We tracked down this place that supposedly has the most famous Philly cheesesteak! The big one is 18" long!!









Independence Hall











Liberty Bell

My husband has a few days off before flying out to Guyana for two weeks, I seized the oppurnity to arrange for this family day trip to Philadelphia. I love living in this part of the country, it's never too far from history and interesting culture.

Here is a sequel to Sage's advanture at the grocery store.

Obviously, the first mistake I made was that I took her to the store with me. I don’t care what the Child Protection Services Agency would say or if I have to stay a night in the county jail, Sage is far safer staying at home by herself than taking out to go shopping with. But of course, if she had a more sensible mother or a more responsible one, I wouldn’t be here writing the story.

Sage always gets to pick the cart she wants to sit in, this store offers the regular grocery cart or the kind that looks like a car and they get to steer inside. And after she picks out the cart, she is never buckled in, because nothing ties her down and also because her mother is a wimp and lets her get away with it. So imagine pushing the cart down the aisles of the store and your two year old child constantly gets in and out just for fun. She has not yet tried to put things into the cart, but she had on occasions, tried pulling all the bananas off the displaying table.

So I made it to the meat section, looking over to see what I should get. But my peripheral vision told me that Sage just picked something up from the floor and I can tell it is something white. Before I had time to react, I saw her pop it into her mouth. Ok, whatever. Since she survived her yogurt licking last time, I can safely assume there are no extremely deadly germs on this particular grocery store floor. And in my mind, I figure it was a small piece of a yogurt coated pretzel some kid dropped on the floor –And Sage loves yogurt!

We continue to shop and Sage continues to move her mouth, I thought: “That’s one enduring piece of pretzel she is chewing.” But thinking how she always takes such an ant bite to anything, I didn’t think much of it.

By the time we made it to the check out, she was then hanging herself on the roof of the cart. While I was paying for the grocery, she almost ran out of the door.

Finally, here we are in front of our car, me unloading the stuff, bag after bag I see her mouth going up and down chewing still, I thought: “ That’s not a piece of pretzel, is it?”

I went to her, demand to see her prize procession, and she wouldn’t have it. I pried her mouth open with my fingers while she wailed and her tears fell like a waterfall and took out whatever it is that was hiding inside her mouth. And out comes a piece of well chewed gum.

Sage cries: “My candy! My candy!” (All in Chinese, which is sort of entertaining)

Ok, by now I can imagine some of you are trying to make me feel better by saying: “well, it’s at least something edible, not a rusty bottle cap" And yes, I see your point. But just the thought of your daughter picking up some old chewed up gum that someone else chewed on for 30 minutes and only after they have sufficiently removed all the gunk from their mouth with it did they spit it onto the floor is a nasty thought. Can you imagine how many people have stepped on it or how many cart wheels ran over it BEFORE Sage spotted that gum and have now thoroughly clean it up?

Sorry, my dear, I think that’s enough candy for your body to sort through your whole life time, and next time, YOU STAY HOME! (I roared)

Note: I am a terrible mother, after 4 kids, you think I should have it all down. My other three at least listens to reasons or threats, but Sage? –she rules, and yes, I let her.

Maybe it’s the name, you know. I did named her after the wild bush.

I thought I will post this old email since I am sort of on a "Sage rush." This incident happened about 9 months ago, while my husband was out of town for 2 months, I had a whole house to pack and a car to be shipped across the country...yep, need I say more?

Enjoy!!

I had the most “interesting” day today with the kids, and I thought it would be selfish of me to not share it with you on the joy of motherhood.

First I took the kids to the store for groceries; Sage grabbed a small individual sized yogurt and was determined to open it. The container fell to the floor and cracked. One of the kids picked up and handed to me to look at, while we were busy looking at the crack, Sage licked off the spilled yogurt on the grocery store floor! Yum, Boysenberry!

We came home with bags of food, the girls was nice enough to help me put the food in the fridge. Aspen had the milk, I went upstairs to do something, then I heard Jade running up the stairs and telling me that I must do down at once and look at the milk. Ok, so I obediently went and “looked at” the milk, ahh, no big deal, just the circle piece on the milk carton broke while being transported from the dinning table to the fridge, leaving a great pool of milk all over the kitchen floor, under the fridge and wherever else running liquid wants to go.

After we got all the towels out and cleaned the milk, I again went upstairs to do whatever it was I was trying to do. Again, I heard of an accident, what now, I wondered? Upon entering the kitchen, I spotted a family sized yogurt lying perfectly still on the kitchen floor with yogurt all over the floor again. Oh, well, I wonder if I should bother cleaning it up, where is that floor licking Sage, maybe she can lick it up?

After all the turmoil, I felt pretty wear out, so I decided to take a nap. No sooner had I drifted off to sleep, Aspen bounced in to say: “Sorry to disturb you, but sister and I were wondering……”

All I’ve heard after that was blah, blah, blah. And like the typical Aspen’s thing to do, she bounced right out the room. So, that ended my peaceful nap.

Things were pretty uneventful the rest of the day until later on tonight, when Kirin, always building some new contraption, decided to use the tall standing fan to build something. Crack, went the body of the fan and the stand it stood on. I lay the fan on the carpet to see if there is some surgical procedure I may perform to save its life. And I realized there were lots of dust coming out from the fan. I went down to get the vacuum to clean it off and as I was moving the fan around, more dust came out. So I vacuumed some more. All of a sudden, the fan just magically turned on, blowing out a huge cloud of dust right on my face. I only caught a glimpse of my son’s horrifying face as the dust clouds had us completely surrounded. I was angry, I yelled at him thinking he had turned the fan on. He innocently points to Sage and said; “It was her.”

Well, dun, of course! The child who has the habit of licking the yogurt off the floor must be the one who turn on the fan while her mothers’ face was right on it. No jury, I am sure she is the guilty one!

Well, that was what happened to me, just a typical day as usual.

PS: For those of you who were interested, I skipped dinner. My mouth and nose is still filled with dust. What? How did it taste? Oh, delicious! Powdery protein with fine, smooth consistency. It’s a delicacy.

It's too soon to tell if I will become a serious blogger at this point, but in the past I thought I would never create a blog of my own, ever! And now, here I am, posting my first blog!