Boston Days 1 and 2

 Josh and I celebrated 10 years of being married this past May 8 and decided that we wanted to head to Boston to celebrate.  Circumstances didn't work out for us to go until the middle of June and so we had to wait a month for the full celebration (although we DID see The Avengers on our anniversary so ya, there was some celebrating! Oh ya and cute Josh brought home a cake from our favorite bakery to celebrate with the boys.)

Well, the day dawned bright and early for us to head out and we spent the entire day on an airplane...yes, this needed to be documented :)  for any of you who are not fans of over documentation...um, I don't know what to tell you because this trip was totally and completely over documented, and I am not even posting all the pictures I took!)  This post is a mixture of both the pics from my camera and iphone (sorry those of you who follow me on Instagram, you've seen those).

We got to Boston pretty late and as always Josh figured out the public transit system to get us where we needed to go (Josh and I are a good team.  I think up where to go and Josh gets us around once we are there.  That is not my talent.  I am totally directionally challenged).

We asked the front desk at our hotel where would be a good place to eat good seafood and he directed us to "The Daily Catch."  So glad he did!

Josh and I both tend to stick with what we know and like when going out to dinner, so I was pretty proud of the fact that we tried a lot of new things on this trip.  The first new thing we tried was clams.  Can I tell you how amazing this dish was.  I don't know if I would have loved them so much if they weren't cooked the way they were, but these were amazing!  We both loved them.

Josh checking out all of the brochures that we got from the hotel.  We didn't really plan what we were going to do in advance, just had some ideas of what we wanted to do.

 My hero Josh is in the process of training for a marathon and didn't want to miss out on training while we were on our trip, so he planned some runs to do while we were in Boston.  It ended up being awesome because he was pretty familiar with the city from them.  We decided to walk to Harvard for our first adventure on the second day.  We stayed in an area of Boston called Brookline which was very close to Harvard.  On our way we happened to pass this cute little house that was where JFK was born. 

I happen to be a huge Kennedy enthusiast (mostly Jackie O...but the rest of the Kennedy's are pretty interesting too).  It was so fun to see where JFK was born.  The house was actually renovated by his mother and has a lot of pictures of the family and things from their childhoods.  The bassinet above was actually there and I think it and this nursery are just gorgeous.

We finally made it to Harvard (after going through a somewhat shady area...) and had a ball walking around the beautiful campus.

This was the business school section.

The buildings are all so different and beautiful.

This boathouse is on the Charles River of the Harvard campus and so pretty.  We actually saw so many beautiful boathouses on our trip.

I have billions of random pictures of gorgeous things about this campus but I am only posting a few.

This was an especially pretty area of campus.

We bought our boys some Harvard paraphernalia (see below).  I am hoping that it inspires some loft goals :)

Aren't they so cute in their new Harvard shirts??  Hunter was ticked at something...no idea what.  I think they all like them as I have to make sure they don't wear them every day.  They try to.

We ate so well (and so much, good thing we were pretty active or it could have been bad) on this trip.  There were amazing little cafes everywhere!  This was a fresh mozzarella sandwich we shared (caprese salad anyone?) that was pretty heavenly (yes I will be sharing lots of what we ate...sorry).

We seriously had the best desserts of my life while in Boston!

We were given some fun advice of what to do in Boston from the cutest girl that I have met through my style blog, she suggested that we go Kayaking on the Charles River.

Okay so there were a few hopes that I had before coming to Boston.  I am kind of a prep nerd at hear.  I love all things preppy, the clothes, sailing, crew teams, Ivy League schools, you get the idea, so I had hoped to see a crew team (rowing) on the Charles River.  Josh had told me that he had seen a few on his run in the morning and I was so excited..

We walked along the Charles River on our way to the kayaking place and I didn't see crew team, and was so disappointed.  Imagine my excitement however when we saw the team above out practicing.  It was the HARVARD CREW TEAM!  They were amazing and we were kayaking right by them (although a LOT slower than they were), and we got to see them practicing.  They passed us a few times and we were just in awe of how fast they could go.  Josh took a picture with the phone (our camera was safely plastic-ed in our backpack). It was kind of heaven for me.

