had something to do with the gigantic margarita my husband ordered for me, but I tried as hard as I could to eat it all, but I had to save room for dessert - fried ice cream. Speechless.

When we first arrived at Cristina's, there was (only) a 15-minute wait, so we sat in the bar area and had some chips and salsa. Hana really enjoyed the salsa!

Before the meal:

After the meal:

She pulled her ponytail out, thus leaving herself a precious little Mohawk. She was worn out by the time we got home. She went straight to bed and took a good 2 hour nap (I took a small nap myself - thanks margarita!).

Oh, what a wonderful weekend I've had! Hana Grace is much better now. I think it's all pretty much gone, she's just coughing it all up now. It's such a BIG cough for such a little girl! I am still sad we didn't make it to the lake for Mother's Day, but it was a great weekend nonetheless. We were able to take care of some much-needed work at our rental property yesterday which allowed me to enjoy today. See, if we would have gone to the lake, we would have gone Friday evening and came back Saturday night so that we could work on the rental house today. Boo! I'm quite pleased with the way things turned out. I hope everyone else had as great of a weekend as we did!