We had a great time this weekend with Jason’s parents in town to visit!

On Friday we got ready for the visit and I started working on dinner in the afternoon. I set up the table with a little fall inspiration:

And for dinner we had Pollo en Fricase, rice and beans, and a Cuban style chef’s salad with romaine, tomatoes, asparagus, red onions, artichoke hearts, avocado, and cilantro.

For dessert we enjoyed a pumpkin roulade that I had prepared that morning, which is a great fall treat that totally reminds me of the Thanksgiving season.

This is one of our favorite dinners to have so it was great to share it with family! Of course, the food did not stop there. We met up again at our house in the morning for a nice filling breakfast.

C’mon, you knew I was going to make waffles! This was actually my first time making the final version of a recipe for whole wheat waffles that I’ve been working on for weeks. I think I finally got it right, they were so good! I served the waffles with a fall fruit salad (pineapple, asian pears, honeycrisp apples, and dried cranberries) and some turkey kielbasa sausage.

After breakfast we spent some time at the outlet mall near our house. The weather was SO beautiful, sunny and in the 70’s! It was great to walk around and enjoy the sunshine.

After we were done shopping it was time to head out for our exciting entertainment of the day…the Williamsburg Italian Festival! An Italian-American organization hosts this event every year, and we’ve heard good things about it so it seemed like the perfect time to check it out for ourselves. There were lots of beautiful crafts being sold by the vendors there.

And some just really hilarious things…

And of course, LOTS of food to taste and eat and enjoy. There was everything from dipping oils to fried calamari to cannoli, and everything was delicious.

The best part was definitely the zeppolis at the end to top it all off. They were freshly fried and OH MAN so worth it.

The atmosphere of the festival was really nice, everyone was just enjoying themselves and having a good time. How can you not have a good time with a guy walking around playing romantic songs on the accordion the whole time?

They also had some of the best wineries in Virginia who had come and set up for wine tastings. Jason and his dad did the tastings and they both really enjoyed it. It’s great to find out about good wineries in our own state!

We got a chance to really enjoy the nice weather at the festival and after resting our feet at home for a bit we headed to Bonefish Grill for dinner. It was WONDERFUL, I highly recommend it if you have one in your area. We’ll definitely be returning there for special dinners in the future. All in all it was a great visit and we were so happy to spend time with Jason’s parents enjoying lots of wonderful food and conversation.

Come back soon, mom and dad! 🙂

Thanks for reading!

-Lauren