Fook Yuen

A couple of weeks ago I was worried that I might not *make it* to Ryan's birthday w/0 having this baby. So I planned a date for him and we celebrated a little early.

Every time we go to Honolulu we pass this restaurant on our way home, always saying to one another "we REALLY need to check that place out!!" With a name like that? How could we not! So this is where we ended up. :)

We were in for a surprise! We thought it would be some run down, hole in the wall, joke of a place- just b/c we always joked about the name! BUT it was in fact quite a nice and classy place to be. We felt a little underdressed in our shorts and t-shirts. Oops!

We ordered some lobster along with a couple of other dishes. It was Maine Lobster. I've only ever had lobster from the Caribbean so this was a first for me. And I'm used to having only the lobster tail presented in beautiful form with a bowl full of drawn butter- YUM! So this was a little different. Still good, but different. Especially since I felt like the lobster was smiling at me!

Happy early birthday Ryan! We all know how Ryan LOVES his birthday so I didn't feel too badly about celebrating nine days earlier. It's the best excuse to stretch it out longer!
After dinner, I had a surprise planned for him. There just so happened to be- THAT very night at the U of H Manoa campus a special film presentation and book signing of Ryan's newest, favorite photographer, Clark Little. How could we get so lucky? :)

We drove over there and he of course figured it out! OF COURSE he would know that Clark Little had his show that night- but Ryan never said anything to me about it. I think his opinion of went up a couple of notches that night since I planned it all on my own :)

We saw a fabulous film presentation about how he's able to capture such gorgeous pictures and then a short question/answer period between he and the audience. After that we stood in line to buy his book of art so we could meet him and have him sign it!!

Me and Clark! Like we're old friends, eh? :) Sorry Ryan I took over and got the picture with him instead of you! But Ryan did get the book and it was signed to Ryan by Clark.

Ryan mentioned to Clark that he'd been looking at something to buy for our wall at home but since we live here on the island we wondered if we could pick something up and not have it shipped...

Clark said, "oh sure! Here take my cell number down. Just call me and we can meet up at a Starbucks or something. Figure it all out!"

I love this place! It's still such a small and unique community of people that this was totally normal! So now Ryan has Clark's cell number. We have yet to decide what we want to invest in to put on the wall- but the whole thing is kind of exciting in a nutshell!

Although it was just he and I on our little date- he had a FABULOUS time! Love you honey!