Our first house guest!

The world we knew in Seattle is still out there! We got a visit from our good friend, Jill. She lives in 'the other' Washington (DC) these days and was in Boston for a conference. Yay, for old friends.

Trick or Treat?

Here is what out Halloween pumpkins looked like:

Let's go to the faire!

What exploration of Massachusetts would be complete without a trip to the King Richard's Faire? For this adventure, we travelled south to Carver to check out what a renaissance faire would be like if all the actors had Boston accents and an affection for 16th century vampires. Check out the pictures:

A juggler with somewhat sharp knives (the somewhat sharp knives are scarier!)
Man-powered rides!
Really big cats!

Horse rides!

Fire eaters!

Garden in the Woods!

Why yes, we are updating our blog for the first time in a couple of months.

This entry takes us to the Garden in the Woods, a beautiful wooded park in Framingham run by the New England Wild Flower Society. The main trail took us past a small pond loaded with frogs, turtles, water lilies and more kinds of dragonflies than we have ever seen. Next, we walked though a variety of native plants and flowers including some really cool carnivorous plants.



There was also a sad garden bed filled with plants from the Pacific Northwest. It was hard to feel homesick when the Oregon grape and salal looked that sickly.

Finally, we played by a small creek for a while and even climbed a rock that was made to look like a dinosaur. This place isn't going to run out of rock any time soon!

Play Date, the Movie!

Check out what we did on a rainy day back in September!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuIMGVupU6k

Gloucester!

We started to explore our new state in September. Here, we drove up to Gloucester to check out the beaches. As you can see, we feel right at home playing in the sand:

Then we took a ride out to sea to do a little whale watching. The whales were really cool (see below), but the best part was riding on the front of the ship while the waves splashed all around. The ocean may be on a different side than Washington state, but we can still have fun with the water.

Hi, whales!

We made it!

We sprinted the last two days, and ended up in Boston on August 11. After Mt. Rushmore, we drove through Minnesota and Iowa, stopped in Chicago, and then made a two-day drive to Boston. Pictures are below:

Here we are in Glacier National Park, getting ready to do some fishing.

Yellowstone was really great. We saw a bear and many buffalo and deer. Yes, that is a picture of a mommy buffalo feeding her calf!

And, of course, there were other interesting things to see in Yellowstone.

Then we moved on to South Dakota and the Black Hills, where we found a whole bunch of motorcycles (who knew that the Sturgis rally was the first week in August?). Here's a picture of us at Mt. Rushmore.

And what trip would be complete without a journey into space?

Oops, that's just Rosa checking out a space suit at the Kirby Science Center in Sioux Falls, SD.

Well anyway, we did discover that a really, really large amount of corn is grown in Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois.

And the windmills in the Midwest are a little different than they used to be!

We went on to enjoy the Chicago Children's Museum before the mad dash to Boston. What a trip! We sure were ready to have some time without the car, and look forward to meeting new friends here in Boston.