The Gibbs Vacations

July 11th through July 19th

2006-07-19T11:47:00.000-07:00

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July 11^th – July 19^th, 2006

One thing I’ve loved about this summer is the people. We have met many different people. Other than the people who are on this job with Mitchel, we’re the only ones here all the time. And living in a hotel… well, it’s a revolving door. I’ve met people from all over, Canada, New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, even Rhode Island and beyond. I’ve met people who live in New England now but were raised in Texas, Florida, and more. We usually meet these people at the pool so we strike up conversations about our children and then it goes from there. We’ve also met people we knew were from the south, either by their accents or the Auburn clothes they were wearing. J The odd thing is these relationship last a day or two, or less, and then they move on and the next group comes in.

Another interesting thing, and I may have mentioned it before, is that we are always finding money. Usually pennies but sometimes nickels, dimes and quarters. I think I mentioned the dollar bill Stephen saw at breakfast one morning. It blew past our window, and he ran to get it. It was a half of a dollar bill. Then at the zoo I found a crumpled up dollar bill. I’m hoping to find a one hundred dollar bill before we leave but we only have five more days so I’m not holding my breath. Because of the sheer quantity of pennies we’ve found Mitchel and I have wondered if it is some good luck ritual to throw a penny on the ground for some odd reason.

Five days! We only have five days left. My how the time has flown by. I really thought we’d be slightly miserable in this little bitty hotel room, all four of us, for a month and a half. It’s going to be hard to leave. It’s been so fun meeting new people, being with Mitchel, experiencing New England. But I think Mitchel will have the hardest time. He will have to go back to being alone all week. His days will be the same but he will come back to an empty hotel room, a quiet, empty hotel room. Come to think of it, it sounds great. :D And I’m sure the first week will be nice for him but I doubt it will be long before we are missed. I thought I would look forward to going home but I don’t at all. I miss my friends and I miss my church but I will miss the friends I’ve made up here as well. And I will miss the endless, responsibility-free time up here. And most of all, I will miss seeing my husband everyday.

During the days of the last blog I forgot to mention an interesting sight. We were near where Mitchel works and Stephen swore he saw a great horned owl on top of an electric pole so we turned around. Stephen has great eyes; he sees things sometimes before Mitchel does who has great hunter’s eyes. Anyway, there was an owl on top of a pole and it looked like it had horns on his head. We pulled over to watch it and must have spooked him because he flew away. As he flew away we saw a squirrel clutched in his talons. It was pretty cool… not something you see everyday!

Well, I have been remiss in writing about our exploits this last week, but honestly we haven’t done much.

July 11^th, 2006

Tuesday we did go to the children’s museum. I was able to use the tickets I checked out from the library. I brought some reading material and let the kids play all day. And they did. I packed our lunch this time so we didn’t have to leave before were ready just because we were hungry. We stayed all day and they had a great time. I did take more pictures because we found different things to do. The kids built some interesting things with the manipulatives that were available. We played in the ship and the cottage and with block and with connecting blocks and with tanagrams and with… a lot of things. We played outside for a long time. They have neat toys outside: a big set of feet that you put your feet in, hold the strings and walk, a cushy block with a long string connected at the bottom to the cushy thing and at the top with handles (you hold on to the handles and jump… sort of like a pogo stick only a lot easier to use), hula hoops and more.

July 12^th, 2006

Wednesday we went to the library to do some Cub Scout work. Stephen had to use periodicals or back issues of news papers to find out some information. Nothing exciting happened on his birthday (other than his birth) or when he was five. Although Princess Diana died shortly after his birthday and in some country his birthday is St. Stephen’s day… although in America that date is December 26^th, which incidentally is my cousin, Stephen’s birthday… but I digress.

While at the library we met an overzealous librarian who is interested in Albert Einstein and after we had finished speaking with him he hunted a book down, then hunted me down to give me the book. I began reading the book and while I don’t understand all of the ramifications of E=mc² I do know what each component stands for (Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared).

July 13^th, 2006

Thursday we went back to the zoo (I have to get my money’s worth out of our membership). We had a good time, again. Saw a couple of things we hadn’t seen before, including giraffes being fed in one of the inside pens. One of the cool things is there is a door the workers come out of to put the buckets in. I snapped a picture of a giraffe craning his long neck to look in the door. Pretty cool, they know where their food is coming from.

July 14^th, 2006

Today was my brother’s birthday and I forgot it. Yuck. I hate it when I do that.

July 15^th, 2006

Today was the day my mom reminded me of my brother’s birthday. It’s also the day we went to Mystic again and had a good time. First thing, though, was breakfast. All week long I have been telling Stephen that we will eat breakfast, just he and I. I didn’t want to do it during the week because we’d be leaving Anna in her all alone. Well, he wasn’t up just yet so Mitchel and I went to eat breakfast together. But before that I was trying to find my key in the dark, dropped something on the floor and bammed my eye into the corner of the refrigerator (it was dark, my hair had fallen to block the fridge and there it was). I have the nicest shiner I’ve ever had (see pictures). Know, when you look at the pictures, that the bruise looks even prettier now, nice and purpley). I figured Stephen would get up and come find us when he woke up. When Mitchel and I finished he went back to the room and soon Anna came and joined me. She said Stephen was upset because we didn’t eat breakfast. When he finally made it down to the breakfast room I asked him why he didn’t come down when he woke up and he said he didn’t want to leave Anna alone. I told him he had done the right thing and the hard thing. This is the child who will do what is fun rather than what is right so I made sure he knew how proud of him we were because I know it couldn’t have been easy. Well, it all worked out because Anna ate with Mr. Andy, Judy and Max (another family up here from Birmingham) and Stephen and I were able to eat alone at our own little table across the room. We talked about his birthday party and made big plans. I think, though, with all that we’ve done this summer and all that we’ll do when we get home, we’ll take a few friends to Chuck E. Cheeses. (Not a Chuck E. Cheese birthday party that costs mucho money but just going to play there).

