Belated Thankfulness

Thanksgiving was our first holiday in Boston!

We arrived on Tuesday night and were planning to stay with Dave in the Inn where he stays.  Well turns out his not so nice neighbors didn't like kids, and made it well known to us, so we headed to our usual hotel the next day. Let me tell you, there is no place like hotel for the holidays! Housekeeping? Yes, please!

We had a really low key Thanksgiving.  We visited a cool park and took a walk around a beautiful local lake.  The kids LOVED playing in the sand in November and we are so thankful that is so much access to water up there!  We then did take out from Cracker Barrel and pigged out in our hotel room.  Great homey meal, and no work.  Love.  Then ego disaster hit.  Noah wanted to go swimming in the pool at the hotel.  Nothing like gorging on turkey and then getting into a bathing suit!  But we did it and the kids had a blast.

The day after Thanksgiving, Dave's office does a program for kids. The way Dave explained it was that they had breakfast and Santa.  So we boarded the commuter rail and took the kids down town, up 37 flights in an elevator, and into Dave's new office.  Dave did not do this program justice in his description!  They had breakfast, but they also had a whole morning of activities planned.  There was bowling in the hallway, a conference room for coloring and ornament making, an awesome photo ooth with multiple backgrounds and tons of props, lava lamp making, storytime, a Christmas Carol sing-a-long, a huge office scavenger hunt and more!  Santa makes his arrival close to 11:30, the kids sit on his lap, and then the day is done for all of the workers!  We all headed out to lunch in the city, and took the train back to the hotel.  The kids loved it, to say the least.

The rest of the weekend was filled with Christmas themed activities.  We visited a giant Bass Pro Shop, saw Santa, sharks and fish and played in lots of tents.  It was an awesome store, but is situated right outside of Gillette Stadium (blech). 

We also experienced an awesome Christmas Village and a cool music lazer show at a furniture store in Boston.  http://www.jordans.com/Attractions/Enchanted-Village.aspx
The village was awesome, and it even snowed inside.  The kids thought it was the coolest thing ever!  Mommy and Daddy also thought it was pretty cool that as soon as you walk into this giant store, there is a huge display about adoption!  There are binders to check out profiles of various kids, tons of resources for grants, information, etc. and they even have special adoption videos playing throughout the store!  Though we didn't get to check out the furniture, I have a funny feeling that if we need furniture, this will be our first stop!  Definitely going to support these folks! And yes, there may have been a few tears shed as we were so touched by their support of adoptions!




We also had the chance to see a really spiritual light display at La Salette Shrine outside of Providence.  The lights were beautiful and plentiful, but the best thing was the focus put on Jesus and scripture.  Not only was the nativity represented, but also the stations of the cross, Jesus' tomb, and they even had a cool alphabet display that used all kinds of scripture.  The alphabet was Noah's favorite feature.  Of course, we picked the coldest night of the year thus far to visit, and didn't get to enjoy the carousel, the trolley ride or the hay ride, but it was still a special experience.  Nice to know we have lots of places to go to entertain any future holiday visitors. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGadihjazQk

Though we missed our  traditional Thanksgiving in Pittsburgh surrounded by our families, we enjoyed our time together as a little family exploring our new surroundings. We are so very thankful for so much and having some downtime together as a family is pretty high up on that list!