aunt alyssa's.

mercer and his entourage traveled to sunbury, pa this past weekend to visit with aunt alyssa. aside from the monster traffic we encountered on route 80 during the ride out there, the trip was a blast.

sunbury is a fine town, blessed with a fantastic (if underused) downtown area and wonderful architecture. sunbury also sits on the mighty susquehanna river, a geographic feature mom and pop are very familiar with from their time at lycoming college. in fact, that's how mom and pop met wonderful aunt alyssa.

we were supposed to arrive friday afternoon, but that was pushed back into the night because of the traffic. mercer was an unbelievably good boy during the whole mess, so we let him run around and eat pizza once we settled in. aunt alyssa has lots of nice toys to play with; mercer took a liking to some markers he found as well as some magic wands, bert (sesame street), and a handcrafted rocking horse that alyssa's grandfather made.

on saturday, we had lunch at the delicious selingsgrove brewery. we may have drank a few too many ciders and ales, because we were all very drowsy afterward. later in the afternoon, we headed to knoebel's, an amazing slice-of-americana-family-run theme park that features one of the best roller coasters pop has ever been on - the phoenix! so great is this ride that it gives you bruises on your arms! the park was packed since it was one of the last weekends of summer, but everyone had a great time. mercer is still too young to go on any kid rides, but he had fun with mommy in a playground and actually won his first price (a toy seahorse) in a carnival game! he was able to throw a wiffle ball into one of the "prize cups!" not bad, mercer!

our trip seemed short because of the whole traffic thing, so sunday morning came before we wanted it to. before we left, though, we took a short trip to spy glass ridge winery and loaded the car up with some good, local wine.

some pictures of the trip are below. enjoy!