Days off together

This family very much looks forward to our days off together. The days are few and far between, but we always make the most of them. My girls' daily question to the both of us is always, "are you off today? When are you off again?" They jump for joy and count down the days when they know the two of us are off together. I am dreading the start of school when Maddie will then be added into the mix of trying to coordinate the days when the 5 of us are together (I am dreading school in general, and refuse to even think about it for now).

Anyway, Dan had his 4-day break this weekend. We decided to do a day in Lancaster on Friday which turned out to be a lot of fun. And, what's best is everything we did was free. Girlies have been asking to go back to Oregon Dairy because they loved it so much. So, we went there first. Faith got to see the cows in the pasture and was in heaven. This girl still just adores cows!

From there we went to Kitchen Kettle Village, a favorite spot of theirs. It's funny how we all always flock straight to the jam shop. The jam shop is just plain awesome. We sampled everything from 4 berry jam to homemade chicken noodle soup to mango salsa. You leave that place feeling like you've eaten lunch, and all for free. We ran into Yummie the Kitchen Kettle mascot and stopped at a couple other shops before going to the playground there to play:

We then stopped over at That Fish Place, the best pet store ever. Faith's been wanting to go to ANY aquarium, but it's just too expensive. Well, she just loved That Fish Place. They got to touch the stingrays in the big touch tank, and they were all fascinated with their enormous selection of freshwater and saltwater fish. The store is essentially a huge warehouse, but their selection is more than impressive.

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We had Donovan's 6th birthday party this weekend as well, and these girls were totally pumped for his space party! They had a lot of fun and don't ever want to come home from their cousins' house.

And, today we spent a lazy morning just taking a walk in the humidity and then Dan suggested we try walking up and down West Reading by the boutiques, and it turned out be a lot of fun. We found some cute little places including a bookstore and a crepes restaurant. Girlies have been reading this cute book about France and crepes, and so it was very fitting that we found a restaurant where I could walk them in and show them how crepes are made.

It was so hot from the humidity by the time we got over to the Stone House that we let them take their shirts off to cool down after getting in the water:

(*The picture of Faith and Abrie makes me laugh. Faith has been taking this purse with her lately whenever we go anywhere. She calls it her "satchel" because she wants to be like Flynn Rider. She reminds me though of Alan from 'The Hangover' with his satchel!).