Almost The End

Five days from now we will be high-tailing it out of Boston and heading back south.  Going home.  Well "home" for me, but literally home for Brian since he was born and raised in Knoxville.  But it is like going home for me, since throughout my childhood as an Army brat Grandmother and Granddaddy's house in Knoxville always felt like "home base" for our family, and especially since I knew that Mom and Dad (Gran and Pawpaw that is) always planned on retiring there.  But I never expected that I would end up living there too, but since God arranged a "hometown" boy for me to fall in love with and marry, it turns out I am.

On Wednesday morning the family will be getting up early and going to pick up a moving truck and car trailer.  We've hired some strong men to load our belongings, and while that's going on the kids and I are going to hop on the T for our last ride and head to the airport.  We are flying out of Boston around 1pm, connecting through Charlotte, and landing in Knoxville at 5:11pm where I expect we will be greeted by two overjoyed sets of grandparents.  The kids and I will be spending the first night at my parents brand-new lake house, which I just can't wait to see.

After the truck is loaded, Brian has the unenviable job to drive the moving truck and car trailer 960 miles and 14+ hours to our new diggs in Knoxville.  Though last year at this time he promised he would never be driving a moving truck again, money talks and it was a way cheaper option then hiring movers to do the whole thing.  Brian has said that he will stop and sleep at a hotel this time (instead of the 2 hours of sleep he got in the truck at a rest area last year), but I'm not going to be surprised if he pulls a stunt like that again just to get the drive over.  The truck will get unloaded Thursday or Friday at some point, Brian is going to go into work on Friday (Aug 1st) to do some orientation, then Saturday will hit the road again (with Granddad?) to make a one-day round trip to Winston-Salem to pick up all our stuff in storage.  After that he'll have the next week off and then report for his real first day of work on August 11th.

*  *  * 

This whole last month has been a bittersweet series of "lasts" for Boston.  Today was our last trip to the Aquarium, last weekend was our last trip downtown as a family for a meal at Faneuil Hall/Quincy Market, last Sunday was our last church service with our whole family (B has call on Saturday so will be at home sleeping this coming Sunday morning).  And, of course, we've been savoring our final visits with the good friends God has blessed us with this year.

Some of our special small group church friends...

And our good friend I. (and her family).

There's still packing to be done, though we have growing piles of boxes around the apartment and crowding our halls already.  There are lots more good-byes to say and two final call shifts for Brian and then we'll be done.  DONE DONE DONE with nine years of med school, residency and fellowship.  Brian and I can scarcely believe it - our whole married life we have been working towards this point in time and we have just a few more days until we've crossed the finish line.  Hooray and thank goodness!  Knoxville, here we come!

Stowe VT Addendum

When I realized I had quite a few additional pictures from Stowe to share, then remembered another little story I wanted to include, I decided to stick it all into a new post.  So here's some fill-in-the-blanks from our trip north.

 The almost-vertical hike we took our first morning in Stowe, before exploring Smuggler's Cave.

The top part of Bingham Falls (the part that thankfully Sarah didn't go over).  We never made it to even see the lower portion of the falls, which I think had more vertical drop.

Brian's finished stone tower, a pretty impressive one if I do say so.  And I just noticed that in the upper right hand of the picture you can see towers made by some kids that were playing across the stream (they were inspired by Brian's example).

The kids and Brian also amused themselves by throwing rocks in the water to make big splashes.  I amused myself by shooting slow-shutter speed photos of said splashes.  I'm pretty sure this one was one of Brian's (larger) rocks)

Sarah's throwing is accompanied by yelling and this face... every time!

Brian and Nathan at Bingham, showing off some of their favorite rock finds.

The view from our condo balcony.  Lovely during the day plus one particularly beautiful sunset that Brian and I enjoyed after the kids were in bed.  This may or may not have prompted us to look at houses/land for sale in Maryville TN, since it made us think how nice it would be to end up with the Smokey Mountains in our backyard.

Some more pictures from our hike at the top of Mount Mansfield.

Another interesting part of our hike on the mountain was Nathan's observation that "We are so tall.  This mountain is taller then God!"  I'm not sure what prompted this line of thinking, but almost three weeks later Nathan's still making comments along these lines: "Boston is bigger then God.  The T tracks are longer then God.  The whole world is wider then God!"  We started then and are continuing to talk with him about God being bigger then everything - God made everything and he's bigger then everything too.  I've told him that sometime these things are hard for us to think about and understand, so we will just continue to discuss.  But I wanted to remember that on top of this (admittedly very high) mountain was the first time Nathan began exploring thoughts along these lines.

