Back to School

This has been Back to School week for Nina and Lyla.  School was officially slated to start on Thursday, 8/24, but for Nina it seemed like it started on Monday of that week.  She is starting middle school this year and is attending a brand new school in Loudoun County that is big, green-friendly, open and airy, and has made an amazing effort connecting to the students and community over the summer.  We’ve been very impressed so far.  Monday was an open house for all students to get acquainted with the building, meet some staff, and see what their new school will look like.  We had Nina’s good friend, Grace, with us for the day, so it was fun for the girls to experience it together.

  

Monday was also the day of the big solar eclipse that so much attention had been given to. After getting home from the open house, we made pinhole viewers in hopes of seeing the eclipe that way.  

The pinhole viewers weren’t successful, however our neighbor who saw us out there, walked over with eclipse glasses, and then we could finally see what all the excitement was about!

  

The next day was locker set-up and Nina did a great job decorating hers.  Locker set-up was followed by a little outdoor party for the kids.  On Wednesday, Nina had a students only orientation and Lyla and I went to Legacy to meet her teacher and see her classroom.  Lyla was very excited about the teacher she got, and she has quite a few friends in her class, so Wednesday was a happy day for her.  Nina enjoyed the students only orientation and felt comfortable about making her way around the middle school without getting lost.  :)

  

Thursday morning arrived, and while both girls were sad to see the summer come to a close, they were upbeat about the year ahead.  Here is our 4th grader...

   

…and here is our 6th grader.  Both girls came back with great reports after the first two days of school, so we’re hopeful that this will be a wonderful year for them both.  Summer always goes by so quickly, and I’m always sad to see it end, but I’m glad Nina and Lyla are happy so far in their school life this year, and we certainly hope that continues.

   

Girls' Trip (Part 2)

After we left the area of the art museum, we got back on the tour bus heading for the Philadelphia Zoo.  The zoo came recommended by several people, but after having been to the National Zoo in D.C. a dozen times or more, I wasn’t expecting to be overly impressed.  We were, however, very impressed with the Philadelphia Zoo.  It was awesome!  Knowing what we know now, I would have left more time to leisurely go through the zoo.  The animal exhibits may not have been as extensive as D.C., but we enjoyed the more intimate feel of the exhibits, all the natural tree growth, and it really was an experience much different than the National Zoo.  I’m so glad we went!

  

  

  

 

After leaving the zoo, we rode the double decker back to Center City.  It was suprising how much we learned about the history in Philadelphia from riding the tour bus!  Our hotel was right next to the City Hall buildings, and there were some rhythmical fountains there that the girls had fun playing in after a long, hot day touring around the city.

  

 

After getting back to our hotel for dinner and a freshen up, we went back out to One Liberty Observation Deck or Philly From the Top.  We took the elevator over 880 feet up to the very top of the building which was all glass and a neat way to view the city at night.

 

When we finished at the observation deck, we called it a night and took the short walk back to our hotel.

 

After a great breakfast in the hotel “club” we walked over to see the Liberty Bell.  I have heard about the Liberty Bell through our nation’s history, but being there to see it in person and understanding the significance of the bell in some of our country’s darkest hours made the experience so much more for me than I anticipated.

  

This little shop caught our eye on the way to the Liberty Bell. :)

After the Liberty Bell we went to the Franklin Institute.  It’s a science museum that came highly recommended to us as a great place to take kids.  It was pretty cool, but it was also quite crowded.  I think we’d have been better off to be there on a week day, but originally the weather was supposed to be rainy on Saturday, so we thought it would be a good indoor activity.  It ended up being a nice, sunny day, so we saw what we wanted to see and then made our way back out to enjoy the remainder of our time.

 

One of the things the Franklin Institute is famous for is their enormous human heart that you can walk through as if following the path of the blood.  Lyla wasn’t so sure about it (as you can see by her face).  :)

  

  

After leaving the Franklin Institute, we went across the street to the fountain at Logan Square.  From our bus tour, we learned that the fountain had quite a history with the city in regards to people getting in it.  Evidently, during warm months, swimming in the fountain was a Philly tradition until 2006 when the city tried to enforce a swimming ban in the fountain.  They even had security presence there to ensure it didn’t happen.  However, the ban was lifted in 2009, and people were legally allowed in the fountain again.  Consequently, Nina and Lyla were dying to get in the fountain!

