her name was lola

shockingly, hanging out with my mom always involves food.  

a couple of weeks ago, she treated me and the girls to delicious afternoon tea.  i mean, if you invite us to join you at a super cute little cottage to enjoy fragrant pots of steaming hot tea, freshly baked scones with housemade lemon curd and cream, and tiers of adorable savory sandwiches, we're pretty much always gonna say yes.  because YUM.

i managed to get this:

and this.

then, to celebrate my mom's birthday, we hopped into the car and drove down to the beach to scoop her up and take her out to lunch.  with MIL in town (visiting an incredibly improved g-wan, i might add), we stole her away and took her with us.  after a failed attempt to try peruvian food for the first time, we instead ended up somewhere vastly different:

(we paid the $2.50, in case you were wondering)

after perusing the giant novel of a menu, plus two special ones, i ended up going with the miso salmon.  and i'm telling you...it's a chain restaurant and all, but hot damn was that a delicious plate of happiness.  the butter sauce that surrounded the fish and rice was just perfection, along with the miso glaze that was poured on top.  i'm salivating just thinking about it.

and what's a visit to the factory without giant slabs of dessert?  these are horrible pictures because the lighting was all wrong, but who cares because CHEESECAKE.  i went with the "adam's peanut butter cup fantasmic orgasmic delight" or something like that:

the teen opted for the toasted marshmallow s'mores.

MIL and the bean shared the blackout cake (or was it linda's fudge cake?  i can't remember because CHOCOLATE).

the birthday girl chose what ended up being my favorite out of them all - the reese's peanut butter cup.  our very friendly and helpful server brought over a candle and we all embarrassed the hell out of her as we sang the birthday song with gusto.  because DUH.

we even managed a pretty nice group photo!

this, on the way back to mom's house, is probably always going to be funny to me.

although i admit it, i'm a little sad we've finally reached this point in our relationship.  poop.