Celebrating 20 years together

In January Evan and I celebrated 20 years together since we started dating by spending a few days in Boston! I had to go there for work, and my parents were nice enough to come to our house to watch the kids so that Evan could join me. Since I had client visits to do during the day, we didn't spend the whole time together, but that was ok as Evan has colleagues in the area and he was able to go work with them.

We were able to do a couple of fun things, in addition to working! We had a free few hours on one afternoon, and at my colleague's recommendation we checked out a place called the Mapparium. It's in the Mary Baker Eddy Library (founder of Christian Science), and is a 1/35 scale glass sphere of the world as it looked in 1935. You walk through it, and the room is completely silent...it's just really cool. They don't allow photos inside, so we took this selfie at their "selfie wall" outside.

 

Definitely a cool thing to do that I'd never heard of before, and am glad we saw!

I had also made us a reservation at Ostra for dinner - wow, it was delicious! And who doesn't love an excuse to dress up? Evan surprised me with flowers delivered to our hotel room as well.

 

We were early leaving for dinner, so we went to Top of the Hub to have a drink before dinner. Beautiful views of Boston!

Dinner was absolutely delicious - I even loved their horseshoe crab plates!

Evan had sneakily told them that it was our anniversary, so this is how my dessert came out. So nice!

We were supposed to stay through the weekend, and spend all day Saturday with Evan's brother and his family. Unfortunately, a giant snow storm was coming through and Friday evening our Sunday flight was already cancelled. I had thought ahead, and managed to get us on early morning flights on Saturday. It was good that we were able to get home, but we were really sad to lose the whole day with them! We made the best of the one night that we got, but we were bummed to miss the time with family. Hopefully we can get back up there soon.

New Hampshire & Cape Cod

On our last two days in the Boston area, we actually didn't go into Boston at all. Scott and Amanda had to work, and so we were a bit on our own as to where we wanted to go and what to do. Since we were only about 90 minutes from where Evan grew up in New Hampshire, it meant a lot to him to head up there and see his old house (he lived there through middle school), and show the kids Amherst and Nashua.

Unfortunately we didn't have the best of weather (it was actually snowing for most of our visit) but I did grab some photos in the Amherst town center.

 Could this town be more quintessentially New England? The weather just helped with that impression even more, despite the cold!

 We then headed into nearby Nashua to have lunch with Evan's cousin. It was nice to catch up with her for a while - I don't think either of us had seen her in many years! Luckily Facebook does help to keep up even when far. And if you're ever in the area, this restaurant was delicious!

On our last full day of vacation, we headed in the other direction (southeast, instead of northwest) to visit Cape Cod. I've never been there before, and the weather was so different from the previous day - definitely still very cold (especially when out on the beach, as below), but the sun was a welcome change from the weather over the previous couple of days!

I tried not to be too annoying with the photos, but I had to take some! Evan took a photo of me and then I instagrammed it - I love this photo!!

 After shopping in the town of Falmouth for a bit, and grabbing some lunch at Seafood Sam's (a little local place that was delicious!)

 

we then headed down to Woods Hole. I always wanted to see it, since there's so much scientific research that goes on there (and we have clients there!), and it was on the water. There's a ferry that goes from there out to Martha's Vineyard, but we didn't feel like using that much time to go out and back. Hopefully next trip! Instead we checked out the super cute Nabsko light house (just outside of Woods Hole). Cold but really pretty there!

I did take a bunch more photos of the lighthouse; you can find them on my photography blog.

Then we did some wandering through Woods Hole itself. It's very small, with lots of oceanographic research going on (below are two research boats).

There were also many places to get a yummy hot chocolate, including this one that we went to for a bit!

 It was a great way to end our trip. We were very sad to go...and Natalie let Scott and Amanda know just how much!

New England Aquarium

I managed to post up our activities from our first day in Boston, when we visited the Museum of Science with Scott and Amanda (how I got that up so quickly I don't really know!). Before I posted the rest of our adventures in New England, I wanted to get through the giant backlog of posts from January, February and March! Now that is done, I can get through Boston (and then hopefully get April done before we're too far into May...might I catch up at one point? We can only wait and see).

Our second day in Boston (Sunday) was spent primarily at the Aquarium.