The kids LOVED toasting marshmallows two of the nights at the condo.  Unfortunately we never got the fire started early enough to let it die down into coals, so we were roasting in the dancing flames both times!

The view of Mount Mansfield from near our condo.  For our hike on Sunday morning, we parked near the hump on the left where the cell towers are (just to the right of the base), then we hiked over the first and second little lumps on the ridge.  The second, pointier hump was where we had our picnic and turned around. We decided not to try and ascent the taller summit on the right of the photo (obscured slightly by the clouds).

The dam after a second day's work.  Neither kid wanted to pose with Daddy this time, but I was impressed with how hard this guy and the kids worked to build this structure.

The Big Bad Wolf and the Three Little Pigs

As I've mentioned in a previous post, one of the kids' FAVORITE things to do in Boston this year has been to go to the Children's Museum.  As our time here has been running out, we've had some wonderful experiences to cap off our year-long love of this place.

I've mentioned before, as soon as we discovered the plays performed daily on the KidStage, we would plan our visits around attending as many performances as possible.  And many plays have become well loved (especially in the past few months as the kids have been eager and willing volunteer participants), but none so much as The Tale of the Three Little Pigs.  Nathan has long coveted the role of Patsy pig - the only part he was interested as "she" (though they usually pick a boy for this part) was the one who built the house of bricks.  (So even when he's going way out of his comfort zone to get up onstage and "perform" in front of a crowd, he's still interested in the safety provided by that brick house.)  Last week Nathan's dream came true when he was picked to play the role of Patsy pig! Here's the short clip that I was able to get of him.



Sarah more recently decided she wanted to be cast as the Big Bad Wolf (the adult actors usually cast this as a little girl - they do a great job keeping it amusing for the parents as well).  Last week she was devastated when Nathan was picked for a role but she was not, but as a consolation prize I volunteered to fill the adult role of Nathan's house of bricks (represented by a brick-fabric covered umbrella) and took her on stage with me.  The big bad wolf who was cast in that play turned out to have gotten into more then she had bargained for, and ended up abandoning her role about 2/3 through the play.  So I whispered to Sarah and pushed her forward and she stepped up, put on the hat, and became the "understudy" Big Bad Wolf.  Since I was onstage unfortunately the little clip of Nathan was the only video I was able to get, but I do have this picture of the three of us that a kind lady seated next to us took with my phone.

And here's their close-up.



Then today, when the threat of scattered showers sent me looking for an indoor amusement for the three of us, we decided to head back to the museum for our last and final visit (boohoo!).  Nathan was thrilled when he was cast as a frog in the first play (a role he and Sarah had both done before)...

...but Sarah was practically inconsolable (lots of crying, twice) because she got passed over three different times as a volunteer.  Then it was time for lunch and a little fishing break on the wharf outside the museum...

(Side note: Sarah still loves the idea of wearing a ponytail, and I figured out that this string of three little ponytails will actually keep most of her hair contained these days.)

... then it was back into the theater for The Three Little Pigs.  Since Nathan had been picked as a volunteer for the previous show, I told him he wasn't allowed to volunteer for this one.  So he sweetly helped Sarah hold up her hand as they were picking parts, with her hand opening and closing wildly in an extra attempt to attract attention her way.  And... SUCCESS!  The biggest, baddest wolf you ever saw!!

This time I let other parents play the roles of the pig houses so I could get my baby girl's performance on camera.  So here's a long video of the whole production, starring Sarah K!


Are either of these kids going to turn out to be thespians thanks to their early acting experience? Only time will tell!

Boston Bucket List Part 2: Stowe VT Round 2

This post really needs 5-10 more pictures to round it out but in order to get this posted tonight I'm going to leave it as is.  Maybe this weekend I'll get the other pictures added.  If so, I'll update this first paragraph to let you know. 