At Mystic we saw the rest of what we didn’t see before, even taking a 30 minute boat tour. It is a steam boat named Sabino. We stayed up on top for a little while then Stephen wanted to go exploring. We made it down into the belly of the ship where a man was “manning” the steam engine. He was dirty from head to toe. There are two bells down in this area. The captain who is above where we originally started out rings one for speed and I think the other one for direction. And the person manning the engine knows exactly what the captain wants to do. We missed the beautiful boat ride with the nice sea breeze but we got a great education on steam engines. Stephen participated as a green crew member on board a ship (complete with sea sickness). He’s a great actor. I think he takes after his Papa Chuck in this regard. I’m wondering if theater isn’t somewhere in his future. Unfortunately, like his parents, he’s a little tone deaf so I don’t know if musicals will be in that future. We found another kid’s area to go into and they had “arts and crafts.” Basically there was a statement about a boat that had experienced all these horrible things but this thing was the worst. You had to figure out on your own what it was and draw it. Not a real occurrence but designed to get the kids to use their imaginations.

After we left Mystic we found a local restaurant and ate outside. It began raining so we sat under an umbrella. It was just a little sprinkle that didn’t last long and it was nice to eat outside.

July 16, 2006

Today we talked about doing a lot of stuff but decided to take it easy and go see a movie. We went and saw Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. I asked the kids if they wanted to see this or Over the Hedge. I took them both aside separately and, of course, they both said Pirates of the Caribbean. There were a couple of times we had to cover Anna’s eyes but other than the gory stuff, it wasn’t so bad. Now the movie on the other hand was okay but not much plot. Of course, the one-liners were hilarious but Mitchel and I both thought the first movie was better. We then found a mall that had a restaurant, ate and went back to the hotel room and the kids and I went swimming.

July 17^th, 2006

We didn’t have much planned for today but Judy and Max (the other wife who is here with her husband and their child) were headed to the children’s museum in Providence. I immediately called the library and secured us a free ticket (which allows 6 people in) and we all got in free and had a good time. We spent most of our time with the manipulatives. I need to find some of these blocks. There are pentagons and squares and triangles and all sorts of things, you click them together and you can build people or twelve sided shapes, twenty sided shapes, hot air balloons and more. Stephen stayed here forever.

July 18^th, 2006

We woke up not knowing what we would do today but I had long had a desire to go to the Boston Museum of Science (since we were there the fourth). We didn’t do it on the fourth because we had put it off knowing we could get in free with our Roger Williams Park Zoo Membership Since the GoBoston card only last three days I figured I had the fourth day to do it. Well, we went back to Plymouth Plantation on the fourth day since that ticket was a two day pass. Well we never found time for it. I still wanted to do it, though. We thought about doing it Sunday but didn’t. Well, the kids and I got up after breakfast and headed down there. We ended up parking at the T-Station we used when we stayed there. I did this because I knew it had a parking lot and I knew where it was. This station is the end of the line. Well Science Park is almost the end of the line the other way and we had to change trains and we did it all by ourselves with out getting lost once… Well, I got lost in the car looking for a closer T station but found my way back quickly to the interstate and just went to the one I was familiar with, so I am not counting that as getting lost… I just couldn’t find the station. We got to the museum around 12 and didn’t know where to start. So we just started walking. We saw so many things it would make your head swim. We saw electricity and visual illusions, bones, a real human heart, chicks that had just hatched and were hatching… we walked up to this display just after a chick had hatched, it was still wet. I didn’t see any of the other eggs moving or with holes in them so we didn’t stay long. We found one room with computers and leggos that you could attach to battery boxes. Anna found a computer that had a Dragon Tales Game on it and Stephen found the leggos. He built an airplane, attached it to a battery pack and it rolled across the floor. We were here for about an hour and would have stayed longer if I hadn’t felt the need to continue on. We found a children’s area just after lunch. The kids each made a sheet of paper from recycled newspapers. It is now finishing drying on our bedside table here in the hotel room. This area was Stephen’s favorite. There was a microscope with various things to look at. There was a penny and a sample of water from the Charles River here. Stephen said that his favorite thing was looking at the penny and seeing that Abraham Lincoln is really on it. Microscopes are amazing. Also we were able to see teeny tiny animals swimming the sample of the Charles River. The lady in this area of the museum said that someone collects this every morning. Anna said her favorite thing was riding the train (subway). She also liked making the paper. “The paper was so cool, wasn’t it Stephen?”

We caught the tail end of the electricity show and Anna stayed outside the glass doors. It was very loud. We were in the computer area (with the leggos) for so long that another electricity show started (they’re every 2 hours). The kids opted not to stay for it.

There was a weather area that had a water vapor tornado you could put your hand in, a house you could go in and watch a weather report. As the storm rolled in you could see the clouds roll by the window and the “skylight”. Then you saw it raining outside and lightning, heard the rain… pretty cool.

We ended up staying much later than I anticipated. We left the museum around 6:15 and made it back to the hotel around 8:30 or so.

July 19, 2006

Today was an errand running day. We returned the museum pass and books to the library, I stopped by a fish market to see about taking some lobster home with us for my mom (we’re not), went to Sam’s and went to two restaurants looking for things Mitchel had left at lunch and dinner. We also stopped by the grocery store and back to the library because of a book we missed. Now, we’re eating lunch, about to go swimming, pick up Mitchel for dinner and chiropractor. We’re going to Newport Creamery again (I called New England Creamery in an earlier blog). I think this has become our favorite place to eat. I probably won’t write anymore until we get home.

It has been fun, but it’s time to go home. Like I said, I’ll miss Mitchel, as will the kids, but we can’t live like this forever… although it has been nice… the only responsibility I’ve had is doing clothes twice a week… and I double up so I’m only doing two loads each time. Ahhh, oh well. Sorry it has taken so long to get this blog up. I know I’m leaving stuff out. If I think of anything, I’ll add it in a new blog.

See you soon!

July 5th through July 10th

2006-07-11T06:27:00.000-07:00

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July 5^th (PM) through July 10^th

July 5^th (PM)

The kids and I dropped Mitchel off at work and made it back to the hotel. I said in my last blog I’d take it easy for the next couple of days but that didn’t start until later. Wednesday was spent unpacking the car into our new room back at the Hampton (which is way better than the Holiday Inn in Newton, MA!) We now have a “studio” which is a king sized bed and a sofa that folds out into a double bed. We figured the kids can sleep on a sofa bed for a month without any harm coming to them. It is much better, much more room, the kids can eat at the coffee table (although they rarely do because it is not directly in front of the TV). Wednesday was also spent washing almost a week’s worth of laundry. We may or may not have gone swimming. Not a very exciting day.

