Hong Kong Station

On Sunday we spent the day in the city on our own. Probably one of our first times in the city with just the two of us since we moved back to the east coast. Nothing too interesting, just a quick visit with the DJ for the wedding, some grocery shopping and a quick trip to the oral surgeon for Phil to check up on his wisdom teeth - yay!...

Before we left the city we stopped by Hong Kong Station for lunch. Phil described it as a Chipotle version of Chinese food. It's basically a noodle soup place where you get to pick the type of noodles you want and all the "toppings" or fixings you want. They have everything from squid and fish balls to spam.


Here is Phil getting ready to chow down. He was pretty hungry, so he wasn't very happy I interrupted his eating...

But I did manage to catch a picture of his noodles before it disappeared. Not the most amazing noodles I've had, but not bad.

Surprise! Bridal Shower

We made plans to hang out at my sister's new place on Saturday. Little did I know that it was actually a surprise bridal shower. And Phil was in on it! Who knew he could keep a secret?
My brother-in-law, Tam, was setup in the back patio with their new grill cooking up a storm. My mom and Mandy had put together some finger food to snack on, including a giant platter of california rolls.

And one of Phil's favorites, shrimp cocktail.

After filling up on some food we went straight into the bridal shower festivities. Mandy and Linda put together a bridal story game. Basically it's like a Mad Libs fill-in-the-blank using the names of household products, like cleaning product brands, paper towel brands, that sort of thing. The story was cute and very fitting. My favorite part was when they called Phil Mr. Clean. (It's funny because it's true...)

At the end they had a bin filled with all of the products that I got to take home. Phil was excited.

And who knew there was a brand of paper towel called "Big T"?

After our first game it was time for grilled yumminess. The food went pretty fast, so it was hard to get a good picture. Tam made a herb butter he put on the beef. Phil thought it was guacamole...

Next it was time for presents.

My mom got us airplane tickets for our honeymoon.

Phil even got some presents out of this. More toys for his Wii. With all the electronics that he put on the registry I guess it was bound to happen ^__^

Doesn't Phil look pretty in his bow?

After all the presents were opened I got a nice little ribbon hat, and a bag of personalized M&Ms.

For dessert Mandy made red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.

After dessert was probably my favorite part of the whole bridal shower - the last bridal shower game. Everyone split into 2 teams and had to craft a wedding gown out of toilet paper, while I hid upstairs until they were done so I could do the final judging. My mom was the model for the first team - complete with bouquet, wedding train, veil and jewelry.

Most of the dress started to slide off in the end after all the walking around, but it was adorable while it lasted.

That wasn't my favorite part though...my favorite part was that Phil agreed to be the model for the second team. They dressed him up in a lovely halter dress and they even gave him an a-cup. He was such a good sport.

Doesn't he make such a cute bride? ^__~

More planning and eating in the city

It was another weekend packed with wedding planning and preparations. In the morning I was supposed to get my hair trial done, but the stylist said she would need at least an hour and a half because of all of my hair - that's a long time to get your hair done! So I had to settle just for the makeup trial. Considering I'm not really used to how I look in makeup it went relatively well.

After the salon it was off to the city for more wedding stuff, and of course eating.
We ended up eating at Congee Village again. We even got to sit at one of the circular booths.

Now on to the food! Chinese donuts and strips of intestine (not sure if it was cow or pig...). That's a winning combination right there.

And when you have Chinese donuts you can't forget the sweet sauce!

Lots of noodles...

Something with beef and I think more intestines... (I really need to learn the names of these foods...)

And some surprisingly good chicken fried rice.

After lunch we started off in search of tuxedo rentals, flowers and rings.

I think the highlight was when we stopped by a bridal place called "Just Pretty" to look for a tux for Phil. We ended up doing the rental at "Manhattan Bridal", but unfortunately they didn't let us take any pictures, so everyone will have to wait until May to see Phil in his spiffy tux.

Finally, it was off to East Manor for some dinner and ironing out details with the man in charge. We still have yet to try their buffet, but maybe next time.

Happy Early Birthday

We had a surprise visit from Phil's family this past weekend. His parents came by to do some work on the house, and his Aunt Chan and cousin Lucia stopped by to celebrate Phil's birthday - a little early, but who would turn down a birthday celebration?

While Phil and his dad did some work on the first floor the girls stayed upstairs for tea/coffee and cake. Lucia was excited about the chocolate creamcheese cake they had brought - and with good reason, it was very tasty. They also brought a huge strawberry pound cake that they made. This time we remembered to keep the leftovers in the fridge...


Here's a close-up of the chocolate creamcheese cake. Doesn't it look yummy?

After tea and cake the girls went out to Wegmans just to look around. If you've never been to a Wegmans it's a huge supermarket + food bar + bakery. In addition to the produce and other supermarket goods, they have a huge section of hot foods from pizza and subs to Chinese food and sushi. While I may be skeptical about the sushi I've heard that the rest of their food is pretty good. We walked past their bakery section where they had tons of cakes and tarts on display. Not bad for a supermarket...

After the girls got back from shopping we all headed out to Phil's birthday dinner at Outback. Phil has a thing for Outback for some reason. It seems like we've celebrated Phil's birthday at Outback every year since his surprise part a couple years back. I guess tricking him to go to Dave & Busters instead of Outback that year really must have kept him craving Outback...As you can see he was very excited when we got there.

Not sure if it's the outfits, but we look like an old married couple in this picture...

We kept the adults on the other side of the table so they could chat amongst themselves. Although Phil's Aunt wasn't afraid to cross over to our side to grab more bread. She really likes the bread at Outback. We had 6 long rolls for the entire table. I think our waitress must have thought we were extremely weird or extremely hungry...

After watching a special on a show called Unwrapped, Phil had been wanting to order the Bloomin' Onion. He'd never had it before, so we ordered one for the whole table to share. It was a little on the salty side and the onions were a little raw in spots, but the fried batter was good! Regardless we still finished the whole thing.

I was still stuffed from lunch so I shared a 20 oz. steak with Phil. According to the menu this was 2 different cuts of meat in 1 - though it just looked like a T-bone steak. But it was still good.

Not sure if it was good enough to draw Phil back again for a third birthday dinner, but I guess we'll see what happens next year. ^__~