Come What May

So many of you know that Justin applied to some schools to get his PhD. Well none of them accepted us. This thought never really crossed our minds as Justin was filling out the applications, so we didn't really know what to do with ourselves when we found out. But now we've adjusted our thinking and are SO EXCITED to move back to Utah!!!! I can't wait. It has been a wonderful opportunity to be here in Philadelphia, and I am truly sad to leave my wonderful ward (best ward ever), but I'm so happy to be going back to family. Family is so so important to me, and I want my daughter to know her grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. It's difficult to do that on the other side of the country....
So we are set to fly into Utah April 25th. We will be living in my parent's basement, probably for about a year. Some people may think "oh that sucks" but not me! I'll have multiple babysitters living right up stairs from me! And this will be my brother Brad's last year at home before he goes on a mission, so it'll be fun to spend more time with him. And also I love my parents. And there will be a little kitchenette thing downstairs for us, so it'll pretty much just be like we're in a little basement apartment, except it will be free, which we like since we are poor and in debt.
Although Philly and I have had our differences when it comes to driving and navigating, we have had some great times here. Here is a little list of things we will miss about Philly:
- Our ward. Our ward rocks. There is so much diversity and culture, and the people in it are nothing short of amazing. Best people I've ever met. And I LOVE my calling. I love my primary class and my activity day girls.
- Our friends. They rock. I hope we can stay in touch with them.
- There's a million cool things to do. We've gone to Gettysburg, Amish country, Valley Forge, Atlantic City/Beach, Washington DC, and done a bunch of things around Philly. We are planning on going to New York before we leave as well.
- The trees. Beautiful!
- The color. I love being the only white person at my grocery store!
- The history!! I love America, and I love being in such a significant place in America's history.
- Justin says: School. He is weird, he really loves school.... He says this year has been really rigorous but his education has been nothing short of "first class" and he has loved his experience at Penn.

Well that's all I can think of for now. Some of the things we won't miss include:
- The "dirt bike gang" as we like to call them. There's a group of boys that must live somewhere around here who have EXTREMELY LOUD dirt bikes that they literally just ride up and down the street for fun or something. I hate them.
- It's no secret I hate driving here. I will not miss it at all.
- Very few restaurants carry Dr Pepper. Lame.
- Humidity.

That's it. I can't think of anything else.

Well, life has yet again surprised us with what's in store. It turns out we're pretty bad at predicting it.... But all we can do is live life to the fullest and enjoy the ride, right? Justin will be reapplying to PhD programs in the Fall, although most said they require 2 years of work experience, but we'll see. Who knows? Not me. In the meantime we will be living the life in my parent's basement with free rent, cable, internet, and babysitting! I'm not complaining!

Spring Break Recap

Our last day of Spring Break we went to the Please Touch Museum, which is a children's museum. Here are our pictures:

Statue out front

Lobby

The lobby is as far as we got, because they were going to charge us $15 for Haddy!!!! We weren't about to spend $15 on her when she's still too young to even understand what's really going on....so we left. Instead, we went out to eat at a place called Friendly's and it was DELICIOUS!!!!!!! I don't think there are any in Utah, which is sad for Utah.
That was Spring Break! Now it's back to the grind.

Big Bus Tour and Natural Science Museum

So yesterday we took the Big Bus tour of Philadelphia and we're glad we did! We learned some very interesting things, and I will admit, it was nice to be sitting down! We also went to the Natural Science Museum, which had some cool dinosaur bone stuff. It was a pretty laid back day. Something interesting that happened though: We were done looking through the museum and went to our stop to wait for the bus, which was right in front of the Four Seasons hotel. All of a sudden this fancy bus pulls up (not ours) and parks outside the hotel, and  we weren't really paying attention until we realized all the guys walking out of it were very tall, and all wearing Utah Jazz gear.....it was the Jazz!!! Sooo random and so funny! We didn't even know they were in town! Anyway, we thought it was cool. Here are some pics:

Cool gold-leafed statue of Joan of Arc

This picture is very dark, unfortunately, but that's Justin and Haddy standing next to a T-rex!

Haddy and I at the back of the bus. Since it was a nice day everyone wanted to ride on top, which means we pretty much had the whole lower level to ourselves!

Here is a large creepy dinosaur head.

Haddy in front of this fake tree thing in the kid's section of the museum.

Justin and Haddy riding a turtle...

This is the bus the Jazz came out of! Unfortunately by the time I got my camera out all the team members had already gone inside...

That's it! Not many pictures. OH well. Today we are having a day at home to plan and figure out our move next month (btw we're moving back to Utah the end of April....we will miss Philly but are excited to be back around family!).

Philadelphia Zoo

Whew! What a week so far! Today we went to the Zoo and we very much enjoyed ourselves! And it was a lot warmer than it was yesterday, thankfully, I was worried because when we were at the outdoor exhibits and the Aquarium yesterday I was freezing! But today was quite nice!
Well, here are some pictures from the Zoo!

Justin and Haddy by a dinosaur statue outside the Amphibian exhibit. CREEPY snakes in there...ew I hate snakes.

I'm such a pro photographer. I caught this tiger right as he was growling or something so you can see his big teeth if you look at the bigger picture.

The otters were SO CUTE!!! So playful and fun to watch, and we got to see them being fed, which was cool and gross at the same time. They pretty much ripped off the heads of fishes and left the rest of their bodies floating down to the bottom....yuck.

Justin loved the Linx, I think it's because his favorite game is Zelda, and the hero's name is Link....

