Boston

A bit more than a week ago, I went on a business trip to Boston with Kyle.  We left the boys with grandparents and headed off with Livia to the unofficial Capital of New England, good ole' Beantown, the land of the original Tea Party when it actually referred to tea.

The flights went great and Livia did wonderfully.  Her petite 16 pounds seemed like 56 after a while, but I suppose I'm a bit of a pansy.  

Once we got to our fancy hotel that had more pillows on the beds than Kleenexes in the box, we celebrated with some cable television.  (Though we don't have cable at our house, I still love me some HGTV every once in while.  House Hunters just isn't the same on Hulu.)  The Iowa caucuses were happening at the time so we watched CNN for a good 2 hours that night.

And it was heavenly.

(Such a change from 'heavenly' six years ago, no?)

The next few days Kyle went to some math talks, math meetings, and math shows.  I exercised while Livie happily played,

and walked around downtown Boston.  We hung out a lot at a high-end mall where we could only look because I kid you not, a scarf was on sale from $58 to $25.  Yet, if you must know, Livia and I are very much into the art of browsing and moseying. We did whatever we felt like, and popped into Dunkin' Donuts every once in a while.

We napped,

and took bubble baths. 

We also enjoyed the view from our hotel room, watching the pigeons waddle by on our window sill every so often.

Again, so wonderful.  So slow-paced.

During Kyle's down time we had fun going out to eat at places like P.F. Chang's, the Cheesecake Factory, California Pizza Kitchen and Dunkin' Donuts--all places that are a HUGE treat to us in NE Iowa.   We visited the mall some more,

and lazily walked around.  In this case, sat around.

During our trip there, I met up a cousin and had lunch with her an her adorable daughter.  I forgot the camera that morning--wish I could show you how cute her girl was.

I also met up with my cousin Jodi.  She's lived in the Boston area for the last 15 years and she helped Bostonize me a bit. (And though I did have my camera on me, I didn't take a picture of her. Silly me.)

We visited the John Hancock building with her husband, Tom, who gave us a private tour of his office and the view.

 They took us to Skipjacks, who are known for their great seafood, of which I normally would've said, "Um, no thanks."  But I was feeling adventurous and had shrimp.  Shrimp wasn't exactly super adventurous so I tried some of Kyle's haddock.  I liked it. So I tried some of Tom's tuna steak and Jodi's salmon and I LIKED it!!

Hello, people, I like seafood.  I'm a new woman!  A woman who eat's seafood (but only if it's on the coast, where it's less than 48 hours old).

Livia and I hung out with Jodi more the next day so she could get more of her baby fix.  She was willing to take me anywhere I wanted, but honestly, I wanted to go to Nick's hockey game--something less touristy.  So we did.

Unless you're from Canada, you would never realize how great 6th and 7th graders can be at ice-skating.  It's outrageous!

Jodi has 4 kids: D.J., Jessie, Nick, and Matt.  (Matt is the boy who single-handedly began Caleb and Isaiah's obsession with Lightning McQeen without every meeting them.  Jodi gives us most of Matt's clothes that he's grown out of and in the last 2 years, we've received at least 25 articles of clothing that has Lightning McQueen on it.)

We hung out with Tom and Jodi, had more seafood and listened to Tom tell hilarious stories.  It was so nice to catch up.

Then we went back to the hotel for a great night's sleep to wake up to this...

Wha?!

Oh yeah.  *sigh* This is a business trip.  Yesssssss!  I should do this more often.