Philadelphia 2011

Surprise surprise, the Frost's are traveling again....and indeed it was a surprise for our little guys.

Here's the start of our great trip to Philadelphia and Aidan finding out that we were not "teasing" him. :)

So quite some time ago, Southwest had a big sale on airfare, and knowing that Ethan was turning two (and hence another airfare ticket) soon, we decided to make another trip to a new city. This time, it turned out to be Philadelphia, Pennsylvania! Most specifically, we had read in a magazine a long time ago that Sesame Place (the theme park for the Sesame Street gang) was in the northeast suburbs of Philly. The boys are both in the prime age for Sesame Street and the time was right, so....off we went!

As you saw above, Aidan nor Ethan had any clue. Aid did ask why were were going a different way to Target, so Emmy and I had to let the cat out of the bag on the way to the airport. It was so enjoyable holding this secret from them, and, after the great time we had on the trip, it was worth it.

Here's Mr. All Smiles on the shuttle bus to the terminal:

After a quick check in and jaunt through security, our plane arrived (a Southwest Boeing 737-300, you know the "suntan" kind), and we were off. The boys were great on the flight, watching movies, eating snacks, and playing with toys. After about 2 hours and 15 minutes, we were there, Philly, the City of Brotherly Love!

Downtown from 5,000 feet.

All of Philly's sports complexes are right next to each other. On Saturday, they had both a baseball and hockey game going on.

As many of you know, I'm a planner. Not just any planner, but down to nearly the minute. Our drive into the city was delayed by some traffic so we had to wing it a bit for lunch. We stopped into the most diverse Burger King ever in S. Philly. I honestly think every continent was covered by the patrons inside...and that was a good thing. Throughout our trip, both Emmy and I noticed how homely St. Louis is to these East Coast cities. It's a different world over there. But I digress...

After lunch it was one to our 3PM tour of the Independence Hall and Liberty Bell area. As many of you may know, Independence Hall is where America was born, the spot the Declaration of Independence was made and signed. The Constitution was written up the street and the Liberty Bell was nearby too. First stop was in the Independence Hall Visitors Center where Aid came across a real 1700's character.

So, great story here. If you look in Aidan's hand, you'll see him holding a toy that was popular with children in the colonial period. It's called a Jacob's Ladder. There is a certain position that you need to hold the toy in order for it to do it's thing. Aid figured out how to do it in less than 30 seconds. The character, who was actually a kindergarten teacher by day, questioned us when we told him that Aid was only 4. He told us in 10 years of teaching, he'd never seen any 4 year old figure out how to make the toy work that fast. Last thing he said to us, "Get that kid in an accelerated program." While Aidan was oblivious to what any of this meant, we were pretty darn proud of our boy. Smarty pants.

As a token of his excellent job, the man gave Aidan a $7 dollar bill and told us that we better hurry up and use it because it becomes non-usable in 1837. Har-har.

So next we took up the strollers and headed to Independence Hall. The weather was beautiful. Low 70's and partly cloudy skies. Both guys (and Mom and Dad) were loving it!

So here it is, the room that the Declaration of Independence was penned and signed.

After the tour we walked around a bit. The boys did their best pose by this huge statue of Commodore John Barry, the founder of the US Navy. You can see that Independence Hall is getting some renovations behind them.

We found a really nice family to take our picture sitting on a bench there in Independence Square. They were sitting on the bench and all the sudden jumped up and told us to take a seat for a family picture. We almost got everyone looking!

So next it was time to see a bell and a crack. In we went to the Liberty Bell and sure enough...it's cracked!

By this time, the boys were getting hungry so we headed to Trip Advisor's #1 rated eatery in Philadelphia, the Franklin Fountain - Homemade Ice Cream.

As you can see, it's extraordinarily popular. And the ice cream? Ah, just OK.

For dinner, and I loathe posting this because it's a grotesque piece of carnage, was the famous Philly Cheese-steak from Jim's Steaks (also a famous and popular place)

It was then up to the hotel for swim, relaxation and dreams about.......

Saturday! And Sesame Place!

Walking up to the entrance, we snapped a few shots of some awesome landscaping:

I like! :)

It was nearly impossible to get the boys to hold still, so the best shot I got was Aidan putting Ethan in a headlock in front of the sign. Nice.

The new ride this year was Elmo's Cloudchaser. A swing ride, Aidan had this one down pat after last year's Mall of America trip.

Sesame Place has a full scale replica of the real Sesame Street set, here's my proof with this iconic picture from all our childhoods.

About half the park is water. And with the temperatures only in the low 70's (actually it did get up to 74) and the water at the temperature of tap water (about 60 degrees) I didn't think we'd venture in any water rides. More on that later. Here's their new attraction from 2010: The Count's Countdown Castle. The bucket drops about every 2 minutes with the Count coming over the loudspeaker and counting down the last 5 seconds before it dumps. Pretty neat!

Sesame Place also has three or more live shows that you can attend. After lunch, we were lucky to be about 15th in line for Elmo's World Live! And boy were we excited...