July 6^th and July 7^th, ²⁰⁰⁶

These weren’t exciting days either. Well, I should say they weren’t very exciting during the day. There were some interesting aspects and one EXTREMELY EXCITING event that occurred Friday evening. These days were spent at wal-mart, the hotel, the library. Well the library was pretty cool. In the parking lot there were hundreds of caterpillars and some were in cocoons and some had just hatched into moths. They were all attached to a line of trees. Anna found a dead moth so I told her she could keep it to show daddy… we still have it, 4 days later.

The EXTREMELY EXCITING event that happened is that Anna lost her first tooth! It was loose but not quite ready to come out until, somehow… and I’m still unclear how this happened, she rammed it on a juice box. There was a lot of blood but she was fine… after the hysterics. I kept asking her if it hurt and she said no, I think she was afraid of the blood. Well, after we got things calmed down and rinsed out I checked out the tooth and it was barely hanging in there. I told her not to tell daddy because he always gives Stephen fits about pulling his tooth. Well, traitor that I am, told him after making him promise not to pull it. Well off to dinner we went and Mitchel asked her to let him wiggle it. Then he began bribing her to let him pull it. First it was $2, then, somehow, it went down to $1, then back up to $2 and order dessert. Then there was a discussion on how it would be done. Would there be a quick yank or a slow pull. Anna opted for the slow pull with a stop clause. If it began to hurt she could say stop and Mitchel would stop. He got a napkin and reached for the tooth, which immediately fell out in his hand. Anna was still trying to explain to him that she wanted him to pull it slowly. He said, “You want me to pull it slowly?” All the while the tooth has fallen out into Mitchel’s hand. I told Stephen what happened and we’re laughing and Anna figures out what happened by putting her tongue in the hole. She starts laughing and I think there were a few tears… from Anna and from her mama. Not because of the pain (for Anna) but because of the excitement. Well, we went back to the hotel and got a small envelope from the front desk and the tooth fairy left a $10 bill and a gold dollar – that’s the first tooth amount. The tooth fairy always leaves a gold dollar. You know, it’s kind of interesting that at one of the subway stops in Boston if you put in a $10 bill you got back several gold dollar coins and quarters and tokens. I hadn’t seen a gold dollar since the last time Stephen lost a tooth, and then I see several in the span of a week.

July 8^th, 2006

Saturday we all woke up, ate and headed to Newport to the Cliff walk. We had to pay $10 to park at a public beach but other than that the cliff walk is free. www.cliffwalk.com

Basically, the cliff walk is a sidewalk etched on out the side of a cliff. You have the bay (I’m trying to figure out which one) on one side and beautiful houses and mansions on the other. You can go in a few of the mansions because they’re museums but we were just there for the walk and the view. The walk started out very leisurely. We had lunches in our back packs and our camelback type bladders full of water. We came to a spot called the forty steps (Yes, there were forty, I counted). You can walk down to some rocks and crawl around on the rocks. We continued on for a while and the sidewalk ended. We were either walking on a well-worn path in the grass or trying to make our way over the rocks. I think it got more interesting for Mitchel at this point. The kids played on the rocks, threw rocks in the water jumped from little rock islands to little rock islands and had a good time. There were two tunnels along the walk way, one was long enough and curved a little so in the middle of it you couldn’t see either end. Anna wasn’t too particularly thrilled with that but we made it through and it was a neat experience. At the end of the cliff walk (which is 3.5 miles long) we hopped on a trolley. We only had a $10 bill and the driver didn’t have change so he let us ride for free, thank goodness! Of course had it been an issue I would have told him to keep the change. Well he only took us back to the forty steps I mentioned earlier which was about 2/3 mile from the beginning of the walk and probably another 1/3 back to the car so we probably walked around 4 or 5 miles that day.

After napping in the car we went to Point Judith where we had visited before. This is the place Stephen found the starfish. There were no starfish to be seen as the tide was up. We did watch a surfer surf for a little while. Then it was bathroom time. We stopped at a restaurant and inn type place. There was a sign pointing up for the restaurant so I assumed the inn was downstairs… I think inn is a euphemism that means bar or lounge. So Anna and I went to the bathroom in the lounge. Then we found a neat little walkway through the brush onto a beach. The beaches up here are very rocky, no laying out, except in Newport where there were a few beaches with sand. But the rocks are very interesting. We have acquired several for our collection… and to be honest, I’ve kept one or two myself.

After leaving there we ate at New England Creamery… or some kind of creamery. This was pretty good, and then of course the kids got ice cream and shared.

July 9^th 2006

Sunday we drove back to Mystic, CT. This is where the aquarium is that the kids and I visited. Today we visited Mystic Seaport. It is a recreated maritime seaport with and old village, old ships, a planetarium, a children’s area, and much more. We bought a membership so we have to go back one more time with the whole family to get money’s worth. We didn’t see everything the first time and are planning on going back this weekend. It was really interesting. There were lots of old ships, pirate presentations, and the children’s favorite was the children’s museum. There was a small boat they could play in, dress-up clothes, bunk area. They would have stayed all day. We went into an old store that sold things to sailors and captains for their voyage. Here the kids learned how to pound lengths of rope into the cracks between boards to keep it water proof. They also “tied” lengths of rope around two strands of twine or rope (I guess you would call these lines instead of ropes since they’re for a boat). I don’t remember exactly what this was for. Then Mitchel spied a whale harpooner way in the back, barely visible. So the man brought it out for us to look at. It was so heavy the kids couldn’t hold it and Mitchel could barely bring it to his shoulder. We went to the planetarium which was free for us since we had just bought our membership that day. That was interesting. They also gave us a booklet on how to identify things in the summer, fall, winter and spring skies. We ate lunch at the galley and then headed home since it was getting late and we knew we could return. I don’t think we saw half of the seaport. I am definitely looking forward to going back.