This was our favorite zoo animal, apparently she's the only one of her kind in the world! We actually ended up taking her home because we thought she's was so cute.

The red panda was our second favorite, what a cuddly cutie!

Giraffes.

Here's that Haddy thing again.

Polar bears.

Bear.

Flamingos.

Kangaroos.

This was Justin's third favorite animal, the Golden Lion Tamarin. This was the best picture we got...

There are no pictures of me because we were at a mostly-outside facility which means I had to wear my ugly stupid hat all day, and I didn't want any pictures of me in it. But that was our day! Fun! We were planning on going to New York for the day tomorrow but then realized we didn't have to do that this week since it's not part of the City Pass, so we're going to go on a Saturday sometime this month or next. We think tomorrow we will go to the Natural Science Museum and do the Bus Tour thingy, which we originally weren't going to do but it came highly recommended so we will try it out!

Aquarium

Second day of Spring Break and I could tell when we got home from the Aquarium it was going to be an exhausting week...a fun one, but an exhausting one. First of all, Haddy has decided not not wake up at 8:30 anymore....she went from 8:30 to 6:30 pretty dang fast, and I'm not okay with it...but what can ya do? Also, trying to hurry and get everything packed and ready and out the door is a little bit stressful, I will admit. When we went to the aquarium we actually forgot the stroller!! Thankfully they had some to rent, which was a lifesaver. And these days include a lot of walking around, which is fine, but I'm still recovering from my flu and my energy level isn't where it normally is, so this wears me out. Anyways, the aquarium was really cool but the lighting inside was not ideal for a non-fancy camera, so unfortunately most of our pictures are blurry, but I will post a few anyway. The ones outside are fine, but there aren't very many outside ones....

Haddy LOVED the fish. She learned to bark from my parent's dogs over Christmas break, now she barks when she sees animals, so she was barking at the fish all day! It was so cute!

More fish, more barking.

This is the actual size of a shark's jaws.....creepy!

Justin touching a stingray...he tried very hard to get me to do it but touching sea creatures is definitely not my thing!

This was the bird/hippo exhibit.

Haddy and I in front of the bird thing

Our faces our blurry, but we thought this was a pretty funny sign :)

More fish, and more barking.

The hippos were in this exhibit but asleep at the time.

Oh no! Haddy's been eaten by a shark! Oh ha ha ha, I'm just kidding, that's just a fake shark. No need to worry!

The shark tunnel was really cool, but proved to be the hardest place for a good picture. This one is super blurry and it's the best we got...

Justin wanted a picture with the sharks so bad, and this is the least blurry out of about ten....

These are penguins. Finally, some non-blurry pictures!

I love those two.

Justin, Haddy, and Philly

Me, Haddy, and Philly.

We had a fun time at the aquarium yesterday, today we are going to the zoo! Hopefully they have Dr Pepper there....

The Franklin Institute

This week is Justin's Spring Break, and we are taking major advantage of it! We got a City Pass (which gives you tickets to a bunch of things to do in the city), and we are planning on going to New York for the day on Friday.
Today we went to the Franklin Institute and it was AMAZING!! I've never had so much fun at a museum. Here are some pictures from our fun-filled day!

Haddy and I out front

That is good ol' Benjamin Franklin! This room was really pretty, and very impressively large.

This picture should be obvious, right? haha, no. This was in the planetarium, we saw a show about Black Holes and it was AWESOME!! It had one of those domed screens that's above your head, and it was so cool. Justin said this was his favorite part of the day.

This is a telescope, and there was a screen on the ceiling showing what the telescope shows that Haddy could not take he eyes off of!

Here she is looking at the screen, straining her neck.

This is a big train, and it moved!

This is Justin and Haddy ON that big train, before it started to go.

This is Haddy and I above an airplane, about to get in.

Here we are, in the airplane.

You can't tell, but we're in a room that blows a lot of air on you really fast, and you're supposed to pick up these foam wings and feel the "lift" when you hold them correctly. Haddy loves wind so she loved this little simulator!

Now THIS was cool! You were supposed to call someone on your cell phone, and this wall's lights lit up from the electric reaction, and when I did it the lights went crazy!! We figured this is why you're supposed to turn your phones off on airplanes, and this wall showed the phones really do interfere with electronics! It was cool.

LOVED this! This was the big heart! I wish I could've taken my health classes through this heart. You can't see me, but I'm at the top.

Here's one where Justin's at the top. Again, hard to see.

This was a tunnel in the "changing earth" section. When we walked into the section, all of a sudden we thought there was an earthquake! But it was just the room! It felt and sounded way real. And this was some tunnel in the exhibit.

There was a thing where you could go into a room with a green screen, and you could be a pretend weather person. Well Haddy and I did it, this is me on the TV screen, it's  a really bad picture and you can't see the "weather" I'm predicting, but you get the point. It was really fun! And I sucked at being a weather person....

Here is Justin controlling this big crane thing. I did it too, and we pretty much rocked it.

Here I am, racing. No biggy.

Justin and Haddy surfing.

Here I am, "falling" off the surf board.

Rock climbing!

I rocked it.

Boo-ya.

THIS thing was FUN!!!! It was supposed to show you how much faster you spin when your body is all close together, but basically it was a spinny thing that spun really fast. I felt like a little kid! And no one was even supervising us, we could break all sorts of rules we wanted!

Justin riding the "sky bike." Again, so awesome.

Here he is again.

And again.

I highly recommend the Franklin Institute.
We are going to the Aquarium tomorrow :)