Now we're finally getting to pretty recent history. Brian turned his last vacation days of fellowship into a long weekend at the end of June. After debating multiple places to go, we decided head back to Stowe. When we were there in December we really felt like we missed out on the wonderful "Stowe" experience since it was frigid and brown and we barely got to appreciate the natural beauty of the area at all. And we ended up having a much more enjoyable trip this time around... though once again the drive involved a kid puking in the car.  This time it was Nathan within the first hour on the road - seems like he has legitimate car sickness issues these days.  Thankfully we were able to contain it in a plastic bag for easy cleanup. Wow, how's that for a fun start to this post?!

We headed up to Vermont on Friday and immediately fell in love with our condo - especially the view from the deck. We visited the pool that afternoon and then were ready to start our adventures first thing the next morning.  Nathan's first request was to "drive up that mountain", pointing to the one across from our condo.  So we decided to oblige (though we ended up driving up and over another mountain that morning and saving his requested one for the next day.)  We drove up and over Smuggler's Notch, named for the smuggling route early Americans use to sell their goods in Canada back when it was against the law to trade with them. 

Almost on the very top of the mountain, we stopped to look around for a hike and discovered that there was supposed to be a short one to Smuggler's Cave.  Well, after we hiked STRAIGHT UP the mountain for a while, we figured we were on the wrong path (we couldn't find any path markings so the boys were blazing their own trail, which happened to be almost vertical).  We finally turned around and headed to an outcropping of rocks the kids had spotted earlier.  We weren't sure if this was technically "Smuggler's Cave", but it was definitely a fun first experience with bouldering for the kids!

Next we drove back down the mountain for a short hike to Bingham Falls.  After admiring the falls (and me being super scared one of the kids would accidentally go over the edge), we headed upstream to have some rock and water fun.

All was going well until Sarah lost her footing in the stream and started floating (face down!) downstream towards the falls.  Brian reacted the fastest and grabbed her out of the water, but not before she was thouroughly traumatized and had lost her yellow bucket to the current.  Thankfully she was not hurt at all!  But it did take me quite a while to console her, as she kept telling me between sobs “I don’t like that waterfall, it took my bucket” and “That waterfall was not kind to take my bucket.”  But she finally recovered and by the time we left seemed to have forgiven the stream as she told it “Bye waterfall, have a good week!”

Brian built a rock tower, a classic family stream/beach pastime!

After that we had a late lunch out and then headed back to the condo for a leisurely afternoon playing at the playground right across the parking lot from our place, with the kids especially enjoying the "Magic Treehouse" playhouse there, and also going for another dip in the pool.  Swimming was followed by a dinner of boiled shrimp, garlic bread and fruit and then we finished out the evening with a round of s'mores.

The kids really loved the two hikes we did on Saturday, so we figured on more of the same for Sunday.  We took the toll road to the top of Mount Mansfield (tallest peak in VT), and from there went on a pretty long hike with beautiful scenic views of the surrounding countryside.  Both kids had acquired walking sticks on the previous days' hikes, and they put them to good use on top of the mountain.  Though we don't know for sure how long the hike we took was, Brian and I figure that it was over a mile each way!  And while both kids took their turn on Daddy's shoulders for part of the trek, they did AMAZING and seemed to love the whole experience!  I kept telling them things like "I'm so proud of you for hiking so well" so they started commenting "I'm a great hiker!"  Hooray for positive reinforcement!

After a picnic lunch on top of the mountain, I propped the camera on some rocks and got a family picture.

At the end of the hike Nathan was still clamoring for more, but after the drive down the mountain (which left more then one of us feeling faintly carsick) we decided we should head home and get some naps in - well naps for everyone but Nathan!  When we all were finally vertical again, we packed back into the car and headed towards town to Chase Park, where Brian had spotted a likely looking stream on Friday as we drove into town.  We were rewarded with a beautiful spot to play!  Someone had dammed up the stream into little pools right where the path from the parking lot ended and we played there for a while.
 

Later, in search of some shade, we headed downstream where Daddy decided to start a project of creating our own dam across the river.  I relaxed in the shade while these three rock lovers created this masterpiece.  Those kids once again amazed me with their hard work on this project!

We finally had to pry the kids away from the stream with promises of hamburgers for dinner at a restaurant called the Blue Donkey.  After finishing his, Brian commented that it may have been the best hamburger he's ever had - how's that for an endorsement!  The World Cup happened to be on the TV screen near our table and Nathan and Sarah were super interested in watching it and picking the team to cheer, and Nathan was pretty intent on learning the rules of the game.  It was the game between Costa Rica and Greece (?) that ended in a shoot-out, and the kids were on the edge of their seats to see who would win as I narrated the game to them. 

