Note:  As usual, click through each photo to go to my Flickr photostream and more information.

I’m taking a little time off from blog posting next week. It’s time for some downtime with the family during our spring break week. I’d love for you to discover some other wonderful blogs while I’m away. These are three sites – of very many on my RSS reader list – that I enjoy reading, and I hope you’ll check them out.

• Lottie + Doof is a gorgeous food blog written by Chicago-based artist Tim Mazurek. His post on Dorie Greenspan’s jammers cookies is an example of his fabulous work.
• 5 second rule is written by Cheryl Sternman Rule, a freelance food writer from the Silicon Valley. Her writing style is open, honest, completely refreshing, and often filled with humor. She keeps me smiling.
• Written by one of my newest friends-in-real-life, Tami, Running With Tweezers is lovely to look at and even more of a pleasure to read. Tami has a great sense of style, and it’s very obviously reflected in her blog. I’m dying to make her most recent Saturday Soup.

Oh, and before I forget, I’ve made a lovely little dessert to keep your tummy happy while I’m gone. Head on over to MomItForward to get my recipe for this Cinnamon-Apple Crisp. You won’t be disappointed.

Our first family vacation for the year is just around the corner, and it can not get here soon enough. It’s true that we just came back from a mini-vacation – an incredible, child-free long-weekend in New York City. After three days and nights filled with an abundance of wonderful food and drink – all in the company of some pretty great people – and hours and hours of walking the bustling sidewalks of Manhattan, I’m a tad weary.

Yep, you heard me. All of that fun wore me out.

Next week we’re spending a few days at Walt Disney World followed by a few days at the beach. While the Disney experience is never a restful one, it’s a trip that I’m really looking forward to. Both of the kids are terribly excited about going to the parks, seeing their favorite characters — Eeyore is high-ranking this year — and riding the fast rides that make me and Sam dizzy and nauseous.

The beach part of the trip is the part that I’m counting on to bring the mental and physical rest that we all need after the last handful of months. Sitting on the sugary white sand beach, making lopsided sandcastles with the kids, listening to the waves crashing on the beach and the seagulls crying….pure heaven.

Let’s get to the meatballs. Meatballs have nothing to do with vacations or Disney or the beach, but they are a great family dinner. Assuming you can get your kids to eat them, of course. Madeline loved these meatballs baked in crushed tomatoes, but Oliver has a thing against anything that may have a speck of tomato in it. Which means that he is enthusiastically opposed to most things red. I blame Sam for the tomato-phobia, but I’m confident that with a few more years of brainwashing the child I can get him to come around.