I missed the Parade for the 2008 World Champions of Baseball because I woke up Friday morning with a migraine! Boo hoo!! But I did feel better for Halloween Trick or Treating last night.

After wearing the same costume for both her first and second Halloweens, Lilia had TWO costume to choose from this year. After perusing one of her Baby Magazines (aka the One Step Ahead catalog), Lilia announced that she wanted to be Cookie Monster for Halloween. This was in August. I found a half-price one on Craigslist.
Here’s a video of her enjoying the costume back in August.

It’s a 2T, so I wasn’t sure if she’d still fit in it 2 and a half months later, but didn’t have a back-up plan. Until the other week– I saw a super-cute cat costume at Old Navy for $15, and asked Lilia if she’d like to be that for Halloween. She said NOOOOO, so I didn’t get it, but later, she started talking about the costume. So we went back to Old Navy, and they were only $11.75… that’s practically Thrift Store prices! So I got it, and she wore it immediately (and had a nice video chat with her Papa Gram while wearing it).

Of course, she wanted to wear the Cookie Monster costume to the library Halloween party. She really did grow– the feet were definitely much shorter and the elastic seemed tighter. I don’t understand why it has to be a one piece costume… Although I think she looks really cute in a big furry suit, so I guess that’s why. We convinced her to wear the Cat for Trick or Treating last night. She had a Blast with a capital B! Last year, we didn’t really get candy– just walked around a bit, went to the library (Halloween was on Wednesday, so the library was open), and did Trick or Treat for Unicef. This year, we ended up with a HUGE bag of treats. A lot of people gave Lilia lollipops, and called them “Taffys.” Is that a Philadelphia thing? I never heard that before!

How about some pictures!
Cookie Monster paying attention to Storytime at the Library Halloween Party

Lilia has had a runny nose, and her face is all chapped from it!! I am starting to think that her issue is teething, and not a cold, although it is cold season. She started drooling terribly yesterday– after this, she’s done till she’s 6 or 7, right?

This is why it was appropriate that she be Cookie Monster. She LOVES cookies!

The Cat Costume

I was going to put cat make-up (nose, whiskers) on, but with that chapped face, I didn’t want to cause any more trouble. Some people couldn’t tell what she was supposed to be, but they all agreed that she was super cute!

Note Squirrel-Like tail…

Cool pumpkins…

These doggies were dressed as Princess Leia and Darth Vadar!!

Lilia went right into this house, and the woman who lived there took her upstairs to see her cats! She shouted down to us, “Hand out the candy,” and these little kids were all saying, “Wow, You have a nice house!”

Lil and Dad

Lil and Mom

On opening day 2000, Joe picked up a Metro with a guide to the 2000 Philadelphia Phillies season and he decided to follow them. Since I knew the ins and outs of baseball from my years as a benchwarmer on the Temple Tomboys, I followed along and got hooked. It was a rough losing season, but Pat Burrell debuted in May 2000, and Jimmy Rollins debuted in September 2000, so we were just on the cusp of something, right? Seats at the Vet were easy to get, and we saw A LOT of games until it closed in 2003. I know it wasn’t a good baseball park, but I loved it there. I’ve been to a few games at Citizens Bank Park, but it’s not as easy with a little one. Since Lilia has been born, we went to one game– I won tickets for the Diamond Club section right behind home plate. The Phillies won that game in September 2007, and they soon became the National League East Champs.
Now here it is, October 2008, and the Phillies are one win away from winning the World Series!

Wow, I just realized that graduation is December 13th. Today is the 14th, so that’s less than 2 months away! I’ll save my writing for papers and homework, and just post some more recent pictures!

The new Please Touch Museum opens this weekend. We went to a members’ preview, and were blown away. Wow! I can’t wait to go more often! They even have a carousel! The PTM is in Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park near the Japanese Tea House & Horticultural Center, so afterwards we went for a little walk. Here are a few pictures:

Aunt Maria came up to watch Lilia while Joe and I saw Nick Cave in concert last week. Her payment: another trip to the zoo. (Aunt Maria really likes the zoo!)
We didn’t go in the reptile house, but here’s Lil with a snake statue… sssss…

After I survived class this weekend, we went apple picking. I heard that Hopewell Furnace had a historic orchard with apple picking, so we stopped by there first. However, it was so warm on Sunday that we were bombarded with gnats. We also couldn’t figure out their map of which tree was which, so we went to the same orchards we went to last year. The gnats weren’t as bad there, thankfully!

