Pennsylvania

A couple of weeks ago the boys and I took a trip to Pennsylvania along with my mother, sister, Aunt Christy and her two children. We flew out of Houston directly to Philadelphia where we stayed the night and spent most of the next day.

That evening we did a night-time city tour of Philly aboard a double decker tour bus, and it was really great to see everything we normally wouldn't have gotten to see. It was very informative and a lot of fun as well. We did drive past Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell but it was too dark at that point to take pictures (plus we were driving very fast), and, unfortunately, we never made it back to the historic district. We stayed at the Embassy Suites in the Center City area and it was great because we were able to walk to Logan Square, Love Park, and The Franklin Institute, which is where we spent most of our day.

When we finished at the museum we loaded up the kiddos and headed to Hershey, PA. We did the Chocolate World tour, and I made the mistake of allowing Mason to have chocolate milk with his dinner. That combined with the snack size chocolate bar he got at the end of the chocolate tour kept him up until after midnight that first night. Needless to say, he now LOVES "chocwat." Who can blame him? It was everywhere. They left Kisses everytime they cleaned the room and just about every tour you went on passed out free chocolates. They even had chocolate BBQ sauce in the food court!

We had a great time. We spent two days at Hersheypark and rode all the rides and saw a few shows. We took a day to go to Strasburg and took an Amish buggy ride and rode the Historic Strasburg Railroad. It was a beautiful drive and trainride through Amish country. We spent time at Hershey Gardens and took in the Chocolate Museum where Jordan and I went to the chocolate lab to make our own chocolate bars and learn about the different places in the world cocoa bean are grown.

Mason and Ian were little troopers throughout the whole trip, although on our last day while visiting the museum Mason just laid down on the floor and fell asleep! It was a fabulous trip! And the best part, we all survived!

Philadelphia City Hall

Ben Franklin monument located inside The Franklin Institute

Strasburg Historic Railroad

Hershey Park had all the ride heights labeled by candies.

Mason could ride rides intended for Kisses and Miniatures.

We saw tons of candies walking around!