Our flight home was scheduled to leave Philadelphia at 6:15. That gave us just enough time to sneak in one last outing... Sesame Place!!! This one of course was just for Brynna. She was such a good kid trekking all over NYC and touring West Point. Neither of those things really spells excitement for a 2 year old. So our last vacation destination was just for her, and it turned out to truly be the GRAND FINALE for all of us.
Let me preface this by saying that Brynna doesn't actually watch a lot of Sesame Street, maybe a grand total of an hour her whole life. However, every two year old seems to instinctively know who Elmo is, and of course Elmo is the star of Sesame Place.
Sesame Place is located north of downtown Philly. We arrived there right around 11:30 from Donald and Desiree's. We calculated that gave us a little more than 4 hours to see Elmo and make our flight.
Sesame Place is basically a theme park for little kids, and it is very well done. They have rides perfect for little ones, but not too boring for Mom and Dad too. About half the park is water stuff, which we completely skipped. They park is laid out nicely, and not overwhelming at all. It's really just perfect for a family with a toddler. We'd recommend it to our whole New Parent's Sunday School class, if anybody is going to be up in the northeast.
We rode rides, had lunch, took in a show, and even got a family portrait with Elmo. Brynna loved it all, and we had an awesome time watching her take it in. But the absolute best part of the whole trip was the final parade down Main Street. Brynna hasn't really been to a parade that she would remember, but we'll all remember this one. She had such a great time watching everything and dancing with all the characters as they came up and down the street. You just have to check out the last two videos.
We'd only meant to stay for a few minutes of the parade, but then couldn't bare to tear Brynna away early. That meant we had to rush to the airport and hope we didn't hit any traffic delays. Thankfully we didn't, and we made it to our gate with about 5 minutes to spare. Whew!
We figured Brynna would pass out as soon as she hit her seat. She didn't. Apparently the day's excitement had wound her up pretty tight. She wasn't really fussy, but she required a great deal of entertaining and attention. So much for my visions of leisurely reading a magazine on the flight home.
Our first ride in the park.
Daddy and Brynna take off.
A close encounter!
I love the look on her face. You can tell she's having a great time, but she's very serious about the whole thing too. (Speaking of dancing, you have to check out this blog post from my friend Gwyneth. It's the funniest post I've seen in a while. Her daughter is one day older than Brynna.)
So that's it. Our Tripp family vacation '08 was a complete success. We had a fun time being tourists and visiting family. Our next big trip will be as a family of four. Wow.
Be sure to check out the rest of the Sesame Place pictures and videos in our picture gallery linked at right.
2 comments:
so fun! we've just started our first vacation as a family of four and it is definitely more challenging! thankfully they both traveled well today. i'd love to see sesame place sometime!
How fun! Munchkin LOVES the videos. She asked to watch them over and over, and she was dancing along to the last two.
Brenna's such a cutie! Glad y'all had such a great trip. Thanks for sharing. :o)
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