Saturday, June 18, 2011

6-18-2011



Good morning! The real reason why Nicole and I drove all the way to Philadelphia is because today is my baby niece, Baby Lily's first birthday party! Clearly, my sister is more organized than I will ever be in my whole entire life. In addition to Lily, it was nice seeing my grandparents and other relatives who came in from New York to party like one year olds. I hope to look exactly like this one day. I didn't really take that many pictures of Baby Lily getting passed from person to person for hours (the primary activity of a one year old's birthday party), besides, my Asian family has every step of that whole processed documented from every angle possible. I did however document Baby Lily's dirty crawling paw. The secondary activity of a one year old's birthday party is eating too much food. My sister went all out and made homemade ice cream in addition to the the homemade cupcakes above. I took her two homemade desserts, and homemade a delicious looking diabetic nightmare. This is allowed though. It falls under our "Ice Cream Every Weekend This Summer" policy. Speaking of desserts, here's a picture of Baby Lily eating her birthday cupcake for anyone who may have been sleeping upstairs when it happened. I'm just kidding, Nicole. Baby Lily still likes you way better than she likes me. She'll be walking by her self any day now.

After her party, we went to dinner in Chinatown. My grandparents only eat Chinese food I guess (I didn't know this before this trip). I don't mean sweet and sour chicken "Chinese food" either. I'm talking about the kind of Chinese food that comes with the head on the plate for some unknown reason. Baby Lily isn't too fond of this kind of Chinese food. It's delicious though. I like it as much as Baby Lily likes her Mickey Mouse water bottle cover or eating fortune cookies. I've already mentioned our "Ice Cream Every Weekend This Summer" policy, but here it is again in case you weren't paying attention.

After Dinner, we asked Baby Lily what she wanted to do for the rest of her birthday. The only thing she wanted to do was gamble and demanded to go to a casino immediately. They don't let you take pictures in casinos, so I can't show her playing high stakes poker, but I did steal this picture when no one was looking. After losing all her money (babes aren't very rich) and getting kicked out of the casino for trying to cheat (or good at being sneaky), Baby Lily enjoyed playing with dirt on the sidewalk out by the water.

To cheer her back up after the poker incident, we gave her the mountain of presents we brought with us. She carefully unwrapped and considered each gift, curious to see what she got. We think she liked her gifts. We got her stuff that I remembered playing with as a kid like this colorful xylophone and rolling popping thing. And so concluded the end of her first baby birthday polka dot party. Actually, Baby Lily decided she was hungry after presents and wanted to go to Tony Luke's for sandwiches. No one says no to a baby even if there's a long line in the middle of the night. Here's the Italian pork sandwich which is a lot like the one from DiNic's that I wrote about last time I was in Philadelphia, and of course a mushroom steak wiz without. Hooray for street food! Boo for what looks like freaky things happening in our hotel elevator.