Possibly the highlight of my summer...

This weekend was Pennsylvania pandemonium. On my ultimate lifetime goal list, running "The Rocky Steps" is pretty dang high up there. So saturday, we drove up to Philly with Ben and Kaylyn to explore pennsylvania and #1 on the list was to run the Rocky run. I was like a little kid, giddy and ecstatic! While in Philly, of course we had to have a famous Philly cheese steak. There are two major sandwich shops that are directly across the street from each other that compete. The whole experience is an adventure! The lines are always super long, so it puts you standing out in the middle of the street in an intersection blocking traffic cause there is nowhere else to go! There are rules on how you order your sandwich, and if you don't do it right, you can better believe there will be yelling (they yell even if you do it right!) Let's just say south west Philly is not number one on my favorite places to go list, and the cheese steaks are nothing to write home about (Nate really enjoyed his, but Kaylyn and I could have done without them. Maybe we didn't do it right?!?) Before heading out, we certainly had to go see the Liberty Bell since we were right there in the heart of Philadelphia. We really liked this area of town, the old historic part. Independence Hall, Liberty Bell, lots of Ben Franklin stuff, the house the Declaration of Independence was written in, etc. Too bad it's only about a block and the rest of the city we saw is pretty dirty (except the Rocky part!). I couldn't help getting National Treasure out of my head while we were here and it was a lot of fun. From Philly we went to Amish country. It is absolutely beautiful, nothing quite like it. We visited and shopped in Intercourse, and also drove through Bird-in-hand and Plain & Fancy. We ate at a lovely restaurant/buffet owned by an Amish family and run by them and some Mennanites. I learned a lot in Amish country! It felt like we were in a movie, I just couldn't quite grasp the reality of it, but I really loved it. We spent a lot of time inside this wonderful jam and relsih shop where you could try everything they had. Jams and jellies I never knew existed: mint jelly, carrot jam, jalapeno jelly, peanut butter schmear, cheescake in a jar, orange curd, tomato basil jam, apple cinnamon, and damson plum just to name a few favorites. It was divine!
After dinner in Amish country, we headed to Hershey, Pennsylvania for chocolate world. There is a ton t do in Hershey, but since we only had a couple of hours until they closed, we jsut wandered and did all of the free stuff. I love that the lightpost are hershey kisses and even the outside air smells like chocolate. What a fun place!
Needless to say, we had a great saturday and enjoyed exploring pennsylvania and spending the day with Ben and Kaylyn. We have loved being to able to spend so much time with them this summer and are really going to miss them when they move to Texas. :( On Sunday we went to Nate's sisters' as usual and much to my surprise, the girls had planned a surprise princess birthday party for me! I actually was totally surprised. It was all really cute, and it was so much fun to have the girls so excited about it all. After a very tasty dinner, we had Sara's creation of to die for chocolate lava cake and then played games with the girls. One of the best things about being here this summer has been spending time with that family. I have absolutely loved getting to know Sara and I lvoe our SUnday night chats. I am so greatful to her and Hans for taking us in these last couple of months and cherish our relationship I have formed. It's going to be really tough to not get to see them all of the time. Thanks for the awesome party and presents, Carlson's! I absolutley loved it all!!!