S A Tee U ARE Dee A WHy

We usually are always on the go, but this weekend decided to stay a little more local. We got up and headed out to check out a little place I've had my eye on for breakfast, a little place called the Hungry A. I have no idea what it stands for, but man, it was awesome. Maybe thats it, the Hungry Awesomeness... From the outside its a little depressing but once you walk in, its on. Bruce and Micky are the co-owners and are the greatest. Totally treat ya like family, even held Jade so Monica could eat her b meal.


I had a great toasted bagel sandwich, Monica had the Big muff, and Hazel had a slice of heavenly homey French toast. The coffee was good, and even the frozen sticky bun they pulled out just for us, was beyond.... Im dreaming of this place even now!!!

After this, we wanted to see if we could go down to the city and maybe catch a free baseball game like in Cali,

but it was a no go cuz they are freaks about the Phillies here. TOtally sold out, but it was cool. We rode the sub down to south Philly and then came back up to Center city. We walked over to Reading Terminal, picked up some organics for Jade, got some cupcakes from our favorite place, the Flying Monkey. We took them over to this cute little tea shop called Tbar. Really cool, got a MoTeato, green lemongrass tea, mint and lime. SUper refreshing cuz it was humid up a bit. After this little spot, we headed over to Rittenhouse square. By this time it was really beautiful out and Hazel got to run around and try to play with the pigeons.



We also visited Hazel's favorite friend and animal. It's this fantastic lion scuplture from Paris in the middle of the park.
She stands by it and roars. It's awesome.

Then we decided to head home, but not before picking up Pig Daddy's bbq. It was a letdown cuz man, i love my potato salad and nobody does it right. Oh well, we enjoyed coming home and chillin out after our sub adventures.. It is so awesome to spend time with your family no matter what ya do or where you go. I am truly blessed. Thank you , God!

Friday spectacular...

Here we are again.... a late Saturday night, happy but weary and typing up a synopsis of the daily happenings here in P-town. Monica and I have this amazing knack - we take time and mold and bend it to the nth degree. Not only can we take a little bit of time and stretch it beyond humanly possible but also spend alot of it in one place. Case in point, Friday. I got off work about 3:30 or so got home around 4ish. We headed out to check out this sale they were having at Linens-N-Things kinda a going out of biz sale and got sidetracked. Rita's, one of our loves, was having Christmas in July celebration goin on. Of course, we stopped, Hazel said hi to the Rita cup, and we got a delicious banana Blendini. This concoction is basically like that banana pudding nilla wafer dessert that Grandma Ethel makes for the church potluck, only it is banana water ice blended with vanilla custard and nilla wafers. To quote Hazel, "I lyke eyes cweam!!" Yeah, me too, kid, me too!! Its okay to want it, but ya gotta come visit! hahaha, anyway, we finally get over to LNT and cruise around realizing the sale ain't all that, so Hazel and I go around goin nie nie on all the beds in the store until Janet(im' sorry if there is someone who reads this or knows someone named janet-i jus came up with the name for this mean lady at the store, i dont know her real name) said, "Hey she can't be on those beds!" Sorry, my 2 year old is totally wreckin your lame beds, oh wait, you are goin out of business anyway. Oh well, so then we head over to Marshalls to check it out. We are like bargain hunters. We are lookin at all kinds of cool stuff and then bam, it's like 9 o'clock. What the....? We lost like 3 hours in a stupid store. But we did have a lot of fun. SO Friday nights are like pizza night for us, and we are on a quest to find the best pizza around where we live because all they eat here in Philly is pizza, cheesesteaks/hoagies and Dunkin donuts. So there is this place by the house called Pica's. Its usually packed so we figured it must be worth a try. We cruised in and got seated by a sweet old lady. We decided on eggplant parmiagiana for appetizer and settled in on a small pie with sausage and mushrooms. Holla holla!! THe eggplant was really yummy! Then the pizza came and wow... it was really good. It was square and we got 8 pieces. Funny thing about it, it was upside down. I guess their specialty is to put cheese first on the dough and then the sauce and toppings. It was different but really yummy. So good in fact that both Monica and I ate way too much and barely made it to the car. So super stuffed, like Monty Python style! It was a great meal and then we came home and digested.... That was our timewarp day!!! Whew.....

