{"id":17961,"date":"2025-08-13T12:33:58","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T19:33:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/?p=17961"},"modified":"2025-08-13T12:35:40","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T19:35:40","slug":"philly-summer-2025-concludes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/2025\/08\/philly-summer-2025-concludes\/","title":{"rendered":"Philly summer 2025 concludes!"},"content":{"rendered":"

All the project work I mentioned in my last post<\/a> aside, we did have some fun adventures the last week and a half we were in Philadelphia after returning from New England.<\/p>\n

The boys got to see a lot of grandpa through afternoon visits all summer, but we were also there to celebrate his birthday with the whole family!<\/p>\n

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The Sunday following our return we went downtown to visit The Franklin Institute again. Yes, we had already been there, but this time we were meeting a friend and his daughter! The last time all three of us were together was long before any of us had kids, so it was quite the momentous gathering.<\/p>\n

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Plus, there were parts of the museum the boys wanted to re-visit or hadn’t seen the last time. Aaron got really into the interactive exhibits. Afterwards we went out for pizza.<\/p>\n

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On my own, I was able to take a long lunch one day to catch up with a friend over sushi and an evening to have dinner with a friend in King of Prussia. It reminded me how good it feels to catch up with friends, and there’s no reason my social life in Philly is more active than in California. I have friends in California too! Time to be better about planning outings with friends.<\/p>\n

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Later in the week I put a pause on work for an afternoon and took the boys out to the nearby Churchville Nature Center to visit the butterfly enclosure. We’re members and they have a lot of great little events, but this was the first time we’d been out there this trip. It was definitely a warm day to be outside, but not as bad as some of the other days have been, and the mist they provide for the butterflies definitely felt nice!<\/p>\n

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We spent Friday evening at The Academy of Natural Sciences in downtown Philadelphia for their event around Haddy returning to Dinosaur Hall<\/a>. It was fun to see their newly installed Hadrosaurus foulkii, but mostly it was a good opportunity to visit the museum with the kids after hours. Afterwards, we had dinner at Victory Brewing Company. I’d never been to this “new” downtown location, but the vibes brought me back to the dozens of times I visited their brewery in Downingtown.<\/p>\n

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Our final week in town was rather chill, owing partially to do with some work stuff really picking up and causing us both to work a bit more than usual. But we still did a couple family visits and dinners, and over the final weekend in town we made our way out to our local model train shop where we picked up a few goodies, including some light-up tracks. Unfortunately, that evening I tripped in our den while working on some stuff with MJ and sprained my ankle, and badly bruised my shoulder. Ouch. This is the fourth time I’ve sprained this ankle (amusingly, it happens every 4 years) so I skipped the doctor and just tended to it at home. Still, no fun.<\/p>\n

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Outdoor time throughout the summer was mostly water-driven pursuits on the lawn with the hose or water guns and balloons. However, our final week there the weather cooled down a bit and allowed the boys to spend a bit more time outdoors riding their bikes! They love doing this in California but often find it’s too hot to do during a Philly summer.<\/p>\n

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Overall, it was a nice visit, and the six weeks flew by. It also felt like the right amount of time for me. I was definitely ready to come back to home prime when the time came, and our journey back to California was uneventful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All the project work I mentioned in my last post aside, we did have some fun adventures the last week and a half we were in Philadelphia after returning from New England. The boys got to see a lot of grandpa through afternoon visits all summer, but we were also there to celebrate his birthday […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,15,41,16,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","category-family","category-kids","category-life","category-philadelphia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17961"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17976,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17961\/revisions\/17976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/princessleia.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}