One of the things we love about living here in NoVa is that we're so close to my family in beautiful Lancaster, Pa. While this could/should happen fairly frequently, life gets busy and weekends go by and before we know it, its April and we haven't seen family since Christmas. oops. We remedied that a few weekends ago. There is a lot of history in Lancaster that I take for granted (or got tired of because of school field trips) and Geoff has never seen, so we took this opportunity to hit up some local historical "hot spots"...if you can call them that. A little history lesson via photos:
Geoff showing off our chocolate purchase: Wilbur Buds from Wilbur Chocolate Factory in Lititz, PA which originally began in Philadelphia in 1865. While both Wilbur and Hershey are a stones-throw from where I grew up, and I have a affinity for both, if given a choice between a kiss or a bud, I'd chose the bud. Semisweet, not milk chocolate. 
Sturgis Pretzels, the oldest hard pretzel maker in the U.S., celebrating 150 yrs in business. Below you can see my dad admiring his pretzel twisting skills -- he did a pretty amazing job. We all left with certificates in pretzel twisting, so if this counseling thing doesn't work out... :)
By the way, hard pretzels are pretty simply soft pretzels baked twice. They, like so many products, started by accident when a batch of soft pretzels were left in the oven overnight and fired a second time the next morning. Nice mistake!
We all left the tour with sample bags of pretzels -- yum-- which were quickly devoured. It was just about lunch time.
Speaking of lunch, per my request we went to one of my favorite sandwich places for lunch, Isaacs. Every sandwich is named after a bird so its not only delicious, but educational! I always get the same sandwich. Always. But its just so good, so why mess with perfection?! (ham and pineapple on a kaiser roll. simple yet delicious)
After our late lunch with my parents and sister, we went back to the house for a relaxing afternoon. Which, unsurprisingly, turned into us girls heading out for a little shopping at Target. One thing I miss especially about living far from my sister is not being able to go shopping with her on a regular basis. We try to remedy that any chance we get. The rest of the day was spent in a heated game of Clue and having cake to celebrate Geoff's birthday later in the month.
The next day we went to church, visited my grandparents for a few hours, and spent some time hiking before Geoff and I headed south again. Here's the girls at Chickies Rock.
So thankful for family, and the joys of home.