Getting down...Jadey style

The other night we put her in the bouncer while we were baking cookies and she was just having the time of her life!!! She was cracking herself up....bouncing up and down....I just couldn't resist getting it on video.

Summer in Abbadon

As is alot of our life, we are about food... in all aspects. Pennsylvania, as I am finding out, is an interesting place for that. They have a great network of local food. So on Sunday, Headhouse Market is held down on 2nd and Lombard street. Supposedly it is one of the oldest markets in the country. This was probably the best farmers market we have been to. It isnt extremely large like the one in the Italian market district, yet it feels more earnest. From the large heirloom tomatoes basking in the summer sun to the scruffy young farmer with the wide brimmed sun hat begging you to buy his wares, it was a really great experience. We picked up some carrots for little Jaders, got some tomatoes, delicious, also grabbed a variety of summer squash, and even a nifty lemon cucumber.

Afterwards, there was a nearby fountain that Hazel simply had to run around in and get refreshed.
Then we walked down South street, which is a pretty neat walk. It reminded me a little of Los Angeles, like Hollywood or maybe even Venice.
There were all kinds of cool little shops and restaurants, real funky. Of course, we had to hit up Rita's, seriously the best place on earth. Oh yeah forgot to mention, super hot and humid, so we were only walkin around for like a half hour, and then.... Later!! It was a good, but sweaty day!

Sabado Gigante

So we awoke Saturday morning with two objectives: 1) Find something delicious to eat for breakfast (Mostly my objective-Joe doesn't love breakfast as I do), and 2) Get a history lesson in by visiting Valley Forge

Well Joe of course hit up yelp.com and found a couple of local diners that sounded scrumptious so we set out for our adventure. However en route to our diner we noticed a Mexican restaurant and decided to stop by to see if they sold breakfast burritos. Ok, just a quick side note: Mexican food is either very American white-washed (i.e Taco bell) or non existent here in Philadelphia. Being from Southern California we are of course very accustomed to great Mexican food!! I guess the food at Mission Burrito is "Mission Style" or "San Francisco" (????) style Mexican Food, so said the proprietor. I give it a solid 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. It was good!! Now it definitely was nothing compared to other places in Cali...but it will do. I had a breakfast burrito that was quite tasty and Joe had a Mexican omelet with chorizo and this delicious potato patty that I kept stealing bites of. It was nice inside and the food was decent so I'm sure we will be back.

So with our Mexican food cravings slightly appeased...we headed to Valley Forge. Just in case you are not quite sure what significance it holds, here is a brief definition:

Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, was the site of the camp of the American Continental Army over the winter of 1777–1778 in the American Revolutionary War. This was a time of great suffering for George Washington's Army, but it was also a time of retraining and rejuvenation.

http://www.ushistory.org/ValleyForge/history/vstory.html

Valley Forge was very educational, so beautiful, so rich in history, and overall an awesome experience. We stopped by the visitor center to pick up a map and plan our route. It was extremely hot so we opted to tour the area via car and stop at all the places of interest. There is this awesome running/walking/biking path around the area...but you'd have to be insane to do that on a day like this...although there were a few people running & riding bikes.

We enjoyed ourselves in the visitor's center and read about Valley Forge, it was nice to actually read about what we were going to visit, it has been a long time since history classes in school.

We drove around Valley Forge and stopped by a cool chapel...

The girls and I in front of the chapel.

Hazel, Jeffrey, and Jade in the Chapel.

Hazel praying in the chapel.

Hazel hugging Jeffrey.

We had an awesome time touring Valley Forge. It is really cool to learn about the early history of our country! Yet another adventure for the Montgomerys....we had an awesome day!!!!!!!!