We went to Wynnewood three weeks after winter wound down to spend a week watching granddaughter Emma over Easter Vacation.
Warmer weather in prior weeks had already melted what was left of the winter snow, watering the trees and shrubs to create a post-winter wonderland in Wynnewood.
We took several extended walks through the neighborhoods near the home Emma shares with her loving parents, Laszlo and Gina, where all the yards have beautiful foliage.
Cards and artwork also played prominent parts in our relaxed stay. We particularly enjoyed dying Easter eggs bright pastel colors with our granddaughter, something that was an annual treat for Julie and me when our children were kids.
Emma joined the adults for a couple of evenings playing "Pandemic," a board game Jay and Sasha had given them for Christmas. Our team managed to save the world, though we did stretch the rules a bit both games rather than accept a no-win situation unacceptable to our crack team. Actually, it was more because we didn't really know what we were doing, but in any case we enjoyed the camaraderie of preventing the spread of disease over games that lasted a couple of hours each.
It's appropriately a game approximating what Gina does in real life as an epidemiologist at Drexel University. Our son-in-law Laszlo has also recently joined the Drexel in a tech supporting role. We all had lunch together one day at Matt's Gourmet Sliders in Philadelphia near Gina's office, which we were able to tour while there. On the Saturday of our arrival, we had sandwiches at Delancey Street Bagels, but we ate most meals at home.
We had roasted a ham on Sunday, our first full day there, and as a side dish, we decided to make scalloped potatoes, eventually realizing, upon perusing recipes, that what we actually wanted to make was potatoes au gratin.
As often is the case, we adapted the recipe to our tastes, layering grated cheese, spices and heavy cream between thinly-sliced, peeled potatoes in an effort to make what my mom used to make for Easter dinner. The potatoes, ham and assorted vegetables turned out to be a terrific meal, and the leftovers served as the basis for a few more lunches and dinners. Julie and I ate the rest of the ham in sandwiches on our flight home, during which the other highlight was watching the new Lady Gaga/Bradley Cooper version of "A Star Is Born" --- great retelling of the classic story!
We also made other meals, of course, including ground-turkey tacos for the adults and ground turkey "Stroganoff" for Emma, but on our last evening, Gina combined fresh vegetables and some bacon Laszlo fried up special for the meal to ham, leftover BBQ chicken from another night and hard-boiled eggs we dyed for Easter, into a Cobb Salad Bar that was also scrumptious, colorful, healthy and honored Earth Day.
In other culinary endeavors, Gina has started a tradition of designing Emma's morning waffles to represent whatever special day it happens to be on a calendar that designates all the normal ones as well as many unusual ones like Bat Appreciation Day.
I did my best to follow the template using whipped cream, strawberries and bananas atop the multi-grain Eggos.
As far as when would Wynnewood woods win our hearts, that was pretty much any time we wandered outdoors, as all the houses seem to have gorgeous trees and shrubs, all blooming for us in early spring.
One day while Emma participated in her Circus Arts class, Julie and I hiked the nearby Wissahickon Valley Trail with Gina and Laszlo. In other activities besides hiking, several families dined at the area's historic roadhouse and several dads fished with kids in the river near the little cascades.
Later that afternoon, we all drove over to Philadelphia's Japanese Gardens, but we found traffic tangled and the surrounding area teeming with tourists there to attend the Cherry Blossom Festival.
Indeed, the cherry trees were in glorious bloom at the park as well as scattered among neighborhood yards in the treesy greater Philadelphia region. Emma is deeply into Japanese anime art, so we thought this event, with lots of people costumed as anime characters, might have greater appeal to her than what we went to see. Gina went to find information and treated us to admission by the time we joined her.
After a slow start with sprinkling skies, Emma got into the festivities, enjoying the opportunity to experiment with origami and Japanese calligraphy. What she liked best was a furry, obese animal character named Totoro she recognized as some sort of celebrity, who we encountered while eating lunch from food trucks. Gina and I split a Philly cheesesteak sandwich while Julie and Emma ate French fries and a delicious pretzel (I ate about half of that pretzel myself).
Ironically, when we finally meandered over to the Japanese Garden we'd come to see, it turned out the line to get in was over an hour long, so we decided to find our way home. Laszlo, by the way, had given up on finding parking after dropping us by the gate and driven home alone, so after considering a shuttle bus ride to catch the Main Line Train, Gina contacted Uber, and despite traffic jams, we finally figured out a suitable meeting place.
Mostly, however, we hiked through trees closer to their home. Their apartment is across Wynnewood Street from the train station, and behind the train station is Maybrook Mansion, which I wrote about on a previous Wynnewood visit.
We watched a few frogs swim around that evening, but when we returned a couple of other times with Emma to show her, we found them rather quiet. Emma nonetheless enjoyed playing in the remains of a formal garden that was probably quite special when Maybrook was at its peak, with what seemed to be an ornamental waterfall passing through a Chinese-inspired ornamentation, including the use of natural boulders
Emma, Julie and I would see a much larger, more extravagant mansion later in the week in Delaware.
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