Vacation Day 1 Part 2 Philadelphia, PA

We arrived in Philadephia, PA on Saturday evening.  We had a hotel right downtown so we checked in and then headed out to see the sights.  

We headed towards the Liberty Bell and Washington Square Park. 

Mike was making fun of me because I was taking all the pictures above, and I didn't know what they were and what significance they were, but I figure it was better to have the pictures, I can always delete them later. 

On our way back we headed to JFK Plaza to see the LOVE Sculpture. It wasn't what I thought it would be at all. I pictured some huge thing, like 20 feet tall, it was barely 8 feet tall and up on a shelf so you could stand under it.  They had some other neat pieces there that Marley liked. 

We then headed back towards our hotel and ate at Hard Rock Cafe for dinner. Then it was time for bed because we were heading to Sesame Place in the morning!! 

Vacation Day 1 -- Hershey, Pennsylvania

It's time to share our vacation that we just took to the east coast.  

We left on Friday night around 8pm and drove until about 4am. By this point we were in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We slept for about 4 hours and then hit the road again to Hershey, Pennsylvania.  We arrived around lunch time and stopped at Fuddruckers.  Then we headed to Chocolate World. 

They have several tours and activities that you can do, but we just did the free factory tour and some shopping. 

 There is so much chocolate you can buy in different flavors and sizes. 

Marley picked out a giant Hershey kiss and ate it in two bites. 

It was so crowded.  We were there maybe an hour before hitting the road to our hotel in  downtown Philadelphia.

Homemade weed killer

Our house sat empty for 2 years before we moved in so it needs some serious landscaping help. Think 6 acres of oak trees with 2 years worth of dead leaves, that equals about 6 inches of leaves in the landscaping. We've started clearing out the front and it's very time consuming so we just do a little at a time.  There's a small rock bed in the back by the back porch that I decided to tackle the other day. I cleaned out all the leaves and then started pulling weeds. It was taking forever so I hopped on pinterest and found my pin for a homemade weed killer.  I had everything already except for the spray bottle that I picked up at Menards for less than $5. 

All you need is 

1/2 gallon vinegar

1/4 cup salt

1/2 teaspoon blue dawn dish soap

Just mix it up in your spray bottle and spray it on the weeds. 

It smells very strongly so I wouldn't go overboard with it. I just did a light spray down and then came back a few hours later and did more.  

This top picture is before I sprayed it and the bottom one is about 5 hours later. It did work, but I still needed to go through and pull the weeds out. This will kill all the plants you spray it on, so I would be careful around your good plants. 

Kids Road Trip Activity Packet

So, we just got back from vacation last week and I wanted to share the activity packet I put together for Marley to do. We were in the car for a total of 30 hours over the last week, but she actually used this more while we were out of the car. She mostly slept in the car, which was nice too.

First I searched pinterest and other websites for activity pages. I printed them on a fourth of the page and upside down so when I folded them it made a little book.  Then I stapled in the middle to keep them from falling all over the place. 

I also printed out some blank bingo sheets and filled those in with things I knew she would see while we were driving. I made two copies, but put the items in different spots so I could play along too. 

I printed out some coloring pages too. She had these colored in no time. 

I punched holes in all the big pages and stuck them in a trapper keeper that my mom gave me. I also put some crayons and colorwonder pages and markers in there too along with some plain computer paper so she could make her own art work.