A Sunny Saturday + Thai Meal Out

Morning Everyone! I hope you're all having lovely weekends. We've having a great time here - making the most of the sunshine :)

Yesterday afternoon we headed outside for some fresh air. Izzy wants me to show you what she had for lunch first though (!)...

A snack plate of leftovers from the night before - baked tortilla triangles, guacamole, spicy cheese sauce + brie and cucumber. And then we were off! Toby is in a seriously hating pushchair mode at the moment. Liam didn't believe what I've been having to deal with during the week until he saw it for himself yesterday - screaming, standing up, climbing out etc - so I had the job of pushing the pushchair whilst the others walked on ahead...

We first strolled through the local woodland area, with plenty of stops for tired little legs...

and then after a bit of shopping (muffin cases and a sugar thermometer...the important things in life) it was time for ice cream! The ice cream shop makes its own ice cream on the premises, and I'm guessing it had been surprised by the hot October weekend and run out as our ice cream seemed very freshly made and, well, drippy...

This was bakewell tart flavour which I hadn't tried before. It was delicious, with pieces of sweet pastry running through it. An appropriate last ice cream of the season perhaps?

We then went for a stroll along the seafront. It was so nice not to have any real plans for once, we could just take our time and enjoy the scenes. (Although I was slightly jealous of my Mum and Sister swimming in the sea...oh to have the freedom of not having young children clinging to you!!) We still had fun though, it was such a hot day - a better summer in October than our actual summer was!

Of course, no trip out would be complete without a visit to the play park on the way home. Izzy made friends with a girl a couple of years older than her, so she had a great time being all grown up and going on things herself...

Luckily Toby still needs our help - I'm not ready for both our babies to be all grown-up quite yet!!

After this we headed back home and enjoyed some of these...

Love Veggies and Yoga's Caramel Apple Bars! I also used Averie's recipe for Dark Rum Caramel Sauce (without the rum) to top the bars. I halved the recipe but still have some caramel sauce left, as you can see in the background...no complaints here! These bars are delicious, very sweet but with a lovely apple flavour too. Like caramel apple flapjacks. I've been keeping the bars in the fridge as they go very gooey at room temperature, but I'm planning to store any that are left by the end of today in the freezer - they will make a great treat for another time!

I made sure not to eat too many bars yesterday, as Liam and I were going for a rare meal out. We went to a Thai restaurant which we had been to once before. All the food was really great. For my starter I had crispy noodles with a pineapple sweet and sour sauce. I wasn't really sure what to expect from this, and was a bit worried about how I would eat it, but it was fantastic.

This was really tasty, and Liam commented that the texture was like eating crisps. It wasn't difficult to eat though, a nice light starter.

For my main, I had broccoli with peanut sauce (on the right obviously, Liam had prawn Thai curry)...

and as my main course was on the lighter side, I chose to have pineapple rice to go with it, which also had peppers, carrots and spring onions in it...

All the food was really delicious. The peanut sauce especially was amazing - I could have quite happily have just eaten two or three portions of broccoli with peanut sauce, but the rest of the food was good too! No desserts as we were both full - we should have shared a rice really, a bit too much food but not as much wastage as some of the other tables at least. I'm glad I didn't force myself to finish my rice though - normally I "must eat everything on my plate" and that leaves me feeling very uncomfortable, whereas instead last night I felt pleasantly full but not in pain...success!

What have you all been doing this weekend? Is it sunny where you are? I think the weather is meant to get worse again in the next day or so, boo. Time to go back outside and make the most of it while it lasts! We're off to see my sister and her boyfriend this afternoon. Apparently there's a really nice child-friendly pub near where they live with a nice garden so we'll probably spend some time in the sun there. Unfortunately the children don't seem to be co-operating with our plans by having naps this morning...I hope they're not too grumpy later!!