F.B. and I headed to the Philadelphia Zoo today. It was 93 degrees out! (Too hot!) We spent around 2 hours there, it's a huge zoo. We wanted to go on the hot air balloon but it wasn't running today. :-(

Here are pictures and video from our day:

Zoo Loot, lol!

Headed to Pennypack Park today and ended up at Peddler's Village later in the day. Got some nice shots with my new camera! (Click for bigger version of the photos.)

Hazelnut

Rosie

Lily

Pepper

There are better quality versions of some of these photos in my Flickr album here.

And all of today's pictures in my Photobucket album.

It’s already Wednesday December 16th here at 2am. (My blog settings are still on my home time.) We are down to just 3 days until the wedding… and even though I’ve been in the Philippines 3 weeks now, it’s the week of my wedding I come down with a cold!!!

Sunday afternoon my nose started running and by the evening my throat was really sore. F.B.’s dad had some leftover cold medicine so that held me over until we could get some more medicine on Monday. Early Monday morning F.B. went to the grocery to get me some Gatorade and menthol cough drops. (Menthol candy here in the Philippines!) Today my nose has just been running & I've been sneezing!!!

Monday we had to go to the Cainta municipal hall to pick up our marriage license. We dropped it off at the mayor’s office for our wedding on December 19th. I also mailed some Christmas cards and we picked up more cold medicine, soup and Listerine at the grocery. We went to Robinson’s Galleria that evening and had dinner at Tokyo Tokyo and Starbucks afterwards… hot coffee feels so good on my throat right now!

Last Saturday we went to Mall of Asia in the afternoon and had lunch at Chow King. I discovered I could get the Peppermint Mocha as a light blended frappucino, yay! F.B. had a toffee nut frapp.(These pictures are especially for Shannon! Sorry, lol!)

Afterwards we met up with F.B.’s parents at the Manila Hotel so we could confirm the reservations, etc for the wedding buffet dinner on December 19th. I was happy because there was free wi-fi at the hotel. I recently had to pay my cell phone company an exorbitant amount of money for blackberry roaming charges, blah. So now I can only use internet on my phone when there’s free wi-fi.

Some pictures of the Manila Hotel:

I thought I would share what our invitations look like all done up:

And these are the favors we are giving away at the wedding. They are in heart shaped boxes. It’s a keychain with our wedding date and an American flag on one side and a Philippine Flag on the other. (A big thank you to F.B.’s family for all of the wedding planning, reservations, favors, etc!)

Our titanium wedding rings!

After the Manila Hotel we decided to go to Trinoma Mall for dinner but it was sooo mobbed with weekend Christmas Shoppers that we just ended up at Big R near F.B.’s house for dinner. We tried a new Japanese restaurant named ‘Kitaro’. I had a chicken teriyaki meal and F.B. had “yakiniku” which was a beef meal. (I told him it looked like Philadelphia cheese steak meat without the cheese!) We also had our favorite sushi, California Maki. Which is just cooked crab meat & mango, mayo. (The USA version has avocado instead of mango.) Kitaro’s had little fish eggs on top too, but it was really good. We will definitely be having dinner there again sometime.

I got some more keychain mice at the 85 Peso store in Robinson’s Galleria. I’ve got a whole collection now!

We also found these weird sunglasses there- I bought them mainly because F & I thought the the “English” on the package is hysterical. I think I may have to submit them to Engrishfunny.com. (Click to make the pictures larger.) Most all of the items from the 85 Peso store are from Japan.

F.B. was excited to have Ruffles the other night, he hasn’t had any since before the flood. I was excited to find plain Snyder’s Pretzels at SM Marikina’s supermarket! (Since I'm still doing my pre-wedding dieting. Which is mainly no junk foods and smaller portions.)

F.B. likes to create sandwiches. Here’s his 3 layer salami sandwich from last week! He and my brother Seth will definitely get along; Seth likes to make 3 layer sandwiches too.

Mugwort was hanging out in front of F’s house the other night he made himself at home on the decorative stone.

Dinner at Gerry’s Grill last week:

Just hanging out at the house:

Saturday morning 12/19 we will be getting married at the Cainta Municipal hall by the mayor. (Which means at home in Philadelphia it will actually be Friday, 12/18 at 9pm!) Around 2pm we will have to check into the Manila Hotel. We are staying 2 nights as a gift from F.B.’s parents. 6pm-10pm will be our wedding dinner. It’s going to be a long day so I will probably be doing a blog sometime the week after the wedding. You can always check my Facebook page for more current updates!

NOTE: If you are getting married in the Philippines and you are a US citizen these requirements from the US Embassy in Manila Philippines, will be helpful: Getting Married in The Philippines.