City of Brotherly Love

I love Spring Break! I love that we don't all have to be ready and out the door by 8:20am. I love that I don't have to worry about picking someone up or dropping someone else off. I love that we can just enjoy a few days together before the absolute CRAZINESS of baseball season begins.

It was a perfect day to head into Philly. It's pretty sad we live so close to such a great city and that we don't take advantage of it more. Allie kept asking if we had to take an airplane to get to Philadelphia or if there was a pool at the hotel we were going to stay at in Philadelphia. (She LOVED saying "Philadelphia"!)

We parked at Reading Terminal Market and the kids enjoyed looking at all the cool food and candy shops. (It was lunch time and they may have just been really hungry, but I'm sticking with that they enjoyed the atmosphere too.) I have to say it reminded me of Nam de moon market in Seoul.

We settled on brick oven pizza and Zach proclaimed, "This is the best pizza EVER!". It was pretty good! We were there for lunch along with the thousands of other people who work in the city or who may be attending the education conference across the street in the Convention Center, but we just happened to sit next to a group of professors from BYU and BYU Hawaii! What a small world!

As we were walking around looking for food we found a great ice cream shop that we knew we would have to come back to after lunch. The trick was remembering which aisle it was on. Thanks to Matt we found it again! And thank goodness because that ice cream from a Lancaster Amish farm was delicious!

Since we are in the "City of Brotherly Love" I thought we would visit JFK Park and see the LOVE statue. It's a pretty famous city landmark and it's even a stop on the city bus and trolley tour! I have to say it looks better in pictures or in the movies, but it was still nice to see.

One of the main reasons I have been wanting to go down to the city is to see the site of the new Philadelphia Temple. The ground breaking ceremony was held last Fall so I was eager to see how it was coming along. After JFK Park we headed toward the temple grounds. I knew it was only a few blocks away but wasn't sure exactly where the site was. Lucky for us we ran into some missionaries who kindly pointed us in the right direction. I guess I was expecting a little more than a full parking lot, like maybe a hole in the ground or even some construction equipment, but all that was there was a gated parking lot full of cars. Oh well. At least I'll know how to get there once it's finished.

The greatest thing is we know THIS is what we have to look forward to:

What a great day! I think Zach's comment pretty much summed it up: "Hey, this was more fun than I thought it was going to be!"

Thanks Zach. I had fun too!