Crack Team does Boston

We spent the first two weeks of August in Boston. Early August here in Austin is dry, hot, and just plain miserable. I'm pretty sure it was over 100 degrees every single day we were gone. Boston on the other hand had it's hottest day land around 81 degrees. The weather alone was a treasured treat for us.

 

The weather however was just one small part! We saw lots of family, celebrated a niece to come later this year, ate fabulous food, visited museums, played in parks, road ferries, took the subway, watched the Olympics, and more....

 

We arrived at 1am on a Sunday night. Thank you flight delay. The hubs had to be at work at 8am. By them time we checked in, got our suite set up, and put the kids to bed we were climbing into bed at 3am. We barely appreciated our view:

 

The next morning the hubs got up, showered, and left for work without us even flinching. We were soooo tired. Then at 8:55 I glanced at the clock and remembered we had 5 minutes to get downstairs for the complementary breakfast. If I was not in a new city with children who I knew would wake up hungry I would have rolled right back over. But instead I jumped up and was luring everyone awake to moans and grumbles. We made it down for breakfast and then took a little walk to a nearby park to get a sense of our new surroundings. Check out Cupcake enjoying the view:

 

 

Later that day Grandma and Grandpa drove down from New Hampshire to spend a few days with us in Boston. Grandpa and the Hubs took Cupcake to the Science Museum one morning. She loved it! Here she is in a bee hive exhibit:

 

There was a park basically across from our hotel. It was a great space filler during Cutie Pie naps, waiting to go to dinner, etc. Cupcake loved these over sized swings:

 

 

After a few days we headed North to New Hampshire for a long weekend with family. I'll post separately about the weekend...look for that soon.

 

After the weekend we drove back to Boston for some family time in the city. Since the Hubs had gone into his Boston office the previous week it was nice for him to have some vacation time in Boston. We checked back into the same hotel...I'm sure they thought we were nuts.

 

We planned to ride a ferry one day. While we were waiting we walked by the Aquarium. They had an outside tank with these seals:

 

Cupcake loved watching them swim back and forth. Apparently they loved watching her too because one of them finally came right over to her and popped up above water. He said "Hello" literally, like a talking bird this seal chose to come up and say hi to Cupcake. I wish I had a picture of her face. Other kids moved closer too...we were all stunned. It was so cute. Here he is coming up for Hello:

 

 

One day for lunch we grabbed box lunches and sat right in the grass and watched all the boats come and go. Hello!!! Dreamy!!! There were no fire ants. The grass was soft. The breeze was cool. The boats were picturesque. I pinched myself twice...just to be sure. Then I took this picture. It really did happen, folks!

 

Cutie Pie won't remember this trip for many reasons not the least of which being that many mornings were spent like this:

 

Of course we had to see the Famous Swan Boats. Ever read Make Way for Duckling? Cupcake enjoyed feeding the ducks some of Cutie Pie's puffs. Naturally this created quite a following of ducks around our boat. We also got to see some ducklings that were about a month old. We had to buy the book as a Souvenir for our girls. Not our best shot....but we had to have a Swan Boat ride picture:

 

 

My Aunt Sheri had recommended the famous Mike's Pastry shop. Sweets? Us? YES PLEASE! We made the walk and it was so so yummy. Cookies, cupcakes, cannolis, oh my! My waist line is still recovering. Every bite was fabulous. We of course took some back to our hotel because it's a great idea to watch our nation's most fit (Michael Phelps and others) while shoving more cannoli in my mouth. Cupcake loved the sweet shop:

 

We ate at Legal Seafood. Every bite was fabulous. We went to the Children's Museum. We had Rachel Ray's recommend pizza, Santarpios. We ate awesome Italian food at Italian Express which was recently featured on Food Networks Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives. We played at parks. We enjoyed the weather. We dreamed about going back as the girls get older and can appreciate the history of the city. It was a super fun end to our summer. We've spent the last two weeks re-adjusting to the heat that will be around for at least another month. Sigh. Thanks, Boston, for being a fun home away from home for 1/2 this month!