Boston Trip

We were due for our temple trip and we were needing a break from the mundaneness of winter, and the kids had school off and Brian had his weekend in the middle of the week so we decided to go to Boston for a night. In retrospect going to Boston to escape during the winter was not quite such the escape, but we still had fun.

We went to the temple first.  We didn't see any cars at first, and we were worried that it was closed (we didn't check because we know when the bi-annual cleanings are).  No the snow was just so high you couldn't see the cars at first.

After the temple we went to the Boston Science Museum.  With the traffic we didn't get there until almost 4:00.  It ended up being a good time though, most people were going home so it wasn't very crowded, and the Museum had extended hours so we were able to stay for a while.  We went to go see the dinosaurs first.

Brian and Joshua had a blast really looking at all the exhibits.  I followed the girls around who were a little less focused.  They did enjoy looking at the snake and turtles swimming around.

One of my favorite exhibits was they had all these drawers with different kinds of sea shells, and probably other things, I didn't get to look in very many of them, but they had them all sorted by type and you could touch one, and the rest were under glass.  The kids liked an exhibit where you went through this sensor to see if you could sneak through the woods without the birds noticing you.  They did that over and over again.

At the end they played in a space capsule.  They had a lot of fun in that. 

After the museum we went to go get dinner. That was a little bit of an ordeal with Boston traffic, but we finally got there, and then afterwards we went to our hotel and got there about 9:00.  We were able to find a good deal and get a room with two bedrooms and a couch bed.  So the girls slept together, Joshua had the couch, and Brian and I were not in the same room keeping the kids awake.  (Our existence in the room keeps them from going to sleep).

The next morning we got up enjoyed a delicious breakfast and then went swimming for a couple of hours.  The pool was reasonably warm if you were moving.  Miriam got cold and figured out a solution.  She would get out of the pool and dry off and stay out until she was freezing, then she would come back into the pool which now felt all warm.  (I know it worked because I did the same thing, not by choice, when I took the kids back and forth to the bathroom multiple times).

We were glad we enjoyed our pool time and our time at the museum the night before because when we finally navigated the roads back to Boston the museum parking garage was full.  So we just decided to go home a little early.

There was a crazy amount of snow in Boston, plus they don't have anywhere to put it.  Entire lanes of the roads are gone to the snow.  There are cars that are not coming out until spring.  Boston has been trying to move a lot of its snow out of the roads.  On our way out of there we found the giant quarry of snow where they were dumping it, it was huge.  And the snow mountains were huge.

On our way home we stopped for a late lunch.  They had a pinball machine. I have fond memories of playing pinball on some road trips growing up, so we all took turns playing pinball.  I think the machine had a chin sensor, because Minna got tons of replay balls and her chin was resting right on the machine.

Joshua quite enjoyed it too.

So we had a nice little getaway this winter break.