Little trip to Boston!

A couple of weeks ago, Brad and I got to go to Boston for a little weekend trip! Brad applied to participate in a pedagogy seminar being held in Boston, and when he was accepted, we decided to make a short trip out of it for the two of us. Not exactly a baby-moon, but as close to one as we ever get. Real quick, here's our "baby-moon" history:
1. Claire: none.
2. Lily: 2 nights in Asheville, courtesy of a credit card points hotel stay + Groupons for all meals + gift card for a movie.
3. 3rd baby: Boston seminar + another credit card points hotel stay.
None of this Cancun-ing for us, guys.

Where we stayed, thanks to Brad's seminar (and credit card rewards)!

A few various views around our hotel.

I don't have a lot of pictures from our trip, in part because almost as soon as we arrived in
Boston, a nor'easter slammed New England. For Boston, that meant really high winds and lots of rain. So, while Brad was in his seminar (at the hotel where we were staying), rather than visiting favorite Bostonian haunts of mine, I hunkered down in our hotel room and listened to podcasts (I binