Knitting Zeal

Season passes at Sesame Place

 

meeting our buddies

Opening day at Sesame Place was this past Saturday.  This was the second year in a row that we went to opening day and it was a lot of fun.  My son was even more excited this year, as he has asked at least weekly since December when we can go back to Sesame Place.  This summer, he is a lucky boy, as we have season passes for the first time to Sesame Place.  I won a season pass from Philly Parent Circle, a great resource website if you are a parent in the Philadelphia area.  I decided to buy two more passes so that the whole family could visit repeatedly this summer and lucked out in buying them during winter when they were discounted.  

 

We have had the chance to visit Sesame Place several times over the past few years as guests of the park at blogger events.  I had heard the spiel about buying passes if one plans to visit more than two times, as at that point it is cheaper than purchasing daily tickets.  What I discovered was that having season passes really pays off in respect to the 30% discount on food and merchandise they provide for guests.  Being local and pass holders means we can visit the park without the pressure to do EVERYTHING in one day.  The rides or activities we missed doing or doing again this past weekend we can do the next time we are there.  It made the day much more relaxing.  I realized that if we didn't make it to the show we wanted, it was ok, as we have more opportunities to catch it this summer.

 

Murray!

What was fun about opening day?  The characters were so fluffly looking!  Fresh costumes, happy employees, and an ultra clean park all led to a fun day.  We missed the morning arrival parade, but did have the chance to enjoy the Neighborhood Street Party Parade.  This time we were along the beginning of the parade route and really had the chance to enjoy unobstructed views.  My kiddo was even encouraged to join in on some dancing by a parade dancer, but Mr. Bashful swayed along on the side.  

 

 

Pretzel dogs and apple slices for the kiddo

A big change I noticed this year was the menu changes.  Honestly, the food there was nothing exciting last year.  This year they added a completely new menu to one restaurant, Captain Ernie's Bistro, which featured a variety of paninis, pizza, and salads along with an updated kid's menu that included pretzel hot dogs and a turkey sandwich.  My husband and I had paninis (Chipolte chicken and Turkey Florentine) and really enjoyed them.  My son had the pretzel hot dogs and actually ate his lunch.  The kids meal includes a fruit choice and drink.  With our pass savings, lunch there was cheaper than what we usually pay locally.  A tip: the map you can pick up at the entrance has the menus printed on the back for each restaurant.  Each place serves different foods, so if you have a picky kid (or adult) who will only eat certain things, check to see which place serves the food they want.  The family in front of us had to get out of line because their kid was upset that Captain Ernie's did  not have chicken fingers.  

 

It was really cold on Saturday, so we did not go on the water rides, although there were a few crazy people swimming.  We actually have never been on any of the water rides.  We are looking forward to trying them out this summer! 

Twiddlebugs slides

 

Sunday afternoon at the ballpark

We spent this afternoon at Citizens Bank Park watching the Phillies beat the Mets!  We took the train and the subway to get there, fulfilling the little guy's need for SEPTA experience.  (I have mentioned his obsession with SEPTA, right?)  It was the first game of this season for us and the weather was perfect, if not a bit hot in the sun.  The kiddo asked to leave approximately halfway into the FIRST inning, as he was too hot.  He ate so much junk food, including his first cotton candy, which not surprisingly he loved (although did not finish!) The 1st through say 7th innings were rather slow, but by the end of the game the Phillies started playing well and the crowd became more enthusiastic, so the kiddo made it until the end.  Phillies won, 8-2!

The kid and the Philadelphia Flower Show

 

 

Aloha!  The kiddo, my mom, and I went to see the Philadelphia Flower Show on Tuesday, apparently with every single senior citizen in the tri-state area too.  (It was really crowded!!) It was beautiful, of course and the theme was Hawaii, which is my dream place to live (specifically Lahaina, Maui.) 

 

The entrance of the show led visitors under the sea, sort of.  The kiddo thought it was cool to see fish "swim" overhead.  We missed many of the main exhibitors because it was just too crowded to get close enough to see any details and I didn't want the kiddo to get hurt because he was too small for people to notice.  It was bad enough I kept whacking him in the head with my camera lens!  We found that some of the smaller displays were just magnificent.  I think a favorite was MODA Botanica.  They had a moving display that the visitors could control by turning dials on the ends.  The dials changed the scenery in the display by sliding parts back and forth.  It was sort of amusing to realize that most adults were not tuned in to the control they could have over the exhibit, but the kiddo and other kids discovered the dials and started playing.  It was very clever to see them change the scene, even if it ticked off some of the visitors who didn't understand!  (Grownups can be so fuddy-duddy!)

 

There were tons of orchids, almost everywhere you looked.  It was hard to photograph them in the poor lighting so I ended up having to use a flash most of the time.  My son did well, considering what a busy day it was.  We had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe, which had really good fries, according to him!  He also loved taking the train to and from the show and was more than happy to ditch me on a busy train and sit with his grandmom.  