July 10^th, 2006

On Monday the kids and I went to the library to pick up a pass to the children’s museum. On our way there I got a call from the other lady who is here with her husband and I convinced the kids we should go to the park with Max in the morning and go to the children’s museum in the afternoon. They had a ball at the park and it didn’t take much to convince Anna, Stephen was a harder sell but he found some boys he could play with and had a great time. We ate lunch with Mitchel in Wickford and went back to the park to play soccer and Frisbee for a while. Max left soon for nap time and we stayed and played and decided to go to the Children’s museum on Tuesday. We headed back to the hotel and swam for a good 2 or 3 hours. Mitchel had a business dinner; I got the kids ready for bed. The kids were in bed around 8:30 and Mitchel and I went up the hall to the lobby and had a cup of coffee. It was nice. Today (Tuesday the 11^th) we have to go to the children’s museum. Although when I picked up the ticket yesterday the librarian said something about having Monday’s ticket so I don’t know if we can get in today. They are begging me to go back and I promise we’ll make it back before we leave! J

I hope all is well with all of you. We will be leaving here in about 2 weeks, actually less than that. So there will only be two or three more blogs. I am sad and excited at the same time. There was a chance Mitchel was going to be up here until June and we thought about putting the kids in school up here. That would have been fun and exciting, but a pain in the bottom, too. Anyway, until next time…

June 30 through July 5th

2006-07-05T17:33:00.000-07:00

Click here for photographs (There should be 14 different albums which translates into hundreds of pictures).

WOW! What a great city. Apparently it is the smallest big city there is. It has less than 600,000 people and it is steeped in history! We have mastered the Subway and it has been great. We bought the Go Boston card for each of us and it gets us into a whole bunch of attractions. So if we use it wisely we will be able to recoup our money and then some.

A co-worker of Mitchel’s, who is also working in Rhode Island, used to visit Boston frequently because the lady who is now his wife lived in Boston when they were dating. She is up here for the summer with their three year old little boy, Max. They showed us how to traverse Boston and we all went to the Boston Children’s Museum together. The Children’s Museum is right near the sight of the Boston Tea Party so we saw that while were down that way. The museum has a big blow up doll of Arthur (PBS show) on top, and many Arthur characters throughout. It was fun, but we got a late start and I can just imagine how late we would have been had we not had their help. It was hard to find the GoBoston Ticket Office. This is the card I mentioned above. It is near Faneuil Hall which is very BUSY! I thought all of Boston would be like this but once we left that area it eased up again. We ate breakfast in the room. Breakfast consisted of PB&J sandwiches and turkey and cheese sandwiches. We did all the above and had a very late lunch, or early dinner more like around 5 or so. We ate at Prudential Center which is a mall that has a food court. Pretty good food, depending on where you go, I guess. I got lobster bisque and quiche combo meal. It was pretty good. We ate outside and relaxed for a while. As we were leaving I saw that we could get a card for discounts to the stores in Prudential Center. It normally costs $5 but with the GoBoston ticket it was free.

Max, the little boy who was with us, was carried on his dad’s shoulders most of the time so Anna wanted to be carried. This is the same little girl that will go hiking for hours up hill and down, through dense woods and never complain. We carried her some and honestly we didn’t walk that much. We were on the T (Boston’s subway) most of the time. We got home around 8 or so, took showers and went to bed.

Today was our second day in Boston. We used the GoBoston card for the Duck Tours this morning. http://www.bostonducktours.com/ We got up REAL early… 6:30, had the kids’ clothes lain out and got them up and out the door in about 20 minutes. Got on the T and headed into town. We got to the Duck Tours kiosk in the Prudential Center (which is a mall) and stood in line. We were told to be there by 8:30 because they usually sell out by noon and this being a holiday weekend they figured they’d be sold out before that. We arrived around 8:10 and there was already a line. I got in line and sent Mitchel and the kids to get breakfast. I met some great people standing around me. One man was from Jersey City, another was from up-state New York, and one lived in Boston or real close and had grown children visiting. I “bought” the tickets for all of us and went and found the crew who were just finishing up breakfast. I grabbed a croissant and a coke to eat as we walked down the sidewalk to the Duck Tours. I was able to grab an early tour – 10:00. We were told to arrive at 9:30 and it was almost 9 so we walked down the street toward them. The Duck is an amphibious vehicle built in World War II. I believe 40% of the sea to land things that they did were done using one of these boats… incidentally these boats were mostly built by women since the men were away at war. They have several different vehicles, all with different names.

We were on the rust colored duck… at first (The Olga Ironsides was its name). It was great. We were driven through Boston, saw a lot of the sights and then drove straight into the Charles River. Now here’s the neat thing… if driving a car into the river wasn’t neat enough… they let the kids drive. Stephen and Anna got to drive the boat. It was way cool. See the pictures. Anna almost didn’t want to go drive it because she’s so shy. I asked her if she wanted me to go up there with her… I was up there for maybe 2 seconds. She got up to the seat and sat down and forgot about me. It was great for both of them. As we pulled out of the water we noticed this loud grinding sound coming from beneath the vehicle. He radioed for a loaner and we pulled over right were Old Ironsides is (who our boat was “named” after). This ship, Old Ironsides, is also known as the USS Constitution and is the first ship in the United States Navy. We didn’t get on the USS Constitution but we walked back and looked at it and got some pictures. As we were walking to look at it another Duck Tour came through and the driver asked our driver what we were doing. Our driver said, “I always give my group walking tours.” Then he told the driver what happened. When the loaner came it was the rainbow vehicle. They are all different colors. This one was white with large rainbow stripes painted down the side. It is named South End Sara. Apparently South End has a large gay community… hence the name of the vehicle with the rainbow. One of the neatest things I saw was some artwork we saw at a museum. It was a large slab of concrete with graffiti on it. It was protected by two things of plexi-glass. It was a strip from the Berlin Wall with the original graffiti on it.

We ended up back where we had started and decided to go find the whale watching place, get our tickets just to be sure we had them. We headed back on the T, transferred lines and headed out to the wharfs. We made it and after 45 minutes of trying to find the office we found it and bought our tickets and she told us to go back the way we came in order to find the 7-11 for lunch. The kids got Lunchables, which they loved, I got a hot dog and Mitchel got some Mexican thing. Then it was whale watching time. To make a long story short the line we were going to use had a broken boat so Boston Harbor Cruises were doing them a favor and loaning them a boat. This was not told to us when we got our ticket. I asked a Boston Harbor Cruises guy where to find the other cruise line (and felt like a schmuck for asking about a rival line) and HE is the one that told me.

