Mark's 22nd Birthday, Philly Style!

For the first time in a couple of years, Mark was home to celebrate his birthday with us!  Yay for boys who serve missions, and yay for moms who survive it all!  We decided to make a day of it and go to Philadelphia.

Mark's first request was to head to Campo's for cheesesteaks.  While the service is never friendly, the cheesesteaks make up for it.  They were crazy delicious.

When I took this picture, I was looking for our classic "Rolling Stones" photo.  However, I managed to catch a rather unsightly restaurant sign in the picture!

 There just so happens to be a frozen yogurt place across the street that is always the perfect follow-up to our cheesesteaks.  I ask you, who needs birthday cake when there is customizable Fro-Yo??  We, of course, sang "Happy Birthday" in beautiful four-part harmony...and turned a few heads of people who, quite appropriately, thought we were amazing.

Glo was pretty much in Glo Heaven, spending the day in one of her favorite cities with her absolute favorite person.  She never fails to hold Mark's hand whenever she can.

Next, it was off to the Franklin Institute, another favorite in the Kennedy arsenal of travel experiences.  We wanted to do two things:  see a movie, and see the Lego exhibit.  Since those were timed, we just headed off to do whatever we could find in the meantime.  I mean, really.  Who doesn't want to try and build a carbon atom, complete with explanation from John?

There was also a very cool exhibit, sponsored by a drug company.  As we well know, those drug companies don't skimp on anything, and it was educational but also lots of fun.  We also solved a mystery at the train station, and solved some of the crazy puzzles that we can never solve.

While we didn't get into the Imax theatre, we did have an entire 3D movie and theatre to ourselves.  The topic of the movie?  Coral reefs.  Yep, we shared a couple of laughs, seeing on the screen what we have seen numerous times for real under the water..

Finally, we were off to the Lego exhibit.  I thought we would see a couple of cool things and be done with it, but as it turns out, it's an actual art exhibit...and it is AMAZING!  We were in the exhibit for well over an hour, and every corner held something unbelievable.

This Lego man was just sitting outside by the line to get in.  No big deal, right?

There was so much to see, but my favorite was a special exhibit of photographs that were taken using Legos.  Check out this first picture, and see if you can figure out what are Legos...

As it turns out, it's the dress!  Isn't that amazing? There were several photographs where I couldn't find the Legos.

Being in Philly, this seemed especially appropriate.  And the line was much shorter to see it here!

The final exhibit was people made out of Legos.  I seriously wanted to just pick one up and bring it home with me to hug one of our trees.  Unfortunately, it just wouldn't fit in my purse!

And what would a trip to Philly be without a violin lesson for Glo?  Yep, we fit that in too, as well as a walk to the Philadelphia temple construction site. Man, it was a great day in Philly.  I can hardly believe my boy is 22!