::grandma & boys::

Now it feels like forever ago, but just before Kathy left for home after Christmas we took a few pictures of her with the little boys.
And the little boys were even semi cooperative.


The littlest one even likes pictures. I get out the camera and he smiles SO big. Then he looks away of course.

These boys love their Grandma! And at this point she hadn't yet stayed with them alone for a long long weekend. Love was tested and it won out.

Here is a fun little series.


Max looks like his head might be flat.

If Grandma is going to pat Max's head then Sandy is going to too.

And then Sandy gets a head pat.

Inspiring yet another reciprocal head pat.

Awwwwwww.

Cuteness. That's all I can say.

::Happy Easter pt 2::

With Kris's mom. It was so fun to get to spend Easter with her.




I had to post this last one because of Max's face. Evidently he was working hard on making a "bunny face" with his longest front tooth stuck out over his bottom lip. It seems to have been a lot of hard work.

::dinner & kris::

Kathy made us a delicious pizza a couple of nights ago. It had ricotta cheese, artichokes, tomatoes and some delicious shredded cheeses that I don't remember.

She even made me a couple of non-tomatoed pieces which I thought was so sweet.

Anyway I was trying to take a picture of the cute people at the table, and somebody was giving me some trouble. It's not necessarily the guy you'd expect.


He just refused to behave.


I do appreciate him setting such a good example for his crazy son, of course.

Oy.

::boston adventure pt 3::

And here's the last little bit of our Boston adventure.
On the side of the church was a really cool little brick courtyard.

And on the left side of the courtyard there was this really pretty old gate.

I tried googling this gate to see if I could learn anything about it, but it appears to be unimportant--or so google thinks. I think it's cool. The gate led into this little square garden, walled with bricks. The bricks were all covered in ivy.

Max said he thought it was probably just like the Garden of Eden used to be. I told him I didn't agree, but it was a good observation.
Then I asked Kris to take a couple of pictures.


There aren't a lot of pictures of Max and I where I'm not holding the camera myself, so these are fun.

It was just such a cool area. It seemed like there were little secret places everywhere.

(yes, Kris is holding my purse, not his own)
Then we found one more little nook, down a little set of stairs from the original courtyard. And it was just too perfect for pictures. It cried out to be posed in. So we did.



(think max was done with posing yet?)

After that we headed home, since these late fall days have started getting dark pretty darn early.
And on the way home, like a gift, was the most gorgeous sunset I've seen in a while. I took so many photos trying to capture it that I had a really hard time picking just a couple to post. So here are three.



Amazing, right?
The end of this adventure, at least for now.

::boston adventure pt 2::

Tthis is long overdue.
When Kris's mom was here we went up to Boston to see a cool historical cemetery--as you might remember since I posted about it forever ago.

When we got there we realized that the cemetery was on the Freedom Trail, which is a walking path through Boston that takes you by historical sites.

So we kept on walkin'!

Right up the hill from the cemetery is the famous church where Paul Revere hung his lanterns (you know, one if by land, two if by sea). The Old North Church.


Isn't that a pretty steeple? The church has been refurbished relatively recently I think.


The inside was really interesting. There are all these little compartments down on the main floor. Each family I guess had their own little compartment and could set it up however they wanted. The guide telling us about it said that some people would decorate their spot like a little living room.
Sounds pretty comfy to me. I'm about ready to adopt the practice in our church! It would make things a lot easier.


We enjoyed looking around until Max started making himself a little too much at home--opening and closing all those little doors was way too much fun.

Since Kris's mom was there we actually have a photo with all three of us in it! Yay.

Small part three to come eventually.....

::boston adventure pt 1::

This is the spooky part of our Boston adventure.
Kris's mom was here visiting last week and we had a really great time. She's been wanting to go up to Boston ever since we moved out here, so on Sunday after church we piled into the car and headed on up. Kris has a who-knows-how-many-great great grandfather that's buried in a cemetery up there. We've been meaning to go up there for a while and find it. This was the perfect opportunity.
Turns out this cemetery is famous. It's on the freedom trail in Boston, which is another cool thing we haven't taken advantage of. But we will. I'm sure.
It's said that this ancestor of Kris's and Kathy's helped to found Harvard. So it was a long while ago that we was alive. In fact the best we could tell is that he died in the 1690s--that should give you an idea of the age of this cemetery.

It was really picturesque. Right smack in the middle of the city stuff--apartments and tiny streets packed with cars all around. It was really close to the water too.

It also didn't hurt that it was an amazingly beautiful fall day.

This cemetery had headstones with dates as early as 1600! I think the latest stuff was the in the 1800s. All the headstons were different, and they were all amazing looking. Actually, I thought most all of them were really spooky.
I'm having a really hard time deciding which photos to post. I had to take a picture of every different skull I saw, and there were so many. No mass production here.





I find nothing comforting about these gravestones. They're so stark and scary, aren't they?
We couldn't find Kris's ancestor George. So many of the stones were broken or had been worn down into illegibility. But we did find a George without a last name, and I think that's going to have to count.

His stone may be there somewhere and we could've just missed it. But who knows.
Max was running around tripping over gravestones. That didn't make me too happy. So we snagged him and made him hold hands. That didn't make him too happy. But too bad.

Kris finally found something for him to do.

There was some ramp somewhere--who knows why. And so Max ran up and down it for the next 15 minutes.

I promise, it's sturdier than it looks. And since he wasn't running on people's bodies, or breaking centuries old grave markers I was happy.

A strange coincidence--I had just read the october issue of Martha Stewart Living, and it had a big article about old New England cemeteries and their grave stones. Some of them look so similar to the ones we saw.  It was really interesting.  I found a copy of it online you can check out if you want here.
And if you're dying for more gravestones and want to spook yourself out I have a lot more--just go to my flickr.

RIP.