We started out outside and the breeze felt great. Then all of a sudden you could feel the breeze get at least 10 degrees cooler. It was amazing. The kids and I went inside. Stephen started feeling a little green so I sent him outside and Anna fell asleep for a little while. It was a little choppy but they said it had been choppier on the morning cruise… poor people. It was still pretty choppy and there was a lot of yakking going on around me. First a little girl, then I walked by a table and two people had their heads down and their area wasn’t very clean. Then in a line for the bathroom you could smell the Lysol coming out of it and soon a guy with a “Crew” shirt on came out. I said I hope they pay you well. He looked at me and said… “Not well enough for this.” They had latex gloves on but no protective masks that I saw. I don’t think you could pay me to do that job.

I guess you want to hear about the whales rather than the yaks. We saw several humpback whales. One of them was a mother with a baby. It was great. You could see their sprays then they would show their backs. Sometimes they seemed to stay up for many seconds. When they showed their entire tail it was when they were diving deep. You knew then, that they wouldn’t be back up for several seconds. Towards the end of the cruise they were letting hotdogs go for $1 a piece so we got a few and had dinner on the boat. We had a great time and Mitchel, who is prone to getting seasick, didn’t! There at the end, when we had been sitting inside for a while he starting feeling queasy but he walked outside and is doing fine. I am, though, still feeling the rocking motion of the boat, even though I’m on the firm ground of my desk chair. The website for the cruise we took is http://www.bostonharborcruises.com/whale_schedule.html.

Ah, Monday, our last day with the GoBoston Card. We new we wanted to do Plimouth Plantation (that’s not a typo, the plantation is spelled with an I rather than a Y) and the Mayflower II. So we got in the car and headed toward the town of Plymouth. We arrived at the plantation when it opened at 9:00 am. We bought our ticket and walked in to view the first movie. We noticed at the bottom of our tickets that it said it was good for two consecutive days. So we promptly left, went to see the Mayflower II and Plymouth Rock and decided to head back to Boston and get more bang for our GoBoston buck. The Mayflower II was interesting; it was a lot smaller than I had first anticipated. Apparently the first Mayflower got sold for scrap years (centuries) ago. Plymouth Rock was not what you expect. It’s a lot smaller than what you would picture. It has been moved several times until the last time put it back in its original position. But every time it moved it lost pieces and it is now only 1/3 as large as it originally was.

We then headed back to the hotel, went to the bathroom and headed into Boston. We ate at Prudential Center again then headed to get our Trolley tickets (GoBoston again). We got tickets to do a 45 minute harbor tour but the line was hugely long so we skipped it. We didn’t regret this too much since we had been on the water twice the previous day (Duck Tours and Whale watching). We went to the Boston Aquarium instead. Mitchel and I both felt a little unsettled in the stomach. And I was able to sit and rest since the kids and I had gone to the Mystic Aquarium. It was very similar. We had a great time here and because we had the GoBoston tickets we got $1 off the Imax Movie. We chose to watch the African Safari 3-D movie. After this was over we headed to the 7-11 for dinner, same one as before. We ate on the pier near the water. Anna knocked Stephen’s Sprite in the water where there were many other interesting things… garbage, interesting garbage and jelly fish. As we were sitting there I saw a lady walk by with a University of Alabama t-shirt on. I know it is the rival college but I was happy to see some home folk so I gave her a big War Eagle. I don’t think she smiled although she did ask me if I wanted a black eye. After that it was a trip to the Subway. Sitting on the subway Stephen notices someone with an Auburn shirt!! He said war eagle and the teenager gave him the thumbs up sign. The lady across from me (near this boy) asked about Stephen’s t-shirt. Our pediatric dentist is Dr. Baker Chambliss and he gives his patients t-shirts. Stephen was wearing his and the lady recognized it. They live in Birmingham as well. I had been looking for an Auburn anything as we walked throughout the city. The closest I came was a Florida State hat.

We are now back at the hotel, getting baths and watching TV, the same thing we’ve done every night… relax.

I just calculated how much we saved with the GoBoston card. Had we done everything listed above it would have cost us $610.55 (probably minus a few dollars due to the only numbers I had to make calculations). And this doesn’t include the 45 minute harbor cruise we got tickets for but we didn’t take. We paid about $320 for all 4 cards. I know we would have not done the whale watching or the Duck tours because we probably would have thought they were too expensive. I highly recommend this card. The only negative is some of the activities (whale watch and trolley specifically come to mind) are the second rate ones. The whale watch office was past the main pier and in a little alcove… kind of hard to find. Not right off the T as the others were. It took a while to find it. Also the trolley was a second rate one, their last trip was at 3 and after 3 we saw other trolleys running. The trolley also offers free 45 minute harbor tours (which we also got with the GoBoston card). Well there were about 10 minutes to go before the next harbor cruise left and we wanted to go on it. The driver of the trolley, right before the stop, pulls over for no apparent reason and says that we have to wait there for a few minutes… I guess to make sure we’re last in line and that the harbor cruise line fills up with paying customers first. But, had we had more time we could have done great things… Duck tour was great, Plimouth Village was great, Kids Museum, Aquarium… these were all great as well. Other cities have the Go card as well.

One thing we noticed is that people who you would normally ask for information aren’t very helpful or specific. Especially when asking where you need to go. It’s almost as if they want you to miss the boat time, or the starting time. Directions are never given as well as I would like. This may be because they’re busy, but still. But the people on the street are SO helpful. I never felt like I was a nuisance to the general Boston population just because we were tourists. We even had one couple take us through a construction zone to get us to the children’s museum.

Our last day in Boston, July 4^th was busy and a little of a let down. We did our second day at Plimouth Rock in the morning. We got there later than the day before because we slept in a little. We finally got going, stopped at the same McDonald’s and then went to the site. It was very interesting. There were native peoples (the sign says don’t call them Indians or even Native Americans) who answered questions from a 2006 perspective but they were dressed in traditional costume, doing traditional work, and had traditional gardens and housing around them. We moved on to the village where people are in character from a 17^th century perspective (never heard of Alabama, for instance).

We watched a modern day potter making pots and Anna kept going back to this time and again. She was really interested in it… sounds like a good gift to me.