Well, it’s Fall already! I have not been great at keeping up on this blog lately…
However, remember this post in which I talked about seeing a squirrel cage at a historic house in Philadelphia? Did you know the Philadelphia Zoo has an actual squirrel cage with the most amazing squirrels? My sister, Lilia and I went to the zoo last week and we took a different path than normal, and found these amazing Russian Red Tree Squirrels! I took a little video with my camera, it’s a little shakey, but I think you can see how acrobatic these squirrels were:

Oh, and you might note that in the post I linked to, I complained about bad service we had a restaurant… The restaurant contacted me (see the comments) and wants to make amends by giving us a free meal, but I feel like that wouldn’t necessarily prove that they have good service… if they know who I am and why I am there when I come in. We considered going back incognito, but it was such a poor experience, I don’t feel like paying money to relive it. What would you do?

We didn’t have any Mother’s Day plans yesterday. When Joe asked me if I had heard of the The Ohio House, I said yes, but when he replied, “Did you know they serve food?”, I had to say no. The Centennial Cafe opened just a few months ago in The Ohio House, one of the only remaining structures built for the 1876 Centennial Exposition (Memorial Hall, where the Please Touch Museum is moving to in October is the other). We decided to check it out.

When we walked into “The Centennial Cafe at The Ohio House”, we weren’t sure if we had to order at the counter or not. I asked the woman at the register, and she acted surprised that we wanted to sit, but had a man lead us into a dining room. A large group was right on our heels, and the man started setting up tables for them, without letting us know where we could sit. We got his attention, and he said we could sit at the table we were eyeing. There were paper placemats on the table that had the remnants of the last customers’ meals. They never offered us a high chair (Lil is okay in a regular seat, but she likes high chairs– she’s also short). We piled the three dirty placemats over to one side, and when the man came over, he took 2 of them (left one with coffee rings on it) and never replaced them. We looked over the menu, which had things like 2 eggs and toast for $3.29, and a side of meat for $1.50– seemed reasonable. When the woman who was at the register came over, we asked about specials. There was a Mother’s Day special– 2 eggs, meat, toast, hash browns and a small coffee. We both ordered that with bacon, I got scrambled eggs to share with Lilia, Joe got over-easy.

The food showed up– brought by a third person. Joe had sausage and scrambled eggs. We had no silverware. Lilia had no plate (eventually she got a cool zebra plate). They gave Joe bacon, but didn’t change the eggs. He tried to eat them, but he doesn’t like them, so he had to send them back. He asked for silverware– we got plastic utensils. When they took his plate back, he lost his fork and had to get another one. I kept making Joe ask for things we didn’t have– napkins, ketchup, salt and pepper, jelly for the toast (when he asked for a jelly, the man handed him ONE packet).

Meanwhile, a woman who I thought was the owner came by a few times to say hello to Lilia. She also gave me a little votive candle, which I thought was a nice touch, but would have rather had her invest in some good service! I think her husband was there too. We were not the only ones having issues– the large group had some trouble too.

We finished up and never got a bill. We decided to just go up to the register, and when they rang up our food, the total was almost $30!! I was almost speechless! The register was computerized, so they needed to take off the extra bacon or something– but I still thought the meals would be about $7.00 each, right? It turns out the Mother’s Day special was the opposite of a special– it was $10.99! Fine, whatever, we paid, and then spent some time walking around the outside of the building– Joe took a bunch of pictures– it’s a pretty cool building. But man, what a lame breakfast experience. To sum up my review: The Centennial Cafe: Cute idea, I wish them luck, but the service stinks and the food wasn’t that great, and they jack up the prices for Mother’s Day. We said, MAYBE we’d go back and get something to go. MAYBE.

Afterwards, we drove past Memorial Hall to see the construction on the Please Touch Museum. We saw two signs for two historic houses– Sweetbriar and Cedar Grove. I’m not sure if Sweetbriar was open– we stopped and walked around to see the view (of the Schuylkill Expressway– we tried to imagine what it was like before…) and we admired a very very VERY large Mulberry Tree. We continued over to Cedar Grove, and two tour guides were outside and invited us in. We had a great tour of this house which was built as a summer house in Frankford– and moved stone by stone to the current location in Fairmount Park. The Morrises of the Morris Arboretum donated it to the city in the 1920s. My favorite items in the house were old-fashioned women’s pockets, and a squirrel cage like this:

After Cedar Grove, we went over the the Japanese House and Garden, which Joe and I have been to before. Lilia was getting tired by this point, but still enjoyed feeding the Koi in the pond. I think Joe has pictures of that, maybe he can share in a comment here? After we explored the house, we walked around outside– there is a beautiful picnic grove that we will need to revisit.

The day out ended with a trip to Trader Joe’s for supplies (Lilia slept in her stroller), and last night, Joe made my new favorite meal, Collard Greens and Garlic with Sausage. Yum. For a day without any plans, it ended up being pretty nice