Addendum

Here's us as the Wizard of Oz bunch (thank you Amie!)

And I don't know why I forgot to include this picture (I guess cuz I didn't flag it in iphoto) but here's cute Tommy totally worn out after trick-or-treating. Aren't they the cutest!?!

The rest of Halloween is below.

Halloween!

Happy Halloween!!!! Okay, it's a day late but I had better things to do last night, like eating my kid's candy. It was a fun week. We carved pumpkins on Monday, had the ward party on Friday and trick-or-treated last night. At the ward party we dressed as a family as the Wizard of Oz. Like a dork, I forgot my camera but Amie took a picture of us and might send it to me, so I might post that picture later. Last night we had Eeyore, a ballerina and JAMES (not Thomas people!) the tank engine.

Oh, I love this video, Tom had to go high-tech on carving and use his dremel tool. What the video doesn't show is him not being able to get through the entire pumpkin with it and scrapping the whole thing in favor of a good old fashioned knife.

Finishing Up: The Freedom Trail

Well, we've been home almost a week and are settling in (though I haven't been on a real grocery shopping trip or done real laundry, so that does say something). I wanted to finish out the pictures of our trip with our last day-where we did the bulk of the "Freedom Trail" -which entails a lot of cemeteries...among other things.

Aren't we cute with our artistic shot of the trail?

Something like...first official landmark in Boston (it was by a pub). Everything is a first there, even if it's not really a first-they make it into one, like the Boston Public library may not be the first public library but it was the first library to start lending books to take home :)

What? You can't tell what that is? It's the site of the Boston Massacre, apparently it was more important to have a street than a monument.

Funny shirt about the accent there.

Site of the first public school

Grave of Governor Winthrop. My sister Erin, a Boston expert told me that he is not actually buried there, they rearranged the graves so they would be in a straight line, interesting huh?

Paul Revere's grave

Okay, so this may seem like an over-analyzing but I love this grave. I visited it once before, it's for "Mother Goose" (sort-of). I just love it because it is some random woman who's famous simply for telling her children stories. That particular graveyard (Granary Cemetery) was full of famous men like Paul Revere and Samuel Adams but it was also notable because of her, someone kind of like me. And I love that.

Graves of the victims of the Boston Massacre. I FINALLY remembered something from U.S. History when I saw this. Crispus Attucks was one of them and notable because he was most likely of African-American Heritage. My teacher used to point out the irony of one of the first casualties of the American Revolution, or at least a pre-cursor, dying for a country who didn't grant blacks equal rights for almost 100 years.

Personal American Revolution hero, Samuel Adams.

Washington Monument

And...my friends the squirrels. I don't know why it was important to me but I really wanted to feed them in the Boston Common.

So I did.

This is me completely and totally geeking out. It was possibly the most excited I was about seeing something famous. These are the ducklings from "Make Way for Ducklings" (okay, okay, they're bronze statues) but I was in Boston Public Gardens, I saw the Swan boats. I made believe a little island is the same one they lived on. It was great.

And the next day after 2 grueling flights in which Eliza slept 0 hours we were home!!!! Oh my gosh, I missed my kids so much I could hardly bear it (but I did, and had fun). Samantha was super-dee-duper excited to see me. Tommy gave me a big hug and then asked where his dad was. It was so good to see them.

Speaking of the kids, they had a wonderful time with Grandma Marti!!! My dad took them to "Where the Wild Things Are." My mom took them to a different play place every day as well as to the pumpkin patch. They had a blast. It was so nice of her to do it, it really was a great experience for us.

Give me Liberty or Give me Death!

The above quote is by Patrick Henry and always sends a thrill through me. I spent yesterday seeing the sites in Lexington (or maybe just Concord). It was so fun and maybe my favorite day so far. First we went through the most gorgeous scenic drive. The colors were just beyond beautiful and I enjoyed it so much.

Then we went to the Minutemen Visitor Center and watch a wonderful presentation about the first shots fired in the Revolution. We saw the monument for "The Shot Heard Round the World." and then we went and saw the house that Louisa May Alcott lived in!!!! You may know her, she wrote Little Women!!!! That was so fun and I had the greatest desire to go running through the woods with abandon in the true spirit of "Jo"

We also got to see Walden Pond, the place where Henry David Thoreau spent 2 years "living simply and deliberately" It also was beyond description in terms of beauty and so fun to visit. I have a little historical crush on him, the stuff I read my sophomore year in high school really affected me. I pretty much love all of his quotes, but I'll just share one with you.

"If you build castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

The monument for "the shot heard round the world" (The first shots of the American revolution -we're not sure why the ones in Lexington didn't count, probably because we don't know which side it came from)

Here are the words on a monument there.

(One of) the houses that the Alcott Family lived in.

My "little woman"

Sitting at Henry David Thoreau's desk (or a replica)

Tom with his homeboy, H.D.T.

Walden Pond

And then Erin and Eric watched Eliza for us while we went to the temple. It was so fun and special to go to a new one!

Eliza stole poor Rebecca's bottle-what a mean cousin!

Eliza's digging her cousin's age-inappropriate toys, so cute.

Boston.2

I don't have nearly as many pictures today. We got a late start (thanks to me). We went into the heart of Boston again today. We visited the Boston Public Library and took a "Duck Tour". These are the big well-known tours of Boston (and THANK YOU to my mother for getting us tickets). They are so named because you take them in "DUK's". I don't know what it stands for but they were created in WWII and are amphibious (water and land capable). So that was way cool and we just heard about different things in Boston. We went around the streets and into the Charles River. I really enjoyed it.

Matching shirts thanks to Grandma Marti

Erin and me in front of the Boston Public Library

Do you recognize the names Margaret and H.A. Rey? Well, you should, they're the authors of the Curious George series-a favorite around our house. I learned a bit more about them, which I particularly liked.

And the Duck Tour

We stopped by a local farmers market. We browsed but ended up only getting some bread for our dinner.

I (and Tom) watched Rebecca so that Erin and Eric could go on a date. It was fun and she is a very easy-going baby so it wasn't a big deal at all. I will tell you though, I used to think people who said "I can't remember how to take care of a baby" who had been mothers and had anywhere from 1 to 10 kids were kind of empty-headed. How could they forget something that consumed so much of their time?!? Now I know, there's only 9 months difference between Eliza and Rebecca and already I had forgotten a ton, for instance:

Don't fill the baby bathtub too full, like only a 1/3 of the way because it WILL spill over onto your counters

Babies spit up what looks like the majority of what you just fed them, it's amazing that they ever grow at all

If a baby is hungry you cannot distract them or hold them off, they will scream until they are fed

Unless they are tired, in which case you can't keep them awake to feed them, they will just fall asleep no matter what you (or they) are doing

Babies who are 4 months old and are at the age where they can't do anything, not even sit up, want to be held...all the time.

It was fun, I love my niece, I'm also glad that I don't have a baby right this second-I can wait a little while longer!

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.