Boston Bucket List

It's hard to believe, but I've now called Boston home for over 11 years. Wow! And what's also amazing is that there are still so many things that I've yet to experience here. Boston (and the whole of New England) has so many great offerings - from refined art museums to the Museum of Bad Art, many historical sites and homes important to this country in different ways, and the ocean to the mountains. I've always tried to live like a tourist and do them all. And if you've been reading my blog for any amount of time, you know that our family rarely takes any down time since we're so busy trying to do everything!

Well, last weekend I got to check off two items off my Boston bucket list that made that list over a decade ago. With the luxury of two date times with Mike (thank to my wonderful in laws for one occasion and our local "usual" sitter the other time), we had a Saturday evening and a Sunday afternoon to play.

On Saturday, we went downtown, had a great dinner on the infamous Newbury Street and laced up some skates for some rounds on the Frog Pond! The Frog Pond sits in the middle of the Boston Common park and is open in the summers to splash around and stay cool in and in the winter to enjoy the frigid air by using it to ice skate on.

Neither Mike nor I have gone ice skating in many, many years, so we were pretty wobbly at first but picked up speed after some warm up loops. Now, we're not great skaters but considering our company, we looked like pros. The unfortunate thing we found out is that the locale is a big draw for first time skaters and it shows. While it was downright scary at times to avoid the unsure skaters that were surrounding us, we escaped unharmed and had a great time together. With my little camera that takes horrible night pictures, this is what we came home with as documentation of fun night.

The Frogs Watching the Skaters

Skaters and the Lighted Pavilion

Self, Rose-Cheeked Portrait

Our Cool Rental Skates

After a great Saturday night of silly fun, we followed it up with a Sunday cultural experience. Dylan's good friend, Erica (our sitter), came over to play while we packed up some lunch and drove up to Salem, Ma. This town, normally known for it's museums centered around witches, also holds an incredible art museum - The Peabody Essex Museum. We got there just a few minutes after the museum opened for the day, admired to amazing architecture of the building and headed right up to the special exhibition that was on it's last day there - Treasures from the Forbidden City. There was some amazing furniture and artwork on display but we somewhat hurried through because the crowds were a bit overwhelming at times.

Once we headed into other areas of the museum, it was much more quiet and we were able to enjoy a nice, leisurely pace. After a few hours of filling our heads with culture, our stomachs were growling so we headed back to the car and ate the picnic lunch Mike packed on our way back home.

While it sounds like I missed out on a ton of Dylan time, I really didn't. Our timing for both dates worked out well and we were mostly gone during Dylan's sleeping time. So, around our dates, we had some good, low key family time around the house as well.