I uploaded most of my photos on Flickr, if you want to see more!

 

The show is open until Sunday, March 11, 2012.  They redesigned the layout from previous years, which in my opinion was done poorly.  Traffic flow around the main exhibits was horrible and at one point we were trapped in a corner because everyone just stopped moving to try to see some dancers--certainly not a place to go if you are at all claustrophobic!  I really hope that in future years they work on having a way to go around all the exhibits on all sides so that doesn't happen again.  If you go, be sure to check out the layout online and get a map there to help.   

 

My little EMT at the Please Touch Museum

We stopped by our favorite place this week, the Please Touch Museum, after a couple month hiatus since our membership had run out.  The little guy had been asking to return for a while, so I renewed the membership, and we went this week.  He loves the place and was so excited to check out the remodeled hospital in the museum.  CHOP sponsors the exhibit, which is a model of their ER along with a kid-sized ambulance.  We visited that exhibit at least twice, since he had so much fun "driving" the ambulance.  It even had a little stretcher in the back, along with lights and a radio sounding out calls for help.  He has been talking about it all week.  Thankfully we've never actually been in the real CHOP ER, so I presume it's a mini model of the place.  There was an X-ray machine that could be used on doll patients and an MRI that also scanned dolls.  My guy said he had seen one of those machines on a tv commercial before, so he knew what it was!  He liked working at the admissions desk!  

 

His other favorite exhibit is the transportation room, including a life sized (half) SEPTA bus. The museum wasn't too crowded, so he got to drive it for a while and play with all of the switches, which he discovered actually make bus sounds, turn on lights, etc.  When the place is crowded there isn't enough time to explore all of that, so he really enjoyed this visit.  I told him that his daddy's daddy use to drive a SEPTA bus too, which really impressed him.  His grandfather would have enjoyed his enthusiasm for transportation!  

 

Here he is driving to Philadelphia!

 

One of the cool things to me at the Please Touch Museum is the ever changing toy exhibits.  It seems that each time we visit I discover a new display somewhere, often of toys I remember from my childhood.  This time we saw a huge display of rubber duckies!  

This is one museum that is so worth the cost of membership to me.  We have a blast every time we go and there seems to be something new to explore each time, even though we've been there so many times.  

Gingerbread house display, an annual family tradition

December is a month filled with new and old family traditions. One of them includes our annual trek to Peddler's Village to see the gingerbread house displays.  We met up with dear friends this past weekend to check out the houses and see the Village lit up at night.  It was beautiful!  The gingerbread houses always amaze me to see such minute details of perfection alongside the kids only entries that look just like my attempts at gingerbread houses!  I am hoping we have time this month to construct our own gingerbread house, as it was fun to do last year!

This depiction of a scene from the BEST Christmas movie was amazing!  Love the tiny little leg lamp and the bunny suit!

This shore inspired gingerbread house was a favorite of mine.

The boys had fun viewing all of the lights at night!

Sick day for mom

I've developed a wicked sinus infection and cold, so we've been staying inside for the past two days. To fill our morning we played with ice cream shop play-doh. After making pretend treats was finished the little guy decided to make wires for the ice cream machine. This wire-making has been happening more often in his pretend play. I wonder if he'll show interest in being an electrician or electrical engineer someday. Or a cable guy!

My "baby" is four!

Three days old

 

First Birthday!

 

Second birthday!

 

Third birthday!

4th Birthday!

 

Rain, please stop smurfing with me

So, the basement is flooded, again.  It hasn't been dry since July.  The grass in the yard looks amazingly green with all the water it's getting.  It rained all night last night, a hard rain with thunder and lightning.  The neighborhood was so flooded that they closed schools today in our district!  I saw reports that in central PA, the Lancaster and Hershey areas, are flooded.  So flooded that the zoo in Hershey had to be evacuated and they lost some animals due to flash floods.  So sad.  Pictures on Facebook show that Dutch Wonderland is under water.  At some point, some of this rain has to go to Texas, which is literally burning up with drought.  

This is officially the last day of my son's summer vacation, as he has "meet the teacher" tomorrow morning at preschool and his first official start of preschool on Monday.  It would have been lovely to celebrate the day at the playground or the pool, but between the rain and the threat of more thunderstorms, neither place would work.  He got it in his head that the news mentioned that the movie theaters were open today and would not stop talking about going to the movies.  I finally gave in and decided it would be a fun way to spend a rainy afternoon.  There was only one movie showing that was kid-appropriate...the Smurfs!  It was not a movie I thought I would like, but after we watched a few trailers and clips, he declared it a movie he would love to see.  So, we went.  