Boston from the Charles.

As said above another thing I am pretty interested it in sailing.  I have never been, but I am DYING to go some day.  We happened to pass this little fleet of MIT sail boats on our way.  Honestly so cool.  We passed a ton of people out sailing and it was so neat to see it in action.

We ended up kayaking about 5 1/2 miles.  Part of it was so windy and choppy and I ended up being SOAKED (after being assured that I would just get a little drop here and there).  Josh being the sweet husband he is took me shopping to get some dry clothes (it also might have been the fact that my shorts were transparent they were so wet...) Kayaking was seriously SO MUCH FUN and it was something that I had never done before (Josh had been once before). 

 On our way to find our seafood restaurant for the day (I was determined to eat it every day.  When in Boston I thought it was a must).  We walked past this wonderful building.  It is so fun to find our church wherever we are in the world.  We have gone to church when on vacation in Cancun, London, Seattle, and now Boston.  It is so fun to be around the wonderful people of the cities we visit.

On Sunday we came back to this building.  The people were as lovely as the city.

 We ended up eating that night at Legal Seafood.  The chowder was just as good as my favorite chowder EVER from this trip.

 I have to be honest I don't like getting my lobster like this.  I prefer just to get the tail.  Once before Josh and I got whole lobsters and actually had to choose them out of the tank and I was a little traumatized.  Apparently you only eat the tail and claws (which I didn't know before and it was...disgusting!).  This time the waiter told us which parts to eat and it was better, but I still wasn't thrilled at the lobster's eyes hanging out on the plate.

Looking dashing in his lobster bib.

 That night we were so TIRED.  We had only gotten a few hours of sleep the night before due to our early flight/last minute packing and so we decided to head back to the hotel and veg.  Our hotel was right by a Trader Joe's which we can never pass up. 

We bought some essentials and ended up watching Goonies on TV.  I had forgotten about that show.  Yep we are pretty much party animals. 

Well, I decided to divide up the days because there is so much over documenting to be done, so stay tuned for more Boston fun!!

Summer Night

 Well, this little blog is in some sad shape.  I can't get to most of my pictures, so I decided to just do a post on something I can get to.  This past week we had a little impromptu BBQ with my sister and her family.

 We love living so close to our cousins and love getting together.  Life has been so busy these past few weeks that we haven't even seen them till now.  We at yummy food, played night games, had a camp fire, sang camp songs and ate s'mores.  It was divine.

The kids loved learning all of the old camp songs.  My sister, BIL and I all worked at summer camps so we had quite a few between us. 

 This little fire pit I got last summer at a yard sale for $5!  Best $5 I have ever spent.

 The kids loved watching their parents sing.  My BIL was an especially good song leader.

Josh was pretty into the songs too :)

 The s'mores were the biggest hit though.

 Many many marshmallows were consumed (I sure love a well cooked marshmallow).

 McKay had his first s'more and thought it was wonderful (and he didn't stop at just one.)

 It was good to be with this family we love so much.

Hopefully we will be doing it a lot this summer.

Piano Recital

 Tonight we went to Lincoln and Palmer's piano recital.  I was a such a nervous wreck for them, but they were just calm and fine.

 ...and I think pretty excited. 

 Lincoln was first to get up and play his song.  I was worried that he had to be first, but apparently he was totally excited.  He got up in front of everyone and calmly told them his name and what he was going to play.  I was so proud!

 He then played his two songs perfectly in front of everyone.

 Seriously proud moment for me.

 Palmer then got up a few people later and confidently said his name and what he was going to play.

 Palmer usually practices his songs SO FAST!  I was so worried with him being nervous that he would go even faster.

 I was so amazed when he also played his song perfectly (including the timing).

 Thank goodness for the iPad, it kept McKay and Hunter busy.  The funniest thing was that every time McKay would do something he would yell "I won!"  It was so funny.

 I loved that Palmer put his arm around Lincoln for the group picture.

 All of the awesome pianists.

This is their awesome piano teacher.  She is so awesome (even when she found out that my boys robbed the refreshment table).  It was such a wonderful experience for us!!