Last weekend Victor and I celebrated our 9 year wedding anniversary.  On one hand I cannot believe we’ve been married for NINE  years – time just flew by!  On the other it seems that my life before being married to Victor was such a long time ago:)   Nine years, two kids, one career change, 3 apartments/houses, 1 totaled car (by me!), 20 pounds of ‘baby weight’, a few wrinkles and grey hairs and more ‘i-am-so-happy-i-could-cry’ moments than I can count, later I cannot believe how fortunate I am to have Victor as my partner, co-parent and a ‘forever friend!

Every year we use our anniversary as an excuse for a little get-away.  Before the girls were born our trips were to to Puerto Rico, California, etc.  Now these trips are a lot closer to home although as much fun (if not more!) than before.  It is always so nice to be able to get away as a couple, to reconnect, forget about responsibilities, chores, countless To Dos and spend time as a husband and wife as opposed to ‘parents’… although we do end up talking about the girls quite a lot.

This year we went to Philly – it is so nice and close to us and makes for a perfect quick get-away!

We had Philly Cheese Steak (whiz, with) at the ‘world’s Famous Genos’ – I have to admit it was pretty darn good!:

saw and photographed lots of cool wall murals – I’ve never seen so many beautiful murals as I have seen in Philly:

Took a stroll on the ‘Museum Mile’ and ‘discovered‘ Rodin’s Museum.  Even though it was closed for renovation I was thrilled to ‘find’ this place because Rodin is my favorite sculptor,  Rodin’s museum in Paris is my favorite museum in the world and it is great to have a place like that much closer to home than Paris!  We did sit down for a bit in front of it and enjoyed a cup of tea/coffee:)

Checked out Philadelphia’s Art Museum and the sculpture of Rocky – I am yet to see the movies though!).

and even experienced the ‘thrill’ of being woken up in the middle of the night by a fire alarm and a mandatory evacuation from our hotel room!

But all is well that ends well and just like our first 9 years of marriage this mini-vacation was great:)