We headed there with Scott and Amanda, and met up with our friends (from UVA) Emily & Andy  with their two little ones Dorothy and Ben. We actually had never met Dottie, so it was nice to finally do that! Who doesn't love a trip to the aquarium? I know we all had a great time. I think this is the third time I've been to the New England Aquarium, and it's totally worth it each time - it's a really great place! Even with the crowds (and it was crowded for sure), there's so much to see that you almost don't notice it.

We of course started out with checking out the main exhibit when you walk in: the penguins!

They're so freakin' cute (or maybe I should go full on Boston and say they're "wicked awesome"?).

Noisy buggers, too!

We saw all kinds of marine life: leafy seadragon, lion fish, cuttlefish, clown fish, and more! I don't really have room to show them all here (I'm sure I'll get a blog post up on the photography blog with my favorites soon), but I did want to show the other place where we spent a lot of time: the top of the giant tank! If you haven't been to this aquarium, the entire thing is built around this gigantic circular tank, and you walk up the ramp around it, to the top. Inside of the tank, in addition to the other creatures, were 3 giant sea turtles. While we were there, they decided to hang out near the top, including coming up for air repeatedly.

Then we got to see two of them right next to each other! They were really fun to watch, and in general the tank itself, especially lit at the top, is just beautiful.

After heading out to the market to get some lunch, we went back to the aquarium to see a few of the things we had missed. Just outside is a seal exhibit, and this time (unlike when we arrived), there was one lovely lady lying there sunning herself! She was very cooperative for photos. 

 

You know, you almost forget how deadly those seals can be until you see their mouths open like that...

We then hit the outdoor sea lion pool, which I couldn't really get any good photos in and it was really cold, so we went back in. That led to one of my favorite parts: the touch pool! This one had lots of rays (as they almost all do).

But also small albino sharks! Which I touched, multiple times! It's crazy how compact and powerful it feels (and also like sandpaper). Natalie and I were super excited for that...and this one kept coming back to us a lot!

 

Outside I had Scott take a family photo for us...definitely a fun day!

Boston Museum of Science

On Saturday, we spent our first day in Boston at the Museum of Science. I hadn't been to this museum on any of our previous trips, and my sister in law Amanda was able to get us coupons for discounted admission, which was great! We all had a blast there, checking out the various things at the museum. The first thing that we saw was this fantastic Rube Goldberg-ian structure. 

 Henry had seen the dinosaurs on our way in (there was a window overlooking the exhibit) so we had to head there first. Very cool triceratops skeleton!

 The kids enjoyed comparing their hands to the T-rex "footprint" (yes they were allowed to touch it).

 Loved the giant T-rex model!

 

We then moved on to various other things around the museum. Henry enjoyed spinning this engine to simulate wind through the turbine.

 We watched an IMAX movie on Humpback Whales; this was the coolest IMAX screen ever! It actually extended all the way up and around, over 180 degrees. We were near the front, but laid back in our seat to watch some of the movie on the screen above us! It was very cool and the kids loved it. I couldn't get a good picture of the theater, but grabbed this one of Natalie talking to Amanda and Scott after the movie.

 Outside of the IMAX theater was the Heyden Planetarium. We didn't go to a show there, but we had a great time checking out all of the information on the planets, solar system, and more! Very great interactive displays.

 There were a few random things that caught the kids' attention, such as the giant grasshopper model (the science museum was very big on models and scale) on the left. I asked Natalie to take a photo inside of the picture frame on the right (Henry wouldn't cooperate).

 

Amanda and I then took the kids to the butterfly garden. Henry didn't enjoy it as much as we did (mostly Natalie and I), so Amanda took him out after a bit. Natalie and I loved seeing all of the butterflies! I posted a bunch of my favorite butterfly photos on the photography blog; this photo isn't the best, as the butterfly was moving too quickly, but how beautiful is this one?!

 We then spent some time in the kids "playground" area. There, they use various things such as swings, pulleys, balances, etc to teach the kids about physics. Here we are learning about balance.

 And Henry is using centripetal force to make himself go faster and slower as he spins around.

 I enjoyed taking photos in the various mirrors they had in one part of the museum. Mirrors and camera = fun!

 This one is my favorite!

 The Museum of Science is very cool! I definitely recommend if you're in Boston. The kids loved it, we had a good time, and despite the crazy crowds it was a lot of fun. So glad we got to go!