Boston trip in June

In June while B was with us and in an attempt to help him have a great summer vacation, we visited Boston. We drove up on Thursday evening, James worked in the hotel on Friday while B, Abi and I went to the Aquarium and the MIT robotics museum, then on Saturday we all four walked the Freedom Trail.

Abi at the aquarium

B loves animals so we ended up spending much longer at this aquarium than we planned, which was actually very fun even for Abi. She loved watching the fish swim around and especially loved the center tank where you can see the fish from floor to ceiling. She was quite intrigued with that!

Watching the diver and fish

The colors of the Jellyfish also held her attention fairly well.

She was pretty captivated

SO many eyes!

This was my favorite part. The gift shop had these turtles and Abi couldn't stop staring at them because she's an infant and loves eyes and faces and hello? Has any 11-month-old ever seen so many eyes??? Cute, cuddly, friendly ones at that! It was very difficult to not buy one for her!

Rainy day on the Freedom Trail

We had seen in the weather forecast that it might be rainy and so B and I had previously purchased rain ponchos because some experiences are only once-in-a-lifetime and you don't miss them for silly rain. We were not going to miss the Freedom Trail. If you've never heard of that, there is a red line throughout old Boston that connects 11 or 13 or some amount of monuments and buildings important to the American Revolution. It is an unforgettable experience! We went on a guided tour which was totally worth the cost. Self guided would not have been half as good.

Our first attempt to keep Abi warm and dry

The unfortunate thing about the rain ponchos was that I didn't consider how we would keep Abi dry. We didn't buy her one. So we just tried to put the blanket on her...

Why that attempt didn't work very well - she couldn't see!

...but of course, she could not see. And that's no fun! Like I said, Boston is once in a lifetime!

How we finally kept her dry

We did find that they sold ponchos at the guided tour booth. Thank goodness. We managed to fit it over the car seat using the arm and neck holes for ventilation and to stick our hands through to push the stroller. Ingenuity right there. :) Abi will just remember Boston as a little more yellow than it really is.

Paul Revere's home - a place I've wanted to see since my History of Interior Design class at BYU

Such a stylish home!

Such a neat experience to see something I had previously studied and thought that maybe someday, a long time in the future, I may get to see. And I did!!!

Interesting headstones in the graveyard

These headstones were very interesting! If you notice, there are three different carvings pictured. Our tour guide explained that the earliest version was the skull and cross bones. Later it became the skull and wings, and finally became the angelic figure. I don't remember why it changed now sadly, but I remember I thought it was extremely cool and philosophically interesting. I'll have to look it up again.

Pretending to be sailors

This was at the USS constitution museum. They had a whole section of hands on activities to see if you could be a sailor. They had a full size mast that you had to roll up and balance, they had these hammocks, anchors and more. So fun! We were running out of time at this point so we didn't get to do as much as we would have liked.

On board the USS Constitution

USS Constitution

Touring this boat and hearing the battle stories made me very grateful for our United States Navy. And for God's hand in the birth of this great nation. Such amazing miracles!

We couldn't resist this picture

Random place on our walk back to our car. :)