A weekend with the girls!

In spite of the fact that the heat and humidity here has been "oppressive", as the local news station states it, I have still managed to walk around Philadelphia and get to know the area outside of University City fairly well. My boyfriend finally arrived from his week with family in Pittsburgh and Erie, Pennsylvania so it's been lots of fun to have someone else to explore the historical sites in the city with.
However, after the girls' long, long day in NYC on Saturday, we were set to spend the day doing the historic tours in Old City. Originally, the girls really had their hearts set on returning to NYC for a day of "shopping", more like window shopping considering NYC prices, but taking SEPTA and transferring in Trenton, NY to the R7 which goes to Penn Station, or just taking Amtrak were both too expensive and time consuming.
So, because I didn't want to kill the girls' spirit to shop, Sky and I decided to rent a car to take the girls to King of Prussia, the second largest mall in America, next to the Mall of America in Minneapolis, which I've been to!! The girls were beyond elated. I just couldn't believe how much our girls love to shop, or just hang out in a huge mall. We picked up the rental car in City Center, ate lunch at Johnny Rockets in South Philly, then got on the 76 West towards King of Prussia. The sitting in traffic and ride were well worth it for all of us. As soon as the girls saw the mall, they complained about the fact that we only had five hours to shop! I did remind them that they would have next Sunday as well to finish their "shopping".
At 7pm, all of the malls closed and we were off to our weekly "fancy" dinner. Since we didn't go out to a big, fancy dinner our first night in Philadelphia and thus, didn't spend all of the money for that big dinner, the girls and I decided that it would be nice to have one "nice" dinner every week where we could catch up and have fun. The food was great and we had a nice and relaxing dinner. I didn't the girls home until 10:30pm! We did have a great time just hanging out, getting to know each other better, talking about what Susan is planning on doing next year since it's her senior year, and what Courtney and Cynthia were going to be taking as far as classes were concerned.
I'm going to meet with Johnny Irizarry and he's going to give me a tour of local Latino CBO's in the area that work with low-income students who want to go to college. We're also going to a fundraiser at the White Dog Cafe on Friday night. The proceeds from the fundraiser go to UPenn's cultural programs on campus, including Casa Latina, where Johnny works.
I'm off to north Philly!
Patty