Boston.1

Yay! A new blog post. Even I was getting sick of my family pictures. Tom looked the other day and said-"you haven't posted in over 2 weeks, what's wrong with you?!?" So here I am...posting. I am in BOSTON!!! My sister Erin lives here and she invited us to stay. We had two free flights, and my mom is watching the two oldest kids (isn't she a saint?). We are thrilled to be here. We traveled a long, long time yesterday and spent over 9 hours in various planes. It was long but Eliza was a champ and we were thrilled to not have the other two-even though I'm missing them so much. So here we are.

This is day one (today). We went into the heart of Boston and did a couple things on the Freedom Trail and took a tour of America's Test Kitchen. Here are my gazillion pictures (and not even all that I took). You can read about our locked-out adventures, tourist visits, and yummy food eating trips. Here you go.

Ready to go-Erin's apartment building

Waiting outside Erin's car. She locked her keys out of her car first thing. We had driven to a train station and she had all of her daughter's bottles in the car, plus her keys and the metro passes. We only had to wait 45 minutes for a locksmith but it was COLD!! Especially for an Arizona weenie like me.

Erin and Me

Yes, I let my daughter play in the leaves in the gutter. They didn't look too dirty and she was so determined to do it.

Me posing as the official Dunkin Donuts spokesman. It was close and we were COLD (as mentioned) so Tom walked to get us some hot chocolate and a yummy treat.

Cutie-patootie Eliza with her donut.

AWWW! My sweet little niece. Her name is Rebecca and she's 4 months old. This is the first time I've seen her in person-isn't that sad? I'm glad I got to see her now though.

We finally got back into Erin's car and on our way. We spent a lot of times on trains today. I always think that's an exciting part of any trip to a city (I know, I'm a nerd). But I get to see what the real people of the city look like.

So our first official stop was to the America's Test kitchen. Have you ever heard of it? We stumbled upon one of their cookbooks in the library one day and LOVED everything we made from it. Now we subscribe to their website and LOVE everything we make from it now too. We saw their facilities, it was very exciting for two foodies like Tom and me.

They were in the process of a taste testing. Besides the recipes they test they also sometimes test products. Here they were testing mayonnaise. I think that sounds revolting but the tour guide didn't think so. I guess that's how they get the best ingredients.

Us in front of the actual kitchen. I was so glad we got to do the tour. The process goes like this for their recipes: They start off with researching all the recipes for something they want to make (for example they were working on empanadas while we were there). They they take 5 or so recipes and work and work and work changing little things here and there until they get their perfect recipe. One thing they do is email the recipe to thousands of volunteers so they can make it in their own kitchens and give feedback-of course, when we heard that Tom and I immediately became volunteers also. I can't wait to try their recipes.

The official start of the historic part of our day-isn't that sign funny-it was on someone's house.

The Bunker hill monument! I climbed all 294 steps, yay for me. If you don't know, Bunker Hill (Breed's hill really) was the site where the first major battle of the American Revolution took place. And later, they built a really tall, really narrow monument for people to climb so when they got to the top they could be very under-whelmed by it and really crowded by everyone else who climbed up and where we couldn't all fit anyway. I was still glad I did it though.

My tired face from climbing.

The U.S.S. Constitution, known as "Old Ironsides" This I definitely was excited about seeing. It's the oldest commissioned warship in the world. It was part of our original Navy and is considered still active with parts of the original boat still intact. It fought in the War of 1812 and was also used as a boat for ambassadors and scientific exploration.

Here we are in front of it but we didn't go in it because....

This was the line for the tours, it would have taken more than an hour to get on and then another 45 minute tour and our babies were kind of finished with that kind of stuff. I was happy just going across the street to the museum for it and watching the 20 minute video all about it.

This is one thing I remember from the short trip to Boston with Tom's family right before we got married. There are a LOT of graveyards in Boston, some with famous people. This was at Copps Hill but I didn't recognize any of the names listed on the map of gravesites. I guess this was the site for lesser famous people to be buried in.

The Old North Church!! You remember, one if by land, two if by sea. I learned some things from the tour guide there though. Like Paul Revere never made it Lexington and the person who actually hung the lanterns was named Robert John Newman. That won't stop 5th graders from reciting Paul Revere's Ride though.

In an Old North Church pew.

We went to Little Italy to a fairly famous pastry shop (with the uninspired name "Mike's Pastries"). We sampled their delights after dinner at Quincy market.

Throwing in another picture of cutie Eliza.

The end of a long day where we actually saw and did a ton-and walked even more. I can't wait for tomorrow.