And ridiculously close...(no zoom here, we were in the 2nd row)

The boys loved Mr. Noodle...

Another attraction that was a big hit was called "Ernie's Bed Bounce" a huge inflatable "bed" that Aidan and almost Ethan jumped on.

Big Bird's Balloon ride gave us a great view of the park:

So now we go back to the water part of the park. By some unknown force, Aidan convinced us he wanted to go into the water. After we had a slight incident in the Count's area (because he got sprayed by water) Daddy had to put on his suit and head into "rescue" him. From there on, I was stuck in the water side. Let me tell you folks, 70 degree air + 60 degree water + 10 mph wind is damn cold. Damn cold. But, we did it. Here we are on Big Bird's Raging River (of freezing your nutz off cold):

The cool (literally) thing about this picture is that the coconuts above our heads would fill up with water and then dump over on us. Neat concept.

After the river, we declared a truce and no more water rides were undertaken. My skin felt like it was burning from the cold. Aid's mouth was a shade of purple I'd never seen. I'm sure the Grammies are loving this. But hey, when in Rome, you do as the Romans do.

We found Snuffie's Slide and it was perfect for our daredevil Ethan. I think Emmy and I climbed the steps about 20 times consecutively to have them go down. They loved it!

At 4PM everyday, the park closes out with a huge parade that all the characters sing and dance their way down Sesame Street. It is a pretty cool parade that involves every character and the boys were entranced by it. The floats were very cool too!

One of Ethan's favs is Abby Cadabby.

My favs, Bert and Ernie.

Oscar and hey, that garbage man looks like Mr. Noodle!?!

Elmo and some girl I can't remember.

The C man!

The Count, right in our face!

I think this guy is Murray, he's new this year.

Super Grover, an Ethan favorite.

So, this then led us into dinner, which was the second big surprise. We were having dinner with Elmo and Friends! To our surprise, of the 50 tables, which fit four people each, ONLY 8 TABLES were filled! And SIX characters were there to dine with us! Holy smokes! Guys, the characters were all over us and the kids, almost so much that we didn't really eat dinner! Here we go!

It took Mookie a little while to get warmed up and he never really got to Aidan's level of comfort, but we did get a few high fives and some dancing (keep reading down) of him. Aidan as you can tell, was the perfect age and maturity for these guys. It was magical for him...and for us seeing him in this moment.

They still love that Elmo! Or as Ethan calls him, "Elbow".

Finally Ethan...dancing. Classic!

So, Sunday ended with an unbelievable experience for the boys. I hope they remember this, or at least look back on this as a truly fun moment of their childhood.

Monday we woke again, with a fully planned day of fun and excitement. This time it was to hit the Please Touch Museum of Philly. This is their children's museum and I will tell you, it is spectacular. From the site to the quality and cleanliness (it's only a few years old) it was top notch.

The building was originally built for the 1876 Centennial Celebration and World's Fair that Philly put on. It is massive inside.

You see the torch there made from toys of the Statue of Liberty, which was actually finished in Philly (not France) thus it has a special place in the heart of Philly.

Aid cruising in a Scion...

The murals there were amazing...from a pure space and decoration, this was the best museum we've been to.

I'm bummed that I didn't get more pictures of this amazing room, but this is Aid carrying a foam rocket that you build and then slide over a compressed air tube that, once you push the launch button, it blasts the rockets over 30 feet in the air with 25 psi of air. It was hands down the best attraction I've ever seen at ANY museum. I think we spent 45 minutes in there.

Here is the water play area...Amazing! It had one cloud that blew wind, one that rained, a sun, a rainbow, boat locks, wave makers, wind makers...in essence...everything.

Shopping areas are huge hits with our boys...and their shopping area was more extensive than any I had seen.

The register area even beeped when you slide products across the scanner!

Aid loves his hot dogs!

Our final attraction was a fully restored carousel from 1908 that ran and sounded like it was build yesterday. It was a very nice carousel.

Our final stop before heading home was in Downtown Philly at the Reading Terminal Market. This huge place was filled with at least 50 food vendors selling everything from Middle Eastern to Asian to American and more types of food. There was really so much food there that it was nearly impossible to decide where to eat. Emmy and I did Italian and boys did Hot Dogs and Chx Fingers (no surprise there, ugh).

We had a little more time on the parking meter and (thankfully) we found some great new places for photo ops.

The brothers in the City of Brotherly Love!

Most of the city isn't too friendly for strollers (which city is?) but E loves going down steps (buckled of course, Grammies)

So that's all, after getting through another easy flight back, we were back, and the city was yuck, but that's OK, our trip was a huge success and a wonderful time with our boys, the world travelers!

Thanks for reading our (long) story. Like I've said time and time again, this blog is my scrapbook. A place to capture these lasting memories before they are replaced by something else. I hope someday Emmy and I and the boys can look back on this and just relive the moment, even though a small bit of it is captured here (I took nearly 2 GB of photos, that's alot).

Have a great night!

Ty, Emmy, Aidan and Ethan