For our 5th Anniversary, David and I went out East for a week. With 3,000 miles of driving in a week, we left Orrin at home with Gpa and Gma Z. It was a good choice because by the end, I was beyond ready to get out of the car! Orrin had much more fun playing trucks and tractors at Grandpa and Grandma's :)
Our trip started 5am Thursday, and we drove all the way to Boston, getting in around 1 am.....
The next day we took the T into the city and took a tour of the Freedom Trail. It was a fun way to learn some history of the Revolutionary War time period. This building was one of David's favorites. The Declaration of Independence was read from this balcony shortly after it had been written.
We went to Newport, RI the next day to tour a few mansions. We stopped for lunch at the Mooring to celebrate our Anniversary. It had really yummy seafood pasta, and we ate on the deck overlooking the boat docks.
We toured two mansions that day. This one was built by the Vanderbuilt's and was an incredibly huge and ornate mansion.
We stayed with a few families in the Rockville, CT area over the weekend and went to Rockville on church on Sunday. Then we left to go down to Pennsylvania for the rest of the week. We spent a few nights with some families from Philadelphia. We had met all these people on work teams to Haiti this past year, so it was nice to meet again!
We went out to the Lancaster area for a day, and watched a live play of Moses. It was pretty incredible with the huge props, great costumes, and even live animals. They even pulled off the parting of the Red Sea fairly well! After that, we stopped at Longwood Gardens. It was so beautiful with sculpted hedges, huge fountains, and tons and tons of flowers and trees. The conservatory was amazing, with every imaginable flower, and it just kept going and going and going!
We did the normal touristy stuff of Philadelphia, skipping the liberty bell because the line was a mile long and we could look in a window and see it good enough :) We went to the Independence Hall, Betsy Ross house, Philadelphia Zoo, Art Museum, Mutter Museum (full of crazy medical stuff like conjoined twins, skeletons of a "giant" and a dwarf, tons of skulls and slices of brain and other body parts....something we liked but other people probably are glad we didn't take any pictures ;). We also went on a walking food tour in one of the suburbs. It was a really neat old town, and the only chain store in the whole town is a Starbucks! The town tries really hard to encourage small businesses and so that was really fun to see. We went to about 4 different restaurants and tasted 7 different things. We had Water Ice, Tomato Pie, Pepperoni Bread, Philadelphia Cheesesteak, Soft Pretzel, Cappuccino, and Red Velvet Cupcake.
We got back late Friday night, and when Orrin fell out of bed and we went to get him, he kept crying and crying, wanting Grandma ;) So we've had a little rough adjustment getting back into routine, but I guess it will get better. It's crazy to see how many new words he's saying in just one week. But during the time we were gone, he stopped saying his prayer "Thank you, Jesus, Amen" at the table...and he's refused to say it since we got back....hmmm....wonder what's going on in his busy mind. Looks like vacations over and we have some work to do :)