We headed in to Boston after that to do Bostononian things. We began the Freedom trail which is about a 3 mile trail that takes you by different places in the history of Boston as well as our country. We went to the graveyard where Paul Revere is buried and also the five people who died in the Boston massacre are buried there. A descendant of Mother Goose was buried there as well. We traveled on and it began to rain but it was just a little sprinkle and stopped soon after. We didn’t do the whole trail so we missed Paul Revere’s birth place as well as the church that hung the two lanterns (one if by land, two if by sea). We headed to Faneuil hall for dinner. There are two Cheers bars in Boston. One is a newer one and it looks more like the set of the TV show. This one is at Faneuil Hall. We peeked in but didn’t go in. Very crowded! We got some hotdogs from a vendor there for dinner and then headed to watch the Fireworks over the Charles River. It was about 6:30 and we planned to walk there. We knew it would take a while and wanted to see the fireworks at 9. We knew we’d have to wait for a little while but we wanted to get a decent seat. As we were walking we saw the original Cheers Bar. The one the TV show was fashioned after. And yes, you do have to go down stairs to get to it. We finally made it to the fireworks area, saw the “half-shell” where the Boston Pops play, they weren’t playing yet. We found a place to sit by some college students. It was around 7:30 when we finally sat down. I figured an hour and a half wouldn’t be too long to wait. We’d been sitting there around 30 minutes and I had been hearing things that made me a little curious… so I asked someone what time the fireworks were supposed to start… NOT 9:00 but 10:30!!! There was no way we’d survive that. They’d go until 11:00 then a long trip back on the T fighting 500,000 people to get a space on the T to get home so probably 12:30 or 1:00 until we made it back to the hotel (our T stop is the last one on the line) and then we’d have to bathe because we’d all be nasty… 2:00 before we all got in bed??? Probably. We decided to leave. It took us an hour to get back to the hotel. While on the T we played Rock, Paper Scissors… all four of us. We had a great time! We were all laughing out loud; it was truly a great family moment. After we got back to the hotel it took about 45 minutes for everyone but Mitchel to bathe and we had the Boston fireworks show on TV. Anna fell asleep before the fireworks started and she never falls asleep while watching TV. Stephen fell asleep during the fireworks as did I. I think we made the right decision, no matter how hard it was. I was really disappointed but feel much better about that decision now.

This morning, as we were packing up in Boston to come back to Rhode Island I asked Stephen what his favorite part about Boston was. He said playing Rock, Paper Scissors on the subway the night before. Mitchel said that when I asked that question that popped into his mind and he knew Stephen would say that. Go figure, we go, go, go for four days. We do all these activities that we think the kids will love instead of walking down neat streets, looking at historical sights that don’t mean anything to the kids yet, but doing all these things for them… and what’s his favorite? Having fun as a family, playing a nonsensical game to pass time on the subway. Anna’s favorite thing was the map cow. All through Boston there are these cows, almost life-sized, decorated so many different ways. You’ll see them in some of our photographs. But there was one with a subway map on it. Very recognizable because this map is everywhere, in the trains, in the subway stations, on maps, etc.

It was a great weekend, a great experience, but I don’t feel as if I’ve experienced Boston. We did a lot of fun things but not things particularly Boston-y. J I told Mitchel that going back to Rhode Island was almost like going “home”. We were just constantly going. Mitchel promised that we’d return to Boston in about 5 years to watch the fireworks. I think it’s a great idea but we’ll start our vacation in Boston on the fourth instead of four days earlier. We were exhausted and wouldn’t have done very well staying up so late on the fourth.

Now we’re back in Rhode Island and I believe the kids and I will take things really easy the next couple of days!

June 26th through June 29th

2006-06-29T19:40:00.000-07:00

June 26 through 29

Click here to View Photographs.

June 26, 2006

Well, I had two people tell me we were headed to a bad part of town but we did it anyway. One said it was okay since we were going during the day. We went to Regal Reptiles. What an experience! They had turtles and alligators and snakes and lizards and iguanas and… (Yes, I know, iguanas are a type of lizard but I wanted you to get the point.) They also had spiders… (Yes, again, I know spiders are not reptiles… none-the-less, they had ‘em). It was a warehouse divided into two rooms. One room had open cages with fish, land turtles, water turtles and alligators (alligators were behind a huge Plexiglas wall). The other side had caged in animals (large snakes, lizards, iguanas, turtles). We got there and began looking around one room. The first thing we saw was a python or boa eating a rat. They feed them dead rats but the snakes still constrict them. We headed to the next room over and they were feeding an anaconda. As we walked up the stopped feeding it because it could traumatize the children. I began thinking of my children; raised by a deer, turkey, squirrel… etc. hunter… my children probably wouldn’t be traumatized. I told them my children would be fine, they had to ask their supervisor who said okay. Anyway, they were feeding a rabbit to an anaconda. The would attach the rabbit to a long pole, swing it into the huge enclosure and wiggle it like a live rabbit. The anaconda grabbed it in a heartbeat, twisting around it to kill it, I assume, and then began to eat it. Gruesome, yes, but it is a part of life that we will never get to see. Then they had an alligator/turtle show. Some turtles live in the same enclosure as the alligators. They showed us a turtle or two then brought out the “big boys” – the alligators. Some guy walked in among them, pulling them out and showing them to us. It was interesting, but I doubt they pay that guy enough.

After the alligator show I paid $1 for Stephen and $1 for Anna to feed a turtle some lettuce. Joe Tucker Park so feeding a turtle would be a new experience for us. It was great.

After the turtles they brought out snakes for the kids to hold and an alligator for the kids to hold and pet. Look at the pictures, we held a huge snake and a little snake… and an alligator. The last thing available to hold was a tarantula. The tarantula the guy brought out is poisonous. But their bite is similar to that of a bee sting. As a matter of fact, if you’re allergic to bees then you are allergic to tarantulas. I didn’t realize that. Well there was a sightsee-er holding the tarantula. So I asked Stephen and Anna if they wanted to hold it. Stephen was willing but Anna wasn’t. I asked the museum guy if Stephen could hold it. He wouldn’t let Stephen hold it because it does bite and it is poisonous (the other guy who held it was an adult and could make his own informed decision). But he would let Stephen put it on his shirt. Stephen had it on his shirt for a few seconds then the museum guy took it back. As soon as he had it in his hands I turned to Anna to see if she wanted to hold it. I barely got the words out of my mouth before the guy yelled and threw the tarantula to the floor. Apparently he was subject to the bee sting bite of the tarantula, which, according to his reaction, feels worse than a bee sting. I’m just glad he didn’t fling it on me. He also showed great restraint in not using the profanity that was on the tip of his tongue, especially since he was around my children. We left soon after that and stopped at the gift shop. Anna bought a stuffed boa constrictor and Stephen bought a tarantula tee-shirt. It wasn’t the shirt he wanted but they didn’t have the one he wanted in his size. It was a big dragon-like thing… I don’t remember it, but that’s what Stephen just told me.

