Happy 4th, Friends and Frozen Hot Chocolate

Ryan and I celebrated our 2nd 4th of July in New York by having a last minute potluck at our place. The way it all came together started on Thursday night. We met new friends, Megan and Kerry, through old friends Chris and Bethany. Megan and Kerry are new to the city so we invited them over for board games and dessert. We had a great time battling for territory in the game Ticket to Ride. Through the course of the evening we hatched a plan to do a potluck since none of us had any salient plans. I whipped up an e-vite and picked up a brisket at the grocery store. We ended up having eight over at our place and celebrated Independence Day with apple-tinis and the game Would You Rather. The only damper on the evening was the fireworks. I had hoped we would be able to see them from our place, but sadly the buildings on the east side were just too high, so we could only see the clouds light up in bright greens and magentas. But, one of the great highlights of the evening was having my good friend Kate visit. She took the bus down from Boston and spent the weekend with us. What a treat!



Saturday morning we got up and went to brunch at Cafe Mozart (seen above) and promptly returned home to take naps. Then, we headed to the Village and met up with Kate's friend Brent to see Get Smart. Joanie on the aisle, "It's what you would expect. Humorous, predictable, entertaining but not life changing." Then Brent took us to this great spot in the center of the universe (1st street and 1st ave) called Boca Chica. It's Cuban and the food was a-maz-ing. I would highly recommend it! Then, as if we hadn't eaten enough, we went to the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park and had ice cream. Kate, Brent and I all ordered ice cream that came in cups. Ryan, however, went the cone route, which proved a bit challenging given the heat and humidity. Ryan's cone became the proverbial "hot mess" and I caught him in this moment expressing his inner 5 year old.



Sunday Kate left to go back to Boston and poor Ryan did something to his neck. We're not sure what, but it seems like a strained muscle. Say a prayer for him that he recovers soon. Luckily he has Monday off of work.
This evening I got to meet up with Megan and Kerry to celebrate Megan's birthday. We met up at Serendipity 3. We put our names in, but it was an hour wait. Seeing that we had some time to kill we jumped on the sky tram that goes from Manhattan to Roosevelt Island. Here's a picture of Megan and Kerry with the skyline behind them.



Luckily it killed just enough time and our table was ready when we returned to the restaurant. It's a cute place with the most killer desserts. We got frozen hot chocolate (their signature dessert) and humble pie, no embarassment required. Humble pie is like a peanut butter mousse with graham cracker crust. "Wow" is the only thing that can describe what those desserts were like! Too, as you can see, the menus are ginormous, too.



Here's the birthday girl with the frozen hot chocolate.



Then, as if the weekend couldn't get any better, we were passing by this new place called Dylan's Candy Bar. Okay, lots of candy, bright lights. No big whooop, right? No! They had the dresses from the Hershey challenge episode of Project Runway from last season! Ahhhh!!! Here's me being fierce with Christian's dress of Reese's cup wrappers behind me. Fabulous!