Jersey Diary: Surprise Party for Phil

Phil's birthday is on Wednesday, so I planned a little surprise party for him. Phil's not really big on surprises, but I like giving surprises. Luckily for him, once the baby comes I doubt I'll have the time or energy to plan anymore surprise parties for a while, so this was my last surprise attempt. We met up with his coworkers at Famous Dave's, one of Phil's favorites. Only a couple of his coworkers could make it for dinner, but everyone still had a good time. Here we are with Anand and Joanna.

As a treat we ordered their rootbeer float. It's so huge they have to give you the rootbeer separately - definitely a 2 person job (or I guess in this case 2.5 if you count the baby). I haven't had a lot of rootbeer floats, but this is one of the best I've had so far.

Phil ordered ribs and brisket.

I wasn't really sure what I was in the mood to eat so I ordered their appetizer sampler - ribs, fried chicken tenders (which is just a fancy way to say chicken fingers), buffalo wings, onion strings and catfish fingers (which I had no intention of eating, but it comes as part of the package). Even pregnant I barely made a dent.

After dinner everyone headed back to our place to hang out and eat cake. Mohamed and his wife, Maroa, met us there to help celebrate. It is Maroa's birthday on Sunday, so we had a little joint cake celebration. I ordered an ice cream cake from Häagen-Dazs - their classic ribbon cake with the Pirouline cookies. Although the highlight for everyone appeared to be the animal shaped paper plates we had. What can I say, we're still kids at heart.

While we waited for the cake to defrost a little for easier cutting we started in on some present opening. Phil got a couple new video games, one for the PS3 and one for the Wii, a stack of blank DVDs and a gift card to Red Lobster. He was thoroughly amused by the card - a cartoon hamster whose entire face is smeared with chocolate cake. His coworkers know him so well. ^__^