Fantastic Philly Fun

I'm going to wrap up our Philadelphia adventures, and only a month behind schedule! Our first full day in Philly started off with snacks at Reading Terminal Market before we struck out for the day. When we were planning our trip we had the girls all do some research on things to do in Philadelphia and pick the things they most wanted to see or do. Almost everyone mentioned the Franklin Institute so we made that the first order of business on our one full day in the city. As we were walking there we stopped to check out anything that looked interesting!  Here's our day of fun in photo format:

Abigail, Natalie, and Samantha with the Philadelphia City Hall in the background.
Jared, Abigail, Natalie, Samantha, and Emily in the courtyard of the city hall. I have a love for beautiful old buildings and this one is definitely beautiful even if it's not so old.
The square across the street from the city hall was filled with statues of board game pieces - dominoes, chess pieces, parcheesi, and monopoly pieces. It was a fun place to run and climb for a little while before we continued our walk.
We found Philadelphia's iconic love statue in it's temporary home at Dilworth Park.  I kind of thought it would be bigger and initially thought this was a smaller replica and not the actual thing!

These beauties were full of love for each other most of the day. It was like a vacation miracle!
The next thing that crossed our path was the almost completed Philadelphia Temple. We're looking forward to returning to Philly in August for the temple open house. Then we can see the inside of the temple as well!
More sisterly love in the city of brotherly love!
We did finally make it to the Franklin Institute and there was so much to do there! We didn't have enough time that day to see everything we wanted to in the museum and knew we would want to come back another day so we ended up buying an annual pass. We'll for sure go back when we go to the temple open house and Jared is taking Madison up this week since she couldn't come with us. By far, everyone's favorite exhibit was the Science Behind Pixar exhibit. Besides all the fun movie characters, there was so much to learn about the way these some of our favorite movies come to life. 

Samantha and Abigail with Buzz Lightyear
Jared and Emily with Sully and Mike from Monsters University
Four of our little monsters being monstrous
Emily with Dory, her most favorite Pixar character
Emily and I and some of the cars from Cars
Abigail striking a pose with Edna from the Incredibles
Another favorite exhibit was SportsZone where you can race, pitch, jump, surf, and pedal.  Here's Samantha catching virtual wave and learning how science can help surfers perfect their balance.
Twice that day we stopped at food trucks for a snack. Cheesesteaks, hot dogs, you name it, it
somehow tastes better when you buy it from a cart.
We made a really quick stop at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Not to go inside and see any art, but to take a picture with the Rocky Statue!
From the top of the Art Museum steps with Ben Franklin Parkway and part of the Philly skyline in the background.
Jared standing in Rocky's footsteps
Most days I love small town life.  The slower pace, the quiet nights, the lack of traffic. Every time we visit a city I'm reminded of how much fun cities are and that maybe, just maybe, I might be happy living in a city. There would be so much to see and experience right at my doorstep and we might actually go out and take advantage of all a city has to offer. Maybe someday when the kids are all grown Jared and I will move to a little high rise apartment in a city somewhere?

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