Quebesmiles: Those yellow bridges.

We finally made it back to Pittsburgh! We had been planning to go back for the temple open house, and I'm so glad it worked out. It was a trip that filled our souls.

Pittsburgh will always be somewhere special for us. It was a city magic--dreams come true--lifelong friends--perfect first home--family memories--yellow bridges--lovelock forever kind of place. That chapter is closed now, and that's ok...but Pittsburgh will always be the place that brought us back to life.

We braved the red-eye!

Hello to our favorite airport dinosaur! I love that he's always there to greet us.

One of the things we've missed the most since moving is being able to walk everywhere. We stayed in an Airbnb in our old neighborhood, Lawrenceville, and happily walked everywhere we could! But even before checking into our Airbnb, we headed straight to La Gourmandine. This is still the best French bakery ever. I've never had a better almond croissant.

My most favorite eight mile running loop! I will never get over these bridge views!

Ok though, oof. The trail is overrun with homeless camps now. I realize it's a complicated issue that cities are dealing with post-covid, but I still hope the city can find a way to take care of it. It made me sad to feel unsafe on my favorite route.

Next stop: Carnegie Museum of Natural History! This is still one of the top dinosaur museums I've ever been too. It may even have a better dinosaur section than New York?!

Owen is still our train kid, so he was dying to go on the Duquesne Incline. Recently, he's been coming up with nicknames for everything, so when we arrived at the Duquesne Incline, he shouted, "Look! It's the Duey!!!" We all had a good Owen laugh.

Once we got to the top, Auggie kept trying to tell me he saw a sign that said we could go downstairs underneath the incline. I kind of brushed him off at first since we'd done the incline many times before and had never noticed it. But thank goodness he was persistent! He discovered an entire mini-museum underneath the lift showing all the gears and wheels and inner-workings! It was so so cool. I can't believe we didn't know about it before this trip.

Duey Views!

I will stand by the statement that this is one of the most gorgeous cities on earth. It's so beautiful!

I stopped in Anthropologie and spent an hour touring around with Rochelle before going to lunch. I cried a couple of times. It was so surreal to be back at the 542. Most of the time I'm fine, but sometimes I really do miss my former life. Ten years at Anthropologie!

For dinner we met up with all of Don's UPMC coworkers. It was really fun to see everybody. It was also a reminder of what a good group of people he had around him for his first job. That is something to be grateful for.

The next day was a Cranberry day. I ran my 20-miler in North Park in the morning, and then we met some of Don's coworkers there for a hike afterward.

In true Pittsburgh fashion, it began pouring rain mid-hike. This was a different kind of reminder for us...that the wetness in Pittsburgh is relentless. It was no problem on our hike though, the kids were thrilled to stomp their way through the mud!

Rain hike!

After a less than demure change in the rental car, we swapped our mud clothes for church clothes and headed off to the temple. This was the real reason for our trip to Pittsburgh. Don was the Bishop in our ward before we left, and the announcement of the temple meant a little more for him. The temple was small but amazing. Just like Pittsburgh.

We spent a lot of time wandering along Butler Street and eating at our favorite spots. We got pizza at V3, and of course made our way to Twisters for ice cream!

On Sunday, we passed the time reminiscing with our Lawrenceville neighbors. Keith and Chal met us for brunch, and we caught up on the neighborhood happenings. It was the best. We also chatted with some of our favorite stoop sitters, and our old next door neighbor, Arthur!