Boston

With today being a holiday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Brett and I both had the day off and decided to go to Boston for the day. It is a roughly a 2.5 hour drive from our house so we drove up yesterday after church and pulled in just as it was getting dark. We did manage to make it to the temple just as the sun was setting which made for some excellent pictures. You know me and my picture taking.... Then we attempted to head into Boston and didn't really have a specific place to go so the GPS was no help and we made a wrong turn and ended up headed back out of the city so we decided that we would save every bit of Boston for the next day. And we sure did....

Temple with sunset

This is what the temple looks like when you are approaching it from the freeway

We started off the day in the small quaint little town of Lexington, MA. You will know this town because this is where the "shot that was heard around the world" happened. We got a nice hotel room for $50 with free wi-fi and a great complimentary breakfast. We are cheap and do everything as cheap as possible but it was a great place to stay. I will definitely go back! All of the touristy stuff to see in Lexington is closed right now so we got to see everything from the outside and of course the Battle Green. 

Statue erected to mark the significance
All of the remains to the soldiers who lost their life on
April 19, 1776 are buried at this statue. 

This church was not here at the time but there was a church
similar to this  on the actual Battle Green

Battle Green - flag pole marks the spot of the first shot

Buchman's Tavern
The soldiers were staying here the night that Paul Revere rode in to give the warning
All the had to do was cross the street and wait for the British to come
The road is also the actual road (of course not paved back then)
that Paul Revere road into town - Bedford Road

Paul Revere

Then we headed into the big city of Boston, took about an hour to find a place to park. I had done some research on cheap places to park and both of the places turned out to be false... :( We finally decided that we were just going to park close to everything and find out the best thing to do for parking for the next time. Parking was expensive but we did learn that parking outside of the city and riding the metro in is fastest and cheapest way and now I can see why! (FYI for anyone headed to Boston soon)
We had predetermined that this time was going to be more of a reconnoitering day than anything else. But we were able to see so much and learned a little bit about travelling in/to Boston. We spent the whole day on the Freedom Trail - which is awesome and you see pretty much everything historical there is to see in the city in just a few hours. We were unfortunate to not be able to get the full affect of the tour due to some of the sites being closed. But we had a very enjoyable time walking around Boston in 20 degree weather! Brrr!

Old State House

Just in front of the Old State House

Old South Meeting House

Old City Hall

Ben Franklin

People such as the first women off the Mayflower,
Governers, Judges are buried here

Granary Burial Grounds
Franklin's parents, Paul Revere, Peter Faneuil,
John Phillips (1st  mayor), Johnn Hancock,
Boys of the Boston Massacre
are buried here

John Hancock's Grave
He is buried next to his wife and long time slave

Granary Burying Grounds
Ben Franklin's parents are the big one in the middle

State House

Statue honoring 54th Regiment of Mass. Regiment
During the Civial War this was the first regiment to consist of both white and black soldiers 

From the steps of State House

Faneuil Hall

Paul Revere's House

Paul Revere with Old North Church behind

At the Old North Church they have several of these things holding
dog tags to honor those who lost their lives in the war with Afghanistan

Old North Church
The window at the top is where the two lanterns were lit to
signal that the British were crossing the Charles River

USS Constitution (closed so no good pics)
"Old Ironsides"

Memorial at Bunker Hill

From inside of the memorial looking back at Boston City

Warming up with some Boston Clam Chowda

I think I have fallen in love all over again. I love Boston - my new favorite Major City BY FAR!

No Place Like Home for the Holidays

We were fortunate enough to be able to head home to Utah for the holidays this year. We had a wonderful time there and were able to enjoy many families and friends. We thoroughly enjoyed our whole trip home but some of the highlights were as follows in no particular order:

Watching USU in their first bowl game in over 10 years

First Sunday evening we were in Utah Scott and Heidi Perkes and Mallory and Paul Leatham came out to my parent's house and played games - Mal and Paul have a lot of unknowns in their future and it will probably be a long time before we get to see them again. We love the Leatham's!

Gracie's Surprise Birthday Party at Fredrico's

Brooklyn preforming her gymnastics and at her school sing-a-long
Sitting in front row seats just behind the Aggie basketball team (no picture)

She's the last girl on the front row to the right (in pink)

A stretch hummer limo ride with the Petersen family to see the lights at Thanksgiving Point 

There were just enough seats for my family to tag along and we are sure glad that they did!

The limo lights.... crappy picture but you get the idea...

The kids (old and young) thoroughly enjoyed the limo ride

Abby made quite a cute angel for the nativity  on Christmas Eve

The Wright/Maughan Christmas party - Nativity

 This year the Wright/Maughan Christmas Eve party was quite epic. The kids were all in a performing mood and we were graced with many great performances. All were great but my favorite would have to be Garrett  singing "Christmas Christmas" by Alvin and the Chipmunks with the talking parts and all. He surprised us by screaming "ALVIN!!!!" into the microphone so hard that his little faced turned bright red. Unfortunately we were a little late on pictures so you'll just have to try and understand.

For Christmas this year I made all the kids beanies and aprons.
Brooklyn and Grace were the only ones we could get to pose for a picture

This was Sue's gift from the kids this year
It was a huge blanket with lots of family pictures on it
She loves it but we'll see how long it takes her to actually use it instead of keeping it "on display"

The rest of Christmas Day was spent playing with lots of new kid toys, skyping with the Jones Family in Alaska, and playing games - many great memories.

Ugly Sweater Party with the Atwood's and the Findlay's - yes Brett does have on a "dickie" and sported a "dickie mullet" the whole night

Partied with the Newton Crowd at the Anderson home (we missed a few of them but it was fun to get together with those that could)

New Year's Eve - Heidi and Britt are my BFF's :) 

This was Brooklyn's goodbye to me. There were tears shed by many - especially her.
She had quite the grip on me but it sure does feel good to be loved.
I love that girl.

A few other things that we enjoyed but were unable to get pictures of were
*Driving horses on the chariot
*Lots of movie watching
 -Sherlock Holmes
 -Mission Impossible 4
 -Breaking Dawn, part 1 (Brett didn't join me on this one - and I am glad he didn't...)
 -Warhorse

The Petersen Family met together for the "last supper" before I left early the next morning and boy was it epic. It started off with the toilet overflowing. Just as that was cleaned up, Gracie was running around and started coughing and coughed so hard she gaged and thew up. While cleaning that up Garrett walked over to Craig and said "how's it going Grandpa?" then proceeded to climb on his back. He stepped on his leg to be able to make it on top and he didn't have good footing so down he fell, putting his elbow into the nasty bowl of puke water and spilling the puke water all over the floor. It was quite an epic night.
We enjoyed spending so much time with our families. We feel so blessed to be so loved by them. Our hearts are full of love as we travel back to our home in Connecticut.
I left Monday, January 2, and am back in Connecticut. Brett will be in Utah until January 10th. Let's just say I am looking forward to that day! :)