Birthday Trip

This year in school Ethan got to study Pennsylvania.  He loved coming home each day and sharing with us all the interesting facts about Philadelphia and he especially loved learning about Milton Hershey and all of his chocolate!

Charlie just so happens to work for an awesome company that provides a free airline shuttle to employees and family members that goes to Philadelphia.  So one thing led to another and before Ethan and I knew it we were both headed to Philadelphia for an adventure just with the two of us!

 Our arrival day was a bit more stress than we had planned for with delayed flights, sheets of rain, cars with no GPS and missed tours but I put on my brave momma face and made the best of it and got us to our hotel safe and sound.

The rest of the trip was a breeze and we had beautiful weather and had so much fun together.

We started out bright and early the next day at Hershey's Chocolate World.  This place was great!  Ethan and I loved every second of it.  We took a chocolate tasting class where we were taught to notice the different flavor notes in the chocolate.  It was deliciously fun!

 After that we took a tour on the Hershey Trolley all around Hershey Pennsylvania.  This tour was so well done and Ethan and I both agree that it was our favorite part and they gave you chocolate to eat all along the way!

 We then headed back to make our very own chocolate bars.  You pick what kind of chocolate you want to use and what special things you want added to it and then you watch it go from start to finish all the way down the conveyor belt!  You finish it off my designing your own packaging.  Ethan and I both had so much fun doing this together.

I fell in love with the town of Hershey.  Maybe it was because the day before had been stressful or maybe it was because the weather was absolutely perfect but this town was peaceful and gorgeous and I would have loved to have brought a good book and just sat down in a patch of grass and relaxed the day away.

 After Hershey World was done we headed back to Philly to walk around downtown and see some of the historical sites.  Most of the places were closed by the time we got there but luckily the tour that we had scheduled the day before that we missed because of the delayed flight let us reschedule.

 So we headed out on our Ride The Ducks tour.  It is a fun little tour that takes you on a driving tour of all the historical sites and then you drive right down into the water with a big old splash and get to see the city from the Delaware river.  They give you these little duck quackers at the end and it was really fun.  The quackers are now hidden away since Logan and Sam got a hold of them and drove me nuts in about 4 seconds flat!

That night we headed to the hotel for a swim and watched a show together until we both fell asleep.  It was a quick but fun trip and it was nice for Ethan and I to spend our birthdays together in such a special way.  I hope this is a trip he remembers for a long time!