Scenes from a phenomenal weekend

This last weekend was one of my favorites ever. Let me just take you through it.

Friday evening, I headed to the art museum for Art After 5 with several of my friends. We sometimes go look at art. The real reason we go there on Friday evenings is for the amazing view and to socialize. Unfortunately, I have this bad habit of leaving my camera home on Friday nights. Hopefully one of these days I'll remember so I can show you this fabulous view down the parkway.

On Saturday, Parker and Ashley came to our house so we could all go to the Manayunk Arts Festival together. We don't live terribly far from there and since it's always so crowded and parking is difficult, we just walked from our place.

Early on it wasn't so crowded:

Ashley and Parker:

Because I am so ridiculously obsessed with Italy, I couldn't walk away from one artist's photographs. His shots were gorgeous. I couldn't say no to these three:
Two of Rome and one from Naples. Soon I hope to figure out where to hang these. I have two ideas. We'll see where they end up.

I also bought a few gifts for some upcoming birthdays. Since I'm not exactly sure if the recipients read this blog, I'll only show hints. First, for my dear friend Katy's birthday, I got her a little something from this shop:

And for a true birth-day, I bought this adorable onesie. This is for a baby boy who is surely going to be one of my favorite baby boys ever. One of my bests from high school is about to have her first baby in the next week or so. I'll be sending this to him once he is actually born, but here's a peek:

After the festival, we headed to a local bar to watch the end of the US vs. Ghana game and then came back home. Parker and Ashley stayed for awhile, playing Wii and having dinner with us. It was a fantastic day.

On Sunday, I convinced my dear husband to drive into Center City so we could go to Taste of Philadelphia, one of the kick-off events for Philadelphia's annual two-week Independence Day celebrations. There were over twenty local restaurants offering small portions of some of their menu items. We drove down to Penn's Landing for this festival seemingly custom-made for the two of us.




We tried kobe beef burgers, ribs, ricotta-filled eggplant, pork wing, crab fries, and tacos from two authentic Mexican places. It was so ridiculously hot that we only stayed as long as it took us to spend the tickets we'd purchased. The food was incredible, the live band was not so great, but we still had a good time.

Nick was pretty tuckered out by all of our activities, so he relaxed at home the rest of the day. I ended my week by going to a concert by The Crossing, an incredible ensemble. They're a group of about twenty voices who do new music, and do it incredibly well. I know three of the women in the group, who are the professional singers in our church choir. The concert was the perfect ending to a phenomenal weekend.

It's hard to deny after a weekend this fun how good my life is. How many more summer weekends do I have? I'm sure they won't all be this exciting and fun, but I have high hopes for them anyhow.