Sunday and Monday: Sightseeing Days

The nice thing about belonging to the LDS church is that you can find a meetinghouse and go to church practically anywhere in the world. It's always fun to attend church in another part of the world. Everyone is friendly, the spirit feels the same and the feeling of one-ness is always there. Pennsylvania was no exception. The only difference was that the views from their meetinghouse were a lot different than the view from ours:



After church we hung out at the hotel. Caleb has been practicing his walking. I think he's determined to be walking on his own by the time we get home.

(


He's also been working on his Touchdowns!




Today, Monday, we had another doctor appointment for Caleb. He weighed in at 6 lbs 6 oz. 3 days ago he was 5 lbs 14 oz, so we're happy to see that he is doing so well. While we were there we had the doctor's office copy all of Noah's medical files for us to take to our pediatrician when we get home. (They have access to the hospital files, too, so we were able to get them all.) While we were waiting Caleb started to get a little restless. A nurse came out and gave him a few balls to play with and keep. 2 other nurses came out at different times to let us know the progress of getting the files and to let us know they were doing their best to be fast. Everyone was super nice.


After Caleb took a nap and Noah ate, we headed over to Valley Forge National Park.


After a quick stop at the Visitor's Center to peruse the gift shop and watch a short movie, we spent the rest of the time driving around on the self-guided tour of the area. We saw George Washington's headquarters and even got to see his room set up just like it was when he lived there. Caleb is a fan.

Then we saw where George Washington's personal guards, or "life guards" camped. Caleb was more interested in his leaf.
Valley Forge is a big hill and the views were amazing. This statue isn't of George Washington, but some guy named Von-something or other. But it looks like Washington from the back. So let's just pretend it's him.

There are cabin replicas here and there, but most of the area is just pretty landscape, so you have to use your imagination and picture what it must have been like 200 years ago.

We made sure to visit the "Patriots of African Descent" monument for our boys.

There are a lot of bike paths, footpaths, and walkways in the park and it looks like a popular place for people to jog and bike. Someday we'll come back and take our kids on a bike-tour of the park.

The whole time we've been here in PA we've been on the lookout for an ice cream place. Can you believe they've been hard to find? What's wrong with you Pennsylvanians? Don't you like cold, creamy goodness? Well, on the way to the park we passed an ice cream place and vowed to stop there on the way home. When we got there we discovered that a lot of Pennsylvanians actually like ice cream.

And now, here are a few random shots of just hanging out at our home away from home.

Noah likes to pose when he sleeps.

These are everywhere out here. They're gas stations. I'm not sure why they're called the WaWa, but I like it. It's my personal goal to find as many as I can. So far I've seen 6.

We think Noah is just adorable. He's just a pretty baby. But sometimes he looks kind of frog-like to me with his big eyes and his long, thin appendages.

Well, at least I thought it was a frog he looked like. Turns out it was something else...

Maybe we should have named him Elllllllliot...