Our trip wouldn’t be complete without getting a Philly cheesesteak, so the last item on our list before we headed home was to stop off for cheesesteaks.  I did a search for the best cheesesteaks in the area we were at, and sadly, several of them had already closed for the day, but we did hear that Reading Terminal had good cheesesteaks, so we went there.  Reading Terminal is also a cool place in the city to see, so we knocked off two things at once.   With cheesesteaks checked off the list, we gathered our bags from where they were being held for us at the hotel, got our car, and headed back home.  I have to say, I was disappointed at first when the weather wasn’t cooperating for the beach, but I’m actually glad it happened that way, otherwise I know we wouldn’t have had this great trip to Philly.  It made us rethink the girls’ trip as well - not making it a beach trip every year but maybe a new adventure place every year.  I guess we’ll have to see!

Girls' Trip to Philadelphia

We were planning to take our annual girls’ trip this year to the beach again.  We were all looking forward to Virginia Beach until the weather forecast showed up as rainy and thunderstorms for the days we were planning to be there.  We kept watching the forecast, and when it didn’t change, we decided to switch gears and head to the city instead of the beach. We had originally planned to leave on Thursday for Hartfield (and then to the beach), so since we planned to leave for Philadelphia on Friday morning, I took the girls to do one of our favorite fun activiites on Thursday.  I drive the bikes to the W&OD trail, then we bike to our favorite wood-fired pizza spot in Leesburg.  We sit outside, eat pizza, drink lemonade, and then bike back.  It’s my kind of day!

 

On the way there, a small butterfly decided to land on Lyla’s arm while she was biking along the path. :)

We had a fabulous lunch when we got to Fireworks, and the girls convinced me to get them the cookie sundae afterwards.  I think I had one bite before it was demolished!

  

The next morning, Mousey came over and we left for Philadelphia.  We picked Philly initially because my mom’s neighbor (who happened to be over at the house while my mom and I were trying to come up with a back-up plan for the beach) had a connection at the Ritz Carlton in Philadelphia and offered to put in a call for us to see if we could get a room for a decent rate at short notice.  She was able to make that connection for us, so we then started working on a plan for fun in the city.

 

Of course, the hotel was a big treat.  We certainly woudn’t have stayed in as fancy of a place normally, but it was a real treat to stay at such a nice hotel.  We were able to use the Club Level floor for food and drinks throughout the day which we all thought was very cool, and they even left us a plate of cookies and a bottle of wine.  The girls took the cookies, Mouse and I took the wine!  When you don’t spend a lot of time in fancy hotels, little things like this get one rather excited! :)

  

After getting settled into the hotel, the first thing we did was take advantage of our City Pass.  It included several of the activities we wanted to do in the city, including taking care of transportation.  We made our way to the Big Bus double decker tour buses and hopped on to head to the Philadelphia Zoo.  Since the zoo is aways away from center city, we traveled through several historical landmark areas on top of the double decker bus, learning the history of the city.  

 

 

 

We got off the bus at the Philadelphia Museum of Art before connecting again on another bus to the zoo.  We didn’t tour the inside of the art museum, but we couldn’t miss the iconic Rocky Balboa statue and the chance to run the famous stairs from the Rocky Movie.

 

Here’s a link of the action: https://youtu.be/A-NKJ7XGnFQ

We heard a great story about the Rocky statue on our tour bus.  After the Rocky movies were completed, Sylvester Stallone donated the statue to Philadelphia as much of the movie and the city were obviously connected.  The statue was placed at the top of the steps leading up to the art museum where Rocky ran the stairs in training during the first Rocky movie.  The statue generated a lot of tourist traffic and, consequently, brought lots of visitors to the art museum. However the art museum decided that the statue was not a piece or art, rather it was a "movie prop”.  So, the art museum pitched a fit and had the statue relocated to a sports areana.  When the statue relocated, so did all the tourists and visitors to the art museum.  Recognizing their loss in traffic through the art museum, they asked to have the statue back, however they placed it at the bottom of the stairs rather than at the top.  When the statue returned, so did the visitors to the art museum, so it looks like Rocky is a piece of art afterall!  We also learned that the city had to fence off the statue and make a fenced in waiting line so-to-speak, as so many people wanted to visit the statue and get their picture taken with it that there had to be an orderly system.  Clearly, whether or not one sees the statue as art, you have to agree that it’s an iconic piece of movie history.  The whole time we were there, people were running the steps and getting to the top, boxing, and putting their fists up in the air!  :)

  

 

I’ll post more about our trip in my next post.