South Philly Pizza

Dallin, Hami and I had such a fun weekend in Valley Forge and Philadelphia! Washington Seminar (the BYU class Dallin is in) took everyone to Philadelphia on Friday and Saturday. Our trip started out a little hectic...I set the alarm for 5 AM because we needed to be at the Barlow Center by 7:50. Turns out someone turned off the alarm (HE will remain unnamed) and we didn't wake up until 7:05! We frantically got ready, pulled Hami out of bed, and jumped on the metro. We got there about 10 minutes late, which is pretty good considering that the metro ride took about 45 minutes. Dallin and I were quite the sight running from the station to the Barlow Center with our suitcase and the stroller!

We drove to Valley Forge and stayed at the Freedoms Foundation. They have dorms there for school groups that come through. I must admit, it was a little scary. Dallin kept commenting on how everything was original to the Founding Fathers...I would have to agree! We didn't bring Hami's playpen so we had him sleep in our suitcase. It was his best night ever! He slept all the way through the night!

Just for you dad, we got a picture with Von Steuben!

Here is a picture of Hami posing as a Founding Father. Hami and I didn't see much of the Valley Forge sights because it was raining really hard so we just stayed in the bus while everyone else got out. Unfortunately we still came down with colds!

That night we met with Alexander Hamilton himself! All we could think of was The Office episode where Benjamin Franklin comes and talks to the girls. I don't know if Hamilton was wearing boxers or briefs, but it was pretty interesting listening to him talk. You would have to study and know so much about Alexander Hamilton in order to do that...maybe Hami has found his calling in life!

The next day we left Valley Forge and drove to downtown Philadelphia. We stopped at the Liberty Bell first. I really like how they have it on display so you can see Independence Hall, where it hung for so many years before it cracked.

Here is a picture of Independence Hall. This is the room where they signed both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. If you look closely you can see George Washington's original chair at the front of the room. An interesting story they told was of Benjamin Franklin. During the Convention he said that he would stare at the sun engraved in the back of Washington's chair and couldn't tell if it was rising or setting, but as he stood to sign the Constitution he said that it was rising just as our new country was rising. I know we are weird history buffs, but even though things don't look so bright nationally, I like to think that we are still a rising country that will persevere and continue the legacy left by the Founding Fathers of freedom.

The Constitution Center is a brand new facility located at one end of the mall, opposite Independence Hall (Sandra Day O'Connor spoke on the opening day). They had an exhibit called Signer's Hall, with the men present at the signing of the Constitution. By this time Hami was sick of taking pictures with Alexander Hamilton, but we didn't mind taking a few more. Dallin and I are both posing with James Madison. They were all life size which was a bit creepy, but I finally understood why Hamilton has little man syndrome!

They also had a voting center for McCain and Obama at the Constitution Center. They had large tubes for each candidate with red, white, and blue balls that people could drop in their candidate's tube. Unfortunately Obama was winning by a large margin, but Hami grabbed a few red balls and threw them in for McCain!

I wish I took pictures of the place we went to eat at the end of the day. Whoever picked the place was losing it because they dropped 50 BYU kids off in South Philly and had them walk 3 blocks to this little pizza joint. The bus driver wouldn't even come eat with us in fear that the bus would be gone or vandalized when we got back. Anyone who knows me knows that I don't like these types of situations. Oh well, we survived and the pizza was pretty good!

Hami left his mark all over Philly because he seemed to have a spit-up problem that day. Almost every building we visited he left a huge puddle of spit-up on the floor. Dallin and I got really good at looking the other way and running away!

All in all it was a great trip and we had a lot of fun!

Oh, Dallin just read this and said I had to say something about BYU football. So to appease Dallin, they won.