PHILADELPHIA | grateful

oh Philadelphia, you done me in real good.

take-a-day-off-Monday

and Tuesday

go to the doctors

get diagnosed with the flu

have the sweats and the chills in the same hour type-of-good.

and even though it reeeeeally isn't Philly's fault (but rather an ongoing flu that is circulating our midst), I trucked through and had a great reunion weekend with college girlfriends.

let me first introduce you to the two lovelies that played hostess with the mostest this weekend:

they took such great care of us and let us see all that Philly had to offer.

On Friday night we spent time ice skating at Caitlin's fathers rink (he used to be a Philadelphia Flyer!), and I quickly realized I'm awesome not as good as I once was...  which seems to be an ongoing trend when trying things now in my mid 20's that I was once good at as a teenager and/or in my early 20's.

I also realized that my cankles aren't made for tight, uncomfortable skates, but that's something I already knew.  

It was a ton of fun though :)

On Saturday we did some touristy type things and walked all around to see the Rocky statue, steps, and LOVE statue...  I have to say, the steps made me want to be a better/more athletic person b/c to imagine running them multiple times daily made my head spin!

The LOVE statue was a little smaller than I had anticipated (don't you hate when things like that happen... ?!), but the "Christmastown" that surrounded it certainly did not disappoint.  We had some delicious pretzels and cinnamon hot chocolate (a new favorite) and enjoyed all that Love park had to offer - 

including the adorable wish wall:

very fitting for our reunion, no?  someone else's wish suited our trip so perfectly, which is really cool when you think about it... :)  we're all connected in this crazy little thing called life.

After all the walking around, we did some shopping in anticipation for our big night out to a gorgeous restaurant called Water Works and had some delicious food for dinner!!  Eggplant rollatini, salmon, and chicken were among the entrees we ordered (please just go read their menu and tell me everything doesn't sound absolutely divine?!), and we all left full and happy.

photo credit here

We then did a little bar hop all dolled up from dinner:

 and enjoyed dancing, talking, meeting a Philadelphia Eagles player (he was hitting on one of my girlfriends and she totally turned him down only to later realize he's semi famous.  that's my girl, she was too pretty & classy for him anyway ;)

but what really did it for us was when this happened:

yes, someone whipped together a makeshift limbo stick and got limbo going in the middle of a bar.  say whaaaaa!?

So all and all it was a wonderful time with wonderful people.

Now I'm just counting down the days until Christmas (we're under a week now!!), and am looking forward to 

-seeing Nick's family
-seeing my family
-spending NYE here with our friends/my sisters

woot woot!!

sharing my random un-weekend update (3 days later, whoops!) with Shanna pants!

see you there.