Aside from the annoying la, la, la song, it was actually a cute movie.  Some of it was boring to him, since it probably is geared towards an older child, but he liked the smurf parts and declared it a funny movie.  In one scene, the smurfs are riding on the top of a taxi through Times Square, while a Vampire Weekend song (Holiday) plays in the background.  My son knows this song from listening to the cd in the car and said he loved that part of the movie.  It also helps that I told him that his daddy works in Times Square, but the scene was too fast to id his office building.  

Despite the rain, the wet basement, and a headache, it was a smurftacular day!

Hurricane Irene didn't ruin our vacation!

Last weekend we were supposed to be traveling to the New Jersey shore for a vacation that we had been planning for seven months.  Unfortunately, Hurricane Irene interupted our plans as the NJ shore was evacuated.  We eventually were able to get to the beaches, after the storm finally passed.

The days leading up to the hurricane were spent partially packing and partially trying to take care of things at home to prepare for the worst...losing power and flooding.  I went to about five stores trying to find size D batteries for all of the flashlights that were left on by a certain three year old.  I never did find the batteries, but we were set with water and non perishable foods!  On the Friday before we were set to leave I learned that we wouldn't be able to go to the shore, so I pulled out some new activities to keep the child entertained in case of loss of power and since we would most likely be home bound for a day or two during the storm.  

Once it started raining on Saturday afternoon, we watched movies, played games and had fun.  Saturday night was a different story, as there were multiple tornado warnings that led us to hide out in our wet basement for a while.  Luckily my son barely woke up during this and was really great about the whole event.  We were fortunate that we never had any tornados.  Our basement did flood and we had to stay up late using the portable pump we have along with a wetvac to remove the rising water.  We also moved some boxes upstairs to save my gift stash (for birthdays and Christmas.)  It was stressful, but it wasn't as bad as it could have been.  Somehow we never lost power, which was great.

By late Sunday afternoon we got a call that we could head over to the beach house, as the bridge to the island was open!  We quickly packed up everything and left!  The week at the beach was fun.  I'll post more about that later.  

Visiting Smith Kid's Play Place during an earthquake!

All summer I've wanted to take my son to check out the cool playground that is in Fairmount Park, called Smith Kid's Play Place, or Smith Playground.  I've been hearing about it for a while, but was a bit unsure about driving there alone, as it's in a section of Philadelphia that I'm not at all familiar.  Then, all summer it was HOT!  Today was just beautiful out, and it was our last week to get together with our buddy whose mommy works for a school, so we had our last official play date of the summer today at Smith Playground.  It was fantastic!  The boys had a blast playing all day and we had a great picnic for lunch in the middle of Fairmount Park that was just lovely. We had such a great time that we never even felt the earthquake that occurred this afternoon!  

The main house on the property was built specifically to be an indoor play house for kids, over 100 years ago (they just celebrated their 112th birthday!!)  Inside were three floors of play areas, including a library.
Outside, one of the fun features of Smith Playground is the wooden slide that is almost 40 feet high.  There is an intricate tree trail that leads to the top where kids (and adults!) can use a burlap sack to slide down the slick wooden slide.  They had waxed the slide yesterday, so it was super slippery today!  My monkey went down once with me, sitting on my lap.  Then he went two more times on his own with his buddy.  He had a hard time figuring out how to center his tush on the burlap and push himself off, so he ended up sliding on his tummy both times, but he had fun!

Behind the mansion, there are 6 and a half acres of an outdoor playground!  There were so many activities to choose from and we maybe did half of them.  There were lots of traditional swings, some tire swings, and this cool saucer swing that the boys had a blast riding on, as if they were surfing.  

There was a tot lot for kiddos ages 5 and under.  The boys had a blast looking for bad guys off the side of the pirate ship and driving the train and firetruck!  There were these cool spinner chairs that whipped them around one at a time until they were dizzy.  My little guy actually fell over after getting off!  He was laughing so hard!

The back of the mansion was just as beautiful as the front, and the perfect weather made the day great!  

My little guy had a blast playing on the indoor train, along with the little inside playhouse.  In the basement was a cool little road way area with little bikes and cars.  The playground is a non-profit, and does not charge a fee to use, but does accept donations.  It was beautifully maintained and well staffed.  It was so clean too!  A great resource for the kids of Philadelphia!

We ended the day around 3:00pm and headed to the car. By chance, I heard my cell phone ring.  It was my husband who asked if I got his text...no...because his high-rise office building in Philly was being evacuated due to the earthquake!  We had not felt the earthquake at all! (the playground surface is covered in very cushy material that is shock-absorbing.  Apparently it works very well!!) He did feel it, as he works on the 36th floor and felt the building sway much more than usual.  He usually takes the train home, but there were lots of delays due to potential structural damage, so instead of going home, we detoured into center city Philly to pick him up.  It was quite amazing to see so many office workers milling around outside in the middle of the afternoon.  The drive home was long, but it was better than him waiting for the train.  Thankfully we were relatively close to his office!

It was an exciting day!