Cousins

Andy and Lane

Edie and Ivy

Jack and Ivy

My sister, Alyson and her family came 2 days after Bryan left. We love having company. We went to the Please Touch Museum and to the New Jersey shore. We took them to Germantown and ate dinner and let the kids play at the castle park. We saw Historic Philadelphia--Liberty Bell and all of that and to Jim's Steaks. We've been dying to go there because it is supposed to be the best place in Philadelphia to get a Philly Cheesesteak. It's even in the book, 1000 Places to See Before You Die, so we had to go before we move. But every time we go the line is out the door and around the corner and the people in it have been waiting over an hour. We went for lunch at 11:30 on a Tuesday and we hardly had to wait at all. It was great. I liked it much better than Geno's or Pat's which are also famous. Jonny got his cheesesteak true Philly style with wiz (cheese wiz. discusting, right?). It was actually really good.

Carriage ride
Jonny (sporting his NY aviators) Andy, Lane, Edie, Jack, and Al

Andy and Lane (with tough guy pose)

Outside Liberty Bell
(more sweet posing- isn't he cool???)

On Saturday we got a babysitter and the four of us went to New York City. We decided to pay the money and do a city bus tour. It was totally worth it. We didn't have a lot of time and I can't walk around all day so it was the perfect solution. We saw the whole city. You can get off whenever and wherever you want and a bus comes every 10 minutes to pick you up. It was perfect. We got off and went to the top of the Empire State Building, and did some back room purse shopping on Canal Street. We all got sweet aviators and some stuff for the kids.

Time Square

Al and Jonny on the bus

Empire State Building

Jude and me sporting our new matching aviators. cute

We had reservations at Beco which is in the Theater District. I think they called that part of the street Restaurant Row? It was a really cute part of the city. We saw Billy Elliot at the Imperial Theater. It is the #2 ranked show (after Wicked, of course, which we've already seen) and was nominated for 15 awards or something-- including best musical. How could we go wrong, right? It was good, don't get me wrong, parts of it were absolutely amazing, but there was so much bad language. Little kids saying the F word all the time and stuff like that which was not cool. There was even some boy on boy kissing-- a bit disturbing. We read the reviews for content and they said there was some language, but that the show was appropriate for a 9 year old. Well anyway I don't think I would recommend it, but I'm still glad we went. The dancing was amazing. It made me want to get Ivy into a ballet class.

Waiting for our table at Beco before the show

At Billy Elliot
Matching specs again and one very large arm


Me and Al after the show

The show got over and we rushed out of there to get on the subway back to the ferry. We got there at 11:37 and the ferry had just left at 11:30. The next ferry wasn't until 12:30. It sucked!! That put us home at 2:30. Our poor babysitter! Prairie you are a saint!

Staten Island Ferry