My weekend: beach, parties and Pop

What a great weekend. I think they need to make the summer weekends a little longer. I need time to recuperate from all of the fun.

Saturday was party hopping day for me. First, I had Karina's birthday beach bash. We all headed over to her mom's apartment on Sunny Isles Beach to celebrate in style. We enjoyed our wine slushies, provided by yours truly, and had lunch (I brought a lemon pasta salad--I'll share the recipe below), before getting out onto the beach. We all grabbed our sun hats and headed out.

It was such a bright pretty South Florida afternoon. We really enjoyed the beach and the water, even though the waves kept soaking us.

After enjoying plenty of time in the surf and sand, we headed back to the pool and got ready to cut the cake. Isn't the cake adorable? It was almost to cute to eat... almost.

It was so great to be able to spend the day with Karina and her family and all of my girls. We definitely celebrated in South Florida style.

After I left the beach, I headed home, changed and then went to my Uncle Willy's house for a family Father's Day celebration. All three generations were represented. The elders didn't play loteria, their usual on Saturday nights, but they had a great time talking.

I even made it in time to dig into to the yummy food, a traditional Cuban spread, pork, congris, yuca and platanitos.

Mom may have enjoyed a cocktail or two...while Pop took her picture.

And the girl cousins caught up on all of the gossip.

Here's our own version of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil... courtesy of the tios, Uncle Ramon, Uncle Willy and Uncle Arnie.

Of course, the night couldn't end before taking the traditional family picture. It was a great night full of food, fun and family. Of course, there was a blubbering, teary, sentimental speech made, but that's just part of the experience. It was great spending time with everyone.

Sunday for Father's Day, we kept it low key. I spent the day in the kitchen making pasta salad for dinner and some goodies for work the next day. Then Mom, Pop and Angel (Richard was working) came over to have a Father's Day dinner. Pop brought his Father's Day gift a new Kindle Fire. In a few hours he'd already downloaded some games and plenty of other stuff.

Dinner was yummy. Mom made baked pork ribs and I made Lemon Pasta Salad. The pasta salad is super easy, I got it off of this recipe I found on Pinterest. I made a couple of changes, like leaving out the parmesan cheese and using bow tie pasta instead of orzo.

The salad comes together pretty quick once you gather all of the ingredients. And the dressing is so yummy, I might make it to put on regular salads too.

Pop really liked the salad, and so did everyone else. I think this will have to be my go to summer picnic dish from now on. And since there is no mayo (and I hate mayo anyways) there is no need to put this in the fridge. It's yummy at room temp or even chilled.

After our dinner, we had some frozen key lime pie and watched the end of the NASCAR race (my brother Angel is obsessed). It was a great (and yummy) end to the weekend. Happy Father's Day to all the dads, and especially my Pop!