The next morning was our last in Stowe so we packed up the condo and headed for one more adventure... per the kids' request, we headed back to the stream at Chase Park to continue work on our dam.

We made a few final stops on our way out of town.  First was the Cabot Factory Annex, where we all filled up on cheese samples (I really only had one or sometimes two pieces of each sample, but there were just so many different ones to try!).  The next was the Ben & Jerry's Factory, where we went on the tour (unfortunately they were between batches and watching them clean out the production floor wasn't too exciting), and enjoyed a free sample of Milk &Cookies Ice Cream (they usually have a "factory tour only" flavor to try, one that's never sold in stores, but unfortunately we missed out on that as well... but what we got was still pretty yummy).  Then, as if that wasn't enough junk for one day, we all got ice cream cones to stuff in our faces before hitting the road for the drive home.

For posterity's sake, I just have to note that I rolled 10,000 pictures/movies on my new DSLR right before heading to Stowe (meaning my camera's started recycling picture numbers, and went from 9999 back to 0001). Isn't that crazy!?!? 10,000 pictures since March 2013!

Checking off that Boston Bucket List (Part 1)

Just two measly posts for all of June... its getting pretty pitiful around this blog.  And I figure with the move coming up that I'm not going to get my act together this month either.  So even though lots of these things deserve their own post, it will probably be this or nothing!

Ever since the weather has turned warmer, the family has been on a mission to do as much as possible on our "Boston Bucket List", and we have done a pretty fabulous job if I do say so.  So starting back in May...

With my parents in town, we made the most of the willing babysitters and hit up two restaurants that we had wanted to go to all year.  The first night we went to Giacomo's, which is supposed to be one of the most popular Italian restaurants in the city.  Unfortunately, we were underwhelmed with our food :(.  But we followed that up with a visit to the movies to see the new X-Men film, which we both gave two thumbs up!

The next evening we headed to Ye Olde Union Oyster House, the oldest continuously operating restaurant in the US.  Pretty cool huh?

This was my lobster pasta.  Pretty impressive to look at, but somewhat underwhelming to eat.  But I'm not complaining because the company (and lack thereof) made it into an enjoyable evening nonetheless.  We followed dinner with a leisurely stroll around downtown, checking out a few places we hadn't explored before with the kids.

Then the kids and I left Brian and joined the grands for a trip out to Brewester on Cape Cod.  The family went out to Martha's Vineyard last July (posts here, here and here), but we had never made it out to cape.   The first day was cold and rainy (that's New England in May for you), but we were able to make it out to the beach the other two full days we were there... bundled up of course.  We all had a great time!

Next the children and I explored a new museum that we had been told about waaaay back last summer - the Waterworks Museum.  This is an old waterworks facility that for decades pumped Boston's water supply from the reservoir system to the whole city. 

There was some incredibly huge machinery in there (see Sarah in the lower left hand corner below for scale).  We got to see a video about the history of the waterworks facility and then poked around and explored on our own for quite a while.  

Brian's birthday was last month and he happened to be scheduled for call that day (reminds me of the year in residency where he was on call for Nathan's birthday, my birthday and his birthday all in the same year).  But this year it worked out nicely because it meant that we had the day to do an activity of Brian's choice.  He picked a visit to the USS Constitution, the world's oldest commissioned naval vessel launched in 1797.

We got to explore the upper deck and well as two of the three lower decks.  Check out those cannons!

Then after naps we "had Daddy's birthday" aka cake and singing, since that evening Brian and I were headed to the Harvard Club for Brian's fellowship graduation dinner.  Thirty-one this year!

Brian had to head straight to the hospital after dinner, so even though it was a bummer he had to work call on his birthday it turned out to be the shortest call shift ever, just about 8 hours overnight.  When he got home the next morning, he was surprised by the sign that the kids and our great friend Abi (who graciously stayed with our kids while we were at dinner) made for him while we were out.

The next week we again took advantage of Brian's pre-call morning to ride the Swan Boats around The Public Garden.  

More to come... (and I promise it will come sometime this week since I already have the pictures sorted and picked out, which is my main hurdle these days.)