A Jolly Holiday in Philly

Hi Blog! After helping Katie clean out her apartment in New Haven, we returned to Toronto to spend some time with Matt, Weina and William. On Saturday, December 19, 2015, we all, iincluding Bubu Puppy, packed our bags and drove down to Philadelphia to spend the week leading up to Christmas. Katie and Maggie Puppy were to drive down from New Haven and meet us there. Here is Sir William safely tucked into his car seat.

While we no longer have a house in Philadelphia, it was easy enough to rent one. We settled on the Rittenhouse Square section of the city, as it was close to where Matt and Weina used to live and within easy walking distance to lots of shopping and restaurants. The four story, three bedroom townhouse gave us lots of room to spread out. William decided if one bean bag chair was good, one on top of another was even better!

The Sunday before Christmas is the annual Paxon Hollow Pollyanna Party. Dave, Kathy, Katie, Matt, Weina, William, Bubu Puppy and Maggie Puppy all descended on the Millers. Sir William and his Great Uncle Tom share a love for festive hats.

 William and Ryan (FCOR - First Cousins Once Removed) take a time out to open their presents!

The rest of the week was filled with shopping, cooking and hanging the stockings by the chimney with care in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. Yes, there are more stockings than people, but William insisted that they all needed to be hung.

The rainy weather in Philadelphia kept us inside for several days. We were running out of things to do. Great Aunt Leslie's Christmas coasters made great platforms for Thomas and his train friends.

In between showers, we managed to get a walk in. There is a really great park next to the Schuykill River where Maggie Puppy, Bubu Puppy and William got some "off leash" time. On the way back from the park, we stopped by Matt and Weina's old apartment on Spruce Street.

At four years old, William has been learning to write his numbers. He's pretty good at counting. He knows which are higher and lower, more or less. We figured it might be fun to introduce him to the card game WAR. He picked it up pretty quickly. He knows its good to be King, but nothing beats an Ace.

We don't have any photos from Christmas morning. A certain young man woke us up at an ungodly early hour. None of us wanted to have our photos taken!

Christmas weekend passed all too quickly. We were soon packing up the decorations and getting ready for our cross-country road trip with Katie and Maggie. Good Night Philadelphia.