A Week with Besties

A week ago, I popped down to Philly to pick up some of my friends from the airport. Nicole flew in from Oregon; Laura, Edgar and Lucas came from Texas. And we had an awesome time together.

Wednesday we met up with Meghan, Rachel and their kids for a fun afternoon at Imagine That!, the nearby Children’s museum. We had a blast.

Nicole and Berrit had a nice lunch at the pretend diner.

Julia was a star in the dance studio room.

Lucas and I flew the airplane.

Meghan and Berrit took in a puppet show, courtesy of Nicole.

Lucas (and everyone else) loved the pirate ship.

It was just an all-around awesome afternoon.

The next day we headed into the city via train. Lucas loved it!

We stopped off in Hoboken because Laura was dying to go to Carlo’s. She was so excited!

Then we popped over to see the 9/11 Memorial. It was amazing and moving.

Nicole and I popped over to Strand. We were both completely smitten with the rare book room.

And our last stop was Times Square. We grabbed a bite at Guy’s new restaurant before heading home.

Friday morning, we raced the snowstorm up to Connecticut and then hunkered down at the hotel. The Texans were loving the snow. We had a late-night snow fight in the courtyard.

And made chocolate snow ice cream in the hotel ice bucket.

The next morning we woke up to a lot of snow – nearly 2 1/2 feet. You couldn’t even see the cars.

We spent a good part of the day digging the cars out and waiting for the roads to clear.

Lucas didn’t really know what to do with all the snow at first, but he definitely warmed up to it.

When the roads re-opened, we headed over to Maria’s Mom’s house to have an impromptu birthday party for Ella. Her party was the reason we were all in CT, but the snow cancelled the official plans. We celebrated with pizza, cupcakes and a smaller crowd instead.

And presents. What’s a birthday party without presents?

Sunday morning was brunch with the whole crew.

The whole thing was quite a whirlwind but now that everyone’s gone home, my house seems so quiet. I so wish these ladies lived closer so we could do this more often.