Pho Grand

It was another weekend spent in the city. The only bad thing about going into the city during the summer is the traffic. People seem more eager to drive into the city when the weather is nice. Luckily the traffic into the city wasn't too bad on Saturday. The traffic going southbound towards the Jersey shore however looked painful.

Phil's cousin Lyida was visiting from Cali. We all headed out to a Vietnamese restaurant for lunch. This time we went to a place called Pho Grand on Grand Street. The place used to be very tiny, but it looks like they added a new room on with more seating. They sat us in the back of the new area - probably to keep us away from the other patrons...Here are Lucia, Lydia and Winnie at the table.

As always there was a lot of food ordered...

So much food that we had to use another table next to us just to hold the rest of our food...

It was a pretty low key weekend, so that's all I got. But next weekend Phil and I will be in Ohio visiting friends, so we should have tons of pictures and fun stories. Maybe we'll even get some pictures of baby Su-Kyi!

Mini Golf and Melting Pot

Phil was in Kentucky over the weekend for work, so I spent the afternoon on Sunday hanging out with some highschool friends. We decided to head out to Fairway Golf for some mini golf. The place has gotten a little run down since its heyday, but we still had a fun time.

Halfway through the 18-hole course Justin and Jamie stopped for a little rest.

After golf we headed out to Somerville for dinner at the Melting Pot. It's a little pricey as restaurants go, but the food is good.

We had to park in a lot behind the restaurant, so we decided to sneak around to the front of the restaurant through a small alley. The alley actually started out really wide, but then got more and more narrow as you got farther in, so we ended up having to squeeze through this small opening to get to the restaurant entrance. Luckily nobody got stuck on the way out. Although it was slightly more difficult to get back to the car in the dark without smacking into the brick walls...


Here we are at the restaurant.

With the menu at the Melting Pot they give you a choice of a couple set courses or you can order a la carte. We decided to go with one of their set courses to cut down on the decision making. Melting Pot is a fondue place, so their set courses consist of a cheese fondue, salad, a broth-based fondue and then a chocolate fondue for dessert.

First we started out with a three cheese fondue...or was it four cheese?...either way it was a lot of cheese. They give you bread, vegetables and apples to dip. Why apples? I have no idea...

Next we moved onto the "Fondue Feast", which was our broth-based fondue that came with beef, pork, chicken, shrimp and some mushroom ravioli type things. Justin was very excited for the main course.

Here is Jamie pretending to eat the raw meat...

It didn't look like a lot of food, but we were all pretty stuffed by the time we got through all the meat. This was Justin's "I'm so full it hurts, so don't make me laugh" face.

Finally it was on to the chocolate fondue. We went with "The Original", which is basically chocolate fondue with peanut butter swirled in. Although this picture looks more like chocolate fondue with a glob of peanut butter tossed in the middle.

And with the chocolate fondue you get lots of "fixin's" - rice crispy squares, banana and strawberry slices, chocolate covered marshmallows, cheesecake and brownie squares. Yum!

Bye Bye Pool

We finally opened up our pool last week, but not for swimming. We decided to tear it down and get rid of it considering the water in the pool has been a gross shade of algae green for at least 4 out of the 12 months we've had it. Probably more than that if you count the winter months that the pool was covered and the algae was secretly growing out of control.

Phil was able to find a coworker who was willing to take the pool off our hands, so we drained all the water from the pool to get ready to break it down.

Phil is getting ready to tackle the disassembling of the pool. Doesn't that lovely shade of green just make you want to hop in for a swim?? (sorry for the grainy looking photo - the picture was taken from the other side of our screen window)


After unscrewing the walls of the pool, Phil and his dad rolled up the wall of the pool with the help of Phil's coworker and his son while sloshing through the little bit of algae water left at the bottom of the pool. Fun fun!

And that leaves us with our giant circle of mud and dirt...Now we just need to figure out what to do with it...

Afterwards Phil got to take part in his favorite activity as a homeowner - cleaning up the yard. Doesn't he look so thrilled? ^__^

We're finally starting to make some progress with the backyard. Hopoefully this means we're that much closer to finally having our long awaited house warming party/BBQ. Can you still call it a housewarming party if you've been living in the house for a year already??

7-11

July 11th is special for 2 reasons: it's my father-in-law's birthday AND free slurpies at 7-11!
Ok, so it's only a tiny cup's worth of slurpy, but free is free...

In the morning we headed off to the city to meet up with Phil's family for lunch. It was back to the Maylasian place. There was some down time between waiting for everyone to arrive and waiting for the food, so Phil's cousins got a little silly...

