As promised: Philadelphia pictures! And there are loads of them, so I'm breaking it into two posts. Also, about 50 percent of these pictures are of food, so if that bores you, well, I'm sorry. We ate so much delicious (and probably also horrible for us) food on this trip. If there is any time when you can indulge, it's on vacation my friends.  

The trip was about 12-13 hours, so we broke it into two days each way, staying in hotels. We stayed in Pittsburgh the first night, and made it to Philadelphia the next day just about right in time for the wedding.

The wedding was beautiful (though we spent most of the ceremony down in the catacombs with a cranky, nap-deprived baby), and the reception was phenomenal (delicious food, well-planned schedule, beautiful old building). Congratulations Ellie and Adam :)

We stayed two nights downtown Philadelphia at the Latham Hotel, an old hotel which has been well updated and had great staff. It was the first time I had ever stayed in a city hotel and it was so fun to just pop into the little lobby and right into an elevator up to the ninth floor. 

Indy loves staying in hotels. She just roams around the room, getting into everything like it's the best day of her life.

We stayed an extra night in Philadelphia so that we could explore the city on Sunday. We spent the first half of the day with Meg, Tim and baby Rosie who were also in for the wedding.

The babies played on the bed together before we set out to see the historic areas of the city.

(Fun fact: I'm actually related to Benjamin Franklin on my mother's side, though I'm not exactly sure how.)

We ate both breakfast and lunch at Reading Terminal Market (a sort of permanent, indoor farmer's market with a ton of restaurants, delis, and stands selling all kinds of goods and produce): crepes and, cheese-steak (my first ever, and it was delicious), fresh ginger-lemonade, and fresh baked desserts.

We were also thrilled that there was a farmstand there that partnered with local farmers to stock a bunch of organic produce, grass-fed meats, and even raw milk! Raw milk can be legally sold in stores in Pennsylvania (which I didn't know), so Indy was able to get her milk fix.

Stay tuned for part two!

Ok so I can't totally blame one silly (not-so-silly) storm for me being gone from this space for something like 11 days, but it made for a sort of hectic start to last week which then ran into a whirlwind long weekend roadtrip to Philadelphia for our friend Ellie's wedding (pictures from that trip coming soon). The storm hit the Sunday before last just as church was letting out, which kept us trapped inside the building for a good 20 minutes until the worst of it had passed. Indy must have had some sixth baby sense about it, since every time I went anywhere near the door she shrieked and hugged my neck and smothered me in terrified kisses even though she couldn't even really see outside. When we finally made it to our car, it was obvious that some sort of micro-burst had come through; it was easily the worst storm I can ever remember seeing. Trees and telephone poles were snapped in half like toothpicks, and power lines were down everywhere. We didn't get power back until early the following Tuesday morning, and Joel and Kate didn't get their power back until late Wednesday night. For others it took much longer. Of course, this all happened to coincide with an intense heat snap with temperatures in the 90's and all the way up to 100. We lit all the candles we had and toughed it out the first night (if Alan running out at 2 a.m. to get a marine battery to hook up to a box fan still counts as toughing it out), stayed at my parents the following night, and then everyone stayed at our house Tuesday night to escape the heat. 

I'll leave you with some pictures I snapped while driving around surveying the damage, and I'll be back with some much happier Philadelphia trip pictures soon.

That half of a tree was in Joel and Kate's driveway. Thank goodness no cars were parked there when it fell.

Oops, can't go that way I guess. . . there is an entire pine tree in the road.

And this one was ripped out by its roots, along with a nice 15 foot chunk of earth, and their pretty park bench is still perched there by the trunk.