Friends & Family in NYC

After some early morning Black Friday shopping with Mandy and mom (nothing crazy, mostly just Macy's shopping) I hopped on the NJTransit into NYC to meet up with two of my college friends - Le and Kyle. Kyle's going through a long hair phase. I almost didn't recognize him!
Here they are at the Vietnamese restaurant in Chinatown where we had lunch. After lunch we walked around Little Italy and Chinatown before meeting up with some of Kyle's friends from his study abroad for coffee. Then I met up with Phil to head over to his Grandma's to celebrate her birthday. All of Phil's family from his mom's side was there. And with so many people to feed there was definitely tons of food. This is just one of the 2 tables filled with food.

And 2 birthday cakes. One was homemade with some kind of strawberry filling, and the other one was an ice cream cake. I think this one was the homemade cake - complete with Happy Birthday in Chinese!

So that would make this one the ice cream cake.

Everyone in Phil's family singing happy birthday to his grandma.

Here's the birthday girl before blowing out the candles. That's Phil's grandma on the right, and her brother and his wife to her left.

When the cake was cut Phil's cousin Amy plugged in the Wii and all the cousins crowded around the TV to play some Mario Kart and WWE while eating cake.

Let's see if I have all the cousins right. From left to right we have Maggie, her boyfriend Jimmy, Kelsey, Derick, Tommy, and Ting Sol. With special appearance by the expired 2L bottle soda that was the subject of much conversation that evening...One of them was Pomegranate 7Up. Such an odd flavor, but surprisingly tasty (even though it was expired...).

And while the kids were eating cake and playing Wii the adults were cutting fruit and a giant deformed pumpkin. The pumpkin was homegrown in someone's backyard. Phil's mom even offered to give me one of the seeds so we could grow one in our backyard...Not quite sure what I would do if I had this growing in my yard...

Poor pumpkin didn't stand a chance...