Here's his cousin Lucia making weird faces at her dad. He looks so sad.

There was enough food to feed a small army - 4 noodle soups, 2 noodle dishes, a bird's nest and chicken and beef satay.

Personally, I like the spicy noodle soup the best. Even though I can't really handle too much spicy it's definitely worth it.


Then there were the seafood noodle soups, which are good if you're into the seafood thing.

Here's the birthday boy serving out the noodle soup.

I had a slight incident with the beef satay...Phil's uncle Tat politely referred to it as a "Pretty Woman" moment, but it basically involved me accidentally flinging a chunk of beef satay at him...probably not the most embarrassing thing I've done, but not exactly one of my shining moments either... (-__-)

After lunch and some grocery shopping in Chinatown, we headed back to Lucia's apartment for some coconut birthday cake. Homemade by Phil's sister. It definitely came out looking better than my cakes normally do, and it tasted good too.

Lucia considered writing a happy birthday on the cake, but decided she didn't have enough icing to really write anything.

Phil's dad patiently waited through all the photos and the happy birthday singing before cutting into the cake.

Once everyone had their fill of cake we all hopped in the car and headed back to our place. Why, you ask? Because Phil's dad's birthday wish was to have dinner at Ruby Tuesdays. And seeing how there aren't really many Ruby Tuesdays in the city it was off to NJ.

Here's Phil's family waiting for a table.

(Aunt Chan, Aunt Ruby, Mom, Dad, Winnie, Phil and Kevin)

Winnie was excited to finally be eating something other than Chinese food. No rice and noodles tonight.

Phil's cousin, Kevin, always seems to have the inside scoop on all the off-the-menu items. This time it was the Colossal burger. It looked so huge I was surprised he finished it, but he said it looked skinnier than last time. Must be the recession...

It does kind of look like it's missing a patty up top...

I had a much less daunting Smokehouse burger.

Phil had lobster and steak.

I know, it's a lot of food pictures. What can I say, we do a lot of eating... ^__^

July 4th BBQ

On July 4th we spent the day at my sister's townhouse for a BBQ lunch. It was a small gathering of around 15 family and friends. There was tons of fruit, veggie dip, cookies and some homemade guacomle and chips.

And we can't forget the meat...Tam bought a giant piece of steak, plus the ever popular hamburger patties and hot dogs. I only got a picture of the steak though since it was so huge.

Here's Tam laying out the buns so he can sneak a taste of the hot dogs.

This is Tam's older brother, Nan, grilling up a storm.

Chuck, Jamie, Hadrian and Nicole chatting while they eat.

And a BBQ wouldn't be a BBQ without a picture of Phil falling asleep after eating himself into a food coma. Jamie is trying to fake a conversation with the sleeping Phil.

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July! ^__^

Red Bank Kaboom! Fireworks

To start off the July 4th festivities Phil and I went out with my mom and one of Phil's coworkers, Joanna, to watch fireworks on Friday night. Joanna had heard about fireworks in Red Bank right along the water that were supposed to be nice. Some of the main streets were closed off for pedestrians, there were cars parked all over the place and tons of people walking through the streets on their way to the fireworks show. After circling for a little bit to find parking and several blocks of walking we finally made it to Marine Park, where the fireworks were being held.

Here we are with Joanna surrounded by the crowd.

"Kaboom!" is the name of the fireworks event. So fitting for a fireworks show.

We managed to make our way through the crowd until we were right by the water. The fireworks were so close and loud it was amazing. I tried to take some pictures of the fireworks with my dinky point-and-shoot. This was one of the nicer ones that came out.

Here's a video of the fireworks finale. They went a little crazy at the end, but it was awesome to watch.

The fireworks lasted for about 15~20 minutes. Afterwards people started dispersing, but we stuck around to check out the fair-style food booths that were setup. Our first stop was a place selling "mozzarepas". What is a mozzarepa? Well, according to the guy it's a sweet corn dough with melted mozzarella cheese inside. It kind of looks like a cheese stuffed pancake. It was pretty tasty.

Here's my mom nibbling on some mozzarepa. She looks so happy ^__^

Next it was on to deep fried oreos! Joanna never had deep fried oreos before, and they didn't disappoint. Deep fried goodness...yum...

(Don't ask me why Phil is making a monkey face...I think he was trying to cool down the oreos...)

Finally it was on to dessert - italian ice...

Overall the Red Bank trip was really fun. I can sense a 4th of July tradition in the making...