We had snacks in the car, came back to the hotel and had lunch. That evening Mitchel had a working dinner so the kids and I played in the pool and ate in the room. I also did clothes while the kids played in the pool. Monday and Thursday have turned out to be our clothes days. By the time we left the pool my eyes were burning and I didn’t even get in. As we were leaving Anna actually started crying because her eyes hurt so bad. I mentioned something to the lady at the front desk (who, of course, knows us all by name). And I figured they’d be talking bad about us. But the next day the lady who took my complaint said the chlorine levels were WAY high but that it was now fixed. We haven’t been back in yet, just because we’ve been too busy.

June 27^th, 2006

We didn’t do much today, went to the library and joined. They have a summer membership deal you can do, which I did. With it you can check out books, DVDs, etc. Also, they have this great program where they buy season passes and you can check them out to various museums and attractions around the area. Only one can be checked out at a time. We got the one to the Mystic Aquarium. This was not a free one but a discounted one. So we went to the library on the 28^th… but that’s for a later paragraph. After we left the library we had a picnic lunch at a playground where it was nice, shady and breezy… beautiful day. Stephen made a friend. There was a little five year old boy who wanted to play with Stephen and Anna. Stephen took the Frisbee and was giving him pointers on how to catch and throw. Stephen was so great with this little boy. Very encouraging… “Get under it, grab it with both hands, this is how you throw it…” I was really proud of him. After we ate we checked to see the price of the swan paddle boats. $5/person. I didn’t have the cash on me as I had just exchanged my last $20 for quarters so we passed on that and went and played at the playground for a while. This is the same playground I mentioned earlier (Boundless Playground by Hasbro).

I had some grocery shopping to do so we left the playground and went by Sam’s and Shaw’s. Shaw’s is a grocery store up here. We got what we needed then went back to the hotel. I believe we ate at Applebee’s with Daniel. Wendy was our waitress and I believe Anna fell in love with her.

June 28^th, 2006

Ah, the fun day! We went to Mystic Aquarium. It was very cloudy and rain was in the forecast so we did all the outside exhibits first – before the rain came. The first stop was the sting ray pool. There is a pool with sting rays in them, obviously, and you can pet them. They swim in a circle, and the will rise up and let you pet them. It’s like a big skating rink (no pun intended… skates are animals similar to rays) with all the sting rays going in the same direction. Their tails are not their stingers. Stingers are cut like fingernails so they don’t sting the people petting them. Also, outside there were beluga whales (beautiful), stellar sea lions which are the largest sea lions in the world, seals, penguins and a marsh area that has huge frogs… we saw one and weren’t convinced it was real… but it wasn’t there the next day. There were tadpoles with heads as big around as a quarter or half dollar… they’d have to be huge to make these frogs. There were turtles, as well. It began raining on us so we quickly finished the outside exhibits. Once you walk inside the first thing you see is a tank FULL of these beautiful jelly fish. There’s no way I can do justice to the aquarium so I’m not going to begin describing the exhibits. Needles to say I believe I took over 200 pictures. You don’t have to look at them all but they will all be in the picture section. We did the sea lion show twice just because we could. Octopus, another ray pool (not to be petted) with a huge sting ray, neat exhibits. Then we went on a 3-D ride, well it’s really 4-d because the seats shake and move as you go down into the sea. When the fish monsters started coming out at us Anna freaked and got in my lap. I took her glasses off but she was still a little nervous. It was cool, though. And the next day she wanted to go back but it was packed so we skipped it. We saw the sea lion show once in the morning, saw the exhibits, went to the car and ate our picnic lunch then went back and saw everything again, including the sea lion show. We got back late and had dinner in the room then went with Mitchel to the chiropractor.

June 29^th, 2006

We went back to the Mystic aquarium this morning. They have a deal where you buy a ticket and it’s good for three consecutive days. Although the kids wanted to go to the children’s museum I mentioned in a previous blog but, alas, the library didn’t have tickets for that day. They had them for Friday but we will be packing for Boston on Friday and won’t have time to go. SO I had to make the kids go to the Aquarium again, but we didn’t pack a lunch. I decided we’d do everything once and come back to the hotel for lunch. We didn’t see all the exhibits this time. We petted the sting rays, we watched the beluga whales, played on some rock formations, skipped the penguins, walked through the marsh. This time we heard a frog croaking. You could see its “throat” swelling and contracting as it croaked… too cool. We watched them feed the anemones which was interesting. The docent would drop a cut up piece of fish or shrimp into the anemone. The anemone would then close his tentacles around the meat and eat. We watched the seal show one more time and then left. It was interesting. We didn’t feel the need to rush through today to get everything in. We stayed at the places that were most interesting to us and didn’t have to “see it all” today. We came back home, ate, I took a quick nap and then we went down to the car and cleaned it out. We went back up to the room and went swimming until daddy came home. We were all hungry so we went to Chili’s for dinner. While we were there Mitchel was recounting a story about work and what I heard was, “I was telling him that my mother-in-law is a drunk driver.” I said “What?!” I was trying to remember when my mom had gotten a ticket for drunk driving. With epilepsy that affects my memory I never know when I’ve forgotten something, when I’ve blocked something, or when something has never happened and there’s no reason I should remember it. Anyway, I said to Mitchel, “Your mother-in-law is a drunk driver?!” He looks at me and very emphatically says, “MY BROTHER-IN-LAW IS A TRUCK DRIVER.” Which he is, Mitchel’s sister’s husband drives a truck during the week. Of course, as soon as we got in the car I called my mom so we could both laugh at this, which we did… hysterically. It is now 10:10 and we’re still up watching cartoons. A few minutes ago Mitchel was watching Tombstone and Stephen said, “This was back in the old days, dad, when you were a kid.” I think Mitchel and I laughed for 5 minutes… okay, Mitchel wasn’t doing much laughing but I thought it was hilarious… I got tickled just writing about it!

Now it’s bed time. I’m tired and I’ve got packing to do because… WOO HOO, we’re headed to Boston tomorrow to spend the 4^th of July!!!

Until next time!

I love you all.

June 21st through June 25th

2006-06-25T17:45:00.000-07:00

June 21 through 25

Click Here for photographs (Several different "albums")

Okay, my days are running together. I have no idea what we did Wednesday of last week. I thought that was the day we went to Battleship Cove but according to the blog it was Tuesday so here we go, as best as I can remember. I do remember we went with Mitchel to the chiropractor again and then we stopped at a little mom and pop joint for pizza… we did this for you Erin! Erin now lives in California and asked me to eat some decent pizza for her. Apparently you can get a good pizza in California. I was recounting this story the other night and someone from California just happened to be walking through and told me that wasn’t true… it depended on where you went. Well, we didn’t get Chicago deep dish style, but it was good… not all that, but not bad, either.

June 22, 2006

I decided to take a break Thursday and relax around the room, swim, clean up, watch TV, etc. We heated up our leftovers and took them out for a picnic. It was so pretty out we decided to go to the Zoo. We actually saw a couple of things we hadn’t seen before. There was one exhibit that had little domes you could crawl in, stick your head out and your head was in the “cage” of the animal. We never did see that animal but it was pretty cool. Also, we went on a walk through the marsh and saw a mama duck with her ducklings.

June 23, 2006

Friday we did take a break. We stayed around the hotel room for a little while. We ran to Wal-Mart to get cheap inner tubes to play with in the pool as well as rain ponchos we knew we’d need for the coming weekend. When we got back I decided we had watched enough TV. so we went down to the lobby and played Uno for a little while. There’s a basket in the lobby with dominoes, cribbage, and other games. Anna and Stephen got the dominoes out, split them up, and began creating domino effects. As we were sitting there, a man walks in with a bird on his gloved hand… We got to me Cody, the Prairie Falcon… aka one of the United States Air Force Academy’s mascots. He was here for the air show that was happening Saturday and Sunday. We got to pet him and the kids got their pictures taken with him (see photos). We soon got a call from Mitchel asking us if we wanted to meet him for dinner… well duh! Needless to say, we met him for dinner.

We had a late night pillow fight and this time I got pictures. Pretty good ones, if I do say so myself. There were several pillows flying through mid air. Some of the kids’ pictures have red eye… It kind of makes the kids look evil. I was in bed trying to read with pillows flying all around me... then I decided to get in on the action. I didn't get on anyone's team. Up to this point it was Mitchel against Stephen and Anna. Now I was just taking opportunity shots, not matter who it was.

June 24, 2006

Saturday we woke up and it was rainy. It rained all weekend. Rained out some of the air show’s flying activity although we got to see some stunt planes and we saw a jet truck race a plane flying upside down. I believe this was the highlight of Mitchel’s trip to the air show. The kids got to sit in a several cockpits, push buttons, pull levers and pretend to be fighter pilots. Oh, I did meet someone famous… sort of. There is a famous picture of a, I believe a World War II sailor who has just gotten off of ship, grabbing a lady and kissing her. For those of you in Sarasota, it’s the huge sculpture that we went down to the bay front to see when we were there in December. I met that sailor. He was selling pictures of himself with his autograph. We declined the autograph but spoke with him for a few minutes.

We left the air show when it became obvious the rain was not going to let up. They announced over the intercom that there wouldn’t be anymore flying that day. We have to drive right by a movie theater on our way home. We stopped and saw the movie Cars. It was cute, I don’t usually enjoy cartoons but this was a good one. I think next we’ll go see Over the Hedge. Hopefully we haven’t waited too long to see it. I’m not sure when it will be leaving theaters.

June 25, 2006

Today, Sunday, we just got in the car and drove. We drove down to Point Judith and back, stopping wherever we decided to. The first stopping point we hit was Gilbert Stuart’s birth place. For those of you who don’t know, and I didn’t know, he is a very famous painter. He is the man who painted the portrait of George Washington that is on the $1 bill. One of the things that stuck out to me was a portrait that was commissioned to be done in 9 days. Because he was not very happy about being rushed he took the head of George Washington off one of his other paintings and put it on this one and painted George Washington’s horse backwards so you see this big old horse bottom. And George Washington’s head is not proportional to his body.

http://www.gilbertstuartmuseum.com/

We then drove to Point Judith which looks out on Rhode Island Sound and Block Island Sound. It is located in Narragansett, RI. (narra – gan – set) Every time I hear about Block Island Sound I think of a Billy Joel song… something about cruising through Block Island Sound, but I digress. We got out of the car, donned our rain ponchos and walked down a rocky cliff, well Stephen and I did. There was a definite line where the rocks were much darker and they were slimier. I’m assuming the tide was out and this is how far it would come up the shore. Stephen came running up to me with something in his hand and said, “This looks just like a starfish.” He had found a starfish in a tidal pool. He put it back in the sea and I never did see it again. I looked and looked for another one, but, alas, there were none to be found. Neat area, though. I’d like to go back again on a sunny day. Maybe this is a place the kids and I can go when Mitchel is at work. There were lots of interesting rocks. I wish I had a penny for every rock that Stephen and Anna want to keep. I actually kept one from this area. http://www.lighthouse.cc/pointjudith/

We headed back up to where we started, stopped at Wal-Mart to get a few things. As always, when Mitchel is with us, we buy more than we had planned. This time it was Nerf guns. They shoot little Nerf darts. We got four of them and had a war. I’m sure there will be many more wars to come… we also bought extra darts. The extra darts whistle as they sail through the air. No one has gotten hurt… yet.

After the war we went down to the pool, Mitchel worked out for a little while then we all went swimming. We came back, all showered and ate and it’s 8:23 and the kids are going to bed as soon as they’re TV. show and macaroni and cheese is over. I got some microwaveable mac and cheese at Sam’s before we left, I may have mentioned this earlier, and that has been the big thing. We’re almost out. I’ll have to wait to get some more so we can eat up some of this soup and ravioli!

I’ve got some great things planned next week. Thanks to John and Kelly Barton for sending me fresh ideas this weekend. Stay posted to find out what we’ll do next!