Botanical Gardens Day

In honor of National Botanical Gardens day, we were able to get free admission to the Japanese House in Fairmount Park.

Here's a little blurb off their website about what it is:

Shofuso Japanese House and Garden is a traditional-style Japanese house and nationally-ranked garden in Philadelphia’s West Fairmount Park that reflects the history of Japanese culture in Philadelphia, from the 1876 Centennial Exposition to the installation of its contemporary paintings in 2007.

Shofuso was built in Japan in 1953 using traditional techniques and materials and exhibited in the courtyard at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It was moved to Philadelphia in 1958, to the site of several previous Japanese structures dating to the 1876 Centennial Exposition. In 2007, internationally renowned artist Hiroshi Senju, inspired by our waterfall, donated 20 murals to Shofuso. A viewing garden with koi pond and island, a tea garden, and a courtyard garden comprise the 17th century-style Japanese walled and fenced garden of this historic site and museum.

Since it's so close, we've been meaning to get there for quite some time, but never have. We're glad we finally did. It was a gorgeous day and the house and gardens we just amazing. Partake of some pictures:

The Becks went with us, and Oliver particularly loved the koi fish. We got some fish food and fed the fish. I wish I'd gotten some pictures of Oliver doing that because it was just adorable.

Now we can cross the Japanese House off our list of things still to do in Philadelphia.

Birthday boy

Zack had a birthday not too long ago. Mostly it was a pretty low key day as we both had to go to work. When we got home, he opened his presents.

Here he is with the present from me. He already knew that it was a Nook Color since he was there when I bought it. So no surprises there.

But he wasn't sure what his mom and dad got him.

It was a case for his Nook, plus a controller for the Playstation and a video game. His sisters also sent him a video game. How spoiled!

We went to a fancy dinner at Ruth's Chris steakhouse. We thought we would do quite well price-wise since we had previously bought one of those group-buying vouchers, but it was still quite expensive. But yummy. We won't be frequenting there or anything. We'll stick with the cheaper stuff. It was fun to get to do that once though.

We polished off the evening with cookies

and games with the Becks.

The next day, we went and watched the Phillies beat the Nationals.

It was a little cool outside for my tastes, but we still had a very nice time.

Oh, and I should mention that my husband is mega awesome.

A night with the girls

I know, I know, my blogging is not nearly frequent enough. I intend to do better.

So, way back when General Conference happened, we decided to have a girls' night while the boys went to Priesthood session. They even took Oliver with them, so we were able to have a nice dinner without kids in tow. We went to a favorite of mine, Maggiano's, and ate a ton of pasta and some delicious desserts. Check them out:

Is your moth watering yet?

This is the picture we were able to get of all of us.

And our attempt to do a jumping picture, which we failed at. This is our best one.

You ladies are the best.

Spring in Philly

In more recent happenings, spring is in full swing here in Philadelphia and we are LOVING it. It does rain a lot, but that makes for gorgeous greenery. The trees are on the tail end of blooming and the leaves are starting to come in. I wish I had taken some pictures but unfortunately, I didn't.

Since it has been nicer, we have been getting out more. A while back, we decided to go play a round of croquet at a nearby park with the Becks. We set up near the playground, thinking that Oliver could maybe play there while we played croquet. The park was packed with people tired of being stuck indoors all winter and wanting to get out and enjoy some great weather. That included a number of little kids who were quite fascinated with our game of croquet and wanted to join in. It was chaotic. It's a wonder that we got through the game and that all of our croquet equipment made it back home with us. It was pretty funny though. I especially liked when we were leaving and one little boy asked if we could come back next week. A couple days back, we got an actual (not invaded by tons of children) game of croquet in on the rooftop deck of our building. I love croquet weather!

Despite having lived here for 3+ months, my friend Brittany had not seen really anything in Philadelphia, and since she was about to leave for the summer, we had to go on a little walking tour of Philly. We took Michelle and Oliver with us and headed into Old City. We saw a lot of historic sites, played the delightful Philly themed mini golf course that I adore so much, ate lunch at Reading Terminal Market, and polished it off with amazing deserts from Naked Chocolate Cafe. Then we went home and watched National Treasure to see some of the places that we had visited that day. Yay for a girls' (and Oliver) day!

Spring also means... BASEBALL. We haven't been to a game (yet... we have tickets for Thursday), but we are definitely keeping up with our Phils. Gotta love it.

I wish I had something more exciting to talk about but we're just living life one day at a time, grateful for all our blessings.

Polishing off vacations

Anyone else up for me giving up on finishing a detailed description of my vacation?

I'll just say that we spent our last day in Florida at the Animal Kingdom with Zack's parents. We had a complete blast. We rode all the best rides several times. We especially like Expedition Everest.

And we owe Zack's family a big huge thank you for making our Florida trip possible and for making it so much fun. Love you guys.

Just for the sake of getting caught up, I'll mention that less than a week after returning from Florida, we headed to Utah. My little brother Matthew gave his pre-mission talk in church and we wanted to be there. He did such a great job. I was really impressed. I can't believe my little Bubba is old enough to go on a mission. But he is. And he's out of the MTC now, in the California Roseville Mission. I am so proud of him. We really enjoyed getting to spend more time with family while we were visiting Utah also.

Florida Day 4

This time it was just Zack and me. Amy had gone home and Zack parents went to Clearwater to watch the Phillies play some baseball. We started the day back at Epcot again. We did ride some rides, but spent the bulk of our time exploring the part devoted to different countries. We ate a very delicious lunch in a very cute little restaurant in Mexico. There was a plant show of sorts going on at Epcot while we were there, and they had many Disney characters in topiary, which was pretty great. Here's some photos for you to check out.

Daisy duck topiary

The scenery at the Mexican restaurant

yummy chips and salsa

China

Zack loves pandas

Lady and the Tramp

Mickey and Minnie

I can't even remember what country this was supposed to be.

France

Tigger

Eeyore

We left Epcot mid-afternoon and headed for the Magic Kingdom. It was crowded. We decided to just do some of our favorite rides... Haunted Mansion, Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, Buzz Lightyear, etc., which is what we did. We got to ride most of them at least twice. We stayed there until quite late, making the whole day 16 hours or something like that. We were pooped. But in a good way. Here is the 1 picture we took at the Magic Kingdom.

Florida Day 3

We wanted to squeeze a lot in on our 3rd day in Florida, so we (Zack, Amy, and I) started at Disney's Hollywood Studios right when it opened. We made our way right to the new Toy Story Mania ride first thing, and we only waited maybe 10 minutes to get on.

Since we didn't have long to hang out in the park, we had to pick our very favorite things to do. We decided on the Rockin' Rollercoaster. We had a few minutes to kill so we did the backlot tour, which was actually pretty cute. Here's a picture of Herbie the Lovebug split in half.

And of course, we polished things off by riding the Tower of Terror. Love it!

In the afternoon, we watched the Red Sox beat the Braves at Disney's Wide World of Sports.

In the evening, Zack and I decided to hit up Epcot.

We didn't get the chance to go there 3 years ago when we went to Florida so we thought we could at least carve out an evening for it this time. We liked it so much that we decided to go back the next day. And we took approximately 2 bzillion photos while at Epcot. That'll be the next post.