Adventures in Boston

Just two days into our trip, and we've had quite a few adventures.  We decided to leave on Friday since we were packed and ready.  We stopped for dinner just outside Baltimore, so we could watch some of the Caps vs. Rangers game.  We got to see both of the Caps' goals in that game, which was nice.  We drove until a little after midnight and made it to Mount Laurel, NJ.

We made the rest of the drive to Boston the next day.  Thanks to my friend, Katherine, for the suggestion to leave Friday.  It worked out really well.  We were able to get into Natick, a suburb of Boston, by about 4.  Dave went for a short run, and then we all headed to the nice mall across the street.  We found a nice surprise - a glow in the dark mini-golf - in the mall.  My boys LOVE mini-golf, so we played a round.  It was fun.  I took some pics with my iPhone, but they did not turn out well.  We grabbed some cheesecakes at the Cheesecake Factory for a treat in the hotel.  Unfortunately, Alex had left his jacket at the mall, which was closed by the time we discovered it.  This caused me to have a mini-meltdown.  We had planned on Mass at 9, followed by the trek into Boston proper to pick up Dave's marathon packet and possibly the Red Sox game.  But, now the timing would be off if we had to stay around here until noon to pick up the jacket.  After a little too much pouting on my part, Dave and I came up with a way to alter the plan.  In the end, we were able to get everything done, just not in the original order.

We headed into town to pick up Dave's packet.  That's always interesting to see all the people and stuff associated with the race.  I think it began to feel very real to Dave and he started to get nervous.  I felt very proud with him there because I know that many people aren't able to make it into Boston and would like to.  next, we headed to church.  It was a nice Mass at a quaint, city church.  Apparently going to bathroom twice during mass was not enough for Matthew because he peed in his pants at the very end.  That sent us back to the car (in the wrong direction, of course) for a change of clothes.  Thankfully, we are packed for 6 weeks or I wouldn't have had new clothes in there.  Then, we hustled a mile or so to the Red Sox game.

We got there with 1/2 hour to spare and got great tickets behind home plate.  The game was a great baseball game in that it had plenty of hits and action.  It was not close - Boston beat the Blue Jays 8-1.  But, the kids had a great time cheering them on. 

After the game, we had to hustle back to car to try to make it back to the mall to pick up Alex's jacket by 6. We made it with a few minutes to spare and fortunately we recovered the jacket. After finding gobs of people at Olive Garden, Dave ate a pasta dinner at Fridays.  Back to the hotel room for showers.  Here's a video of Matthew.  He was in the shower hooting and hollering.  He usually takes baths and was reluctant to take a shower.  But, he was having a great time.  It was so funny that I grabbed the camera to capture it.  Unfortunately, he had kind of stopped, so I was prompting him.  But, the video is funny because it captures much of Matthew's personality.  Note:  there is no inappropriate nudity in the video