Sunday Fun-day!

This past Sunday, we spent the day celebrating a very special and important lady in our lives, Nana {Brenda}. She is Ken's mom and she is a great mom-in-love to me and an incredible Nana to our girls. She is always willing to help us out in anyway possible from watching the girls while I go work out or taking care of the them last minute when they get sick. The girls love going over to Nana's to hang out, do craft projects or just play a great game of pretend, using their imagination with their Nana. It has been so nice having her near by this past year {she previously lived in Winston-Salem which is about one and a half hours away}. Sunday was spent celebrating Nana's birthday this week.

To start our day with Nana we went to this new restaurant in the Elizabeth neighborhood in Charlotte called, The Stanley. The restaurant had a twenties vibe with its interior decor. It is a locally sourced restaurant and the menu is constantly changing. {hint, if you look at the menu in the link, please note that it is a sample of what their menu looks like}. The Stanley is only open during the week from 5-9 p.m., but they serve a brunch menu on Sundays. The food we had was very delicious. I think my favorite part of the meal was the appetizer we ordered, tempura broccoli with a side of sweet and sour sauce . It was cooked to perfection, in my opinion. The broccoli wasn't over breaded and it still had a nice crisp to it but didn't taste raw, the sauce was a great companion to it and didn't over power. The girls split the pancakes and bacon and Abbie loved that the pancakes were dusted with powder sugar. Brenda had the tostada, she loved it, while Ken had the fish and chips. Overall, the food was great, the only critique I have is, there was a miscommunication when we made our reservations and they weren't aware we would need a high chair, and it seemed like they were a little miffed at having a small child there. Again it could be just perception.

After lunch, we went over to Southend. There is this cool heart decorative wall, located in the same area as Jeni's Ice Cream {more about that in a moment}. The wall is a collage of hearts, some have quotes from MLK, Jr and others have positive messages in them. It was extremely popular as it's fairly new and near Valentine's Day. The great thing about it is if you wanted to do a photo sess {which Ken did} there is plenty of room to accommodate many groups. I have included some of my favorites below.

Now to Jeni's Ice Cream. This place is sooooo goooood!!!!! They have very unique flavors, as well as some of the more traditional flavors like chocolate. I personally feel like the best deal is the mini flight. You get three half scoops {looked more like three normal size scoops} of ice cream. This allows you to try three different flavors and it comes with a waffle cone triangle too. Ken and I decided to split this and we went with gooey butter cake, salted peanut butter with chocolate chip flakes and milkiest chocolate. My favorite was the salted peanut butter and Ken's was the butter cake. The kids really enjoyed the ice cream and the location was perfect. There is a nice square area to enjoy your sweet treat and it is the perfect place to go before or after visiting the heart wall.

Afterwards, we headed home for presents, appetizers for the Big Game and a slice of Celebration cheese cake from the Cheesecake factory, which I didn't grab a photo of but was yummy too! We had a great day out and truly did enjoy our time together.

Sidenote, about this year's game, I have one word blah..... I can't remember ever watching one, where the game, commercials and half time show were so underwhelming and boring. Best ad was the 100th anniversary from the NFL, loved seeing all the different players and liked that they were able to get so many generations of players into one commercial. Finally, I don't even want to begin discussing the double standard of watching Adam Levin basically strip on national television and having to explain or try to explain it to my five year old and that being okay and remember Janet Jackson being raked over the coals for her one second over exposure. That is my rant......

Any way hope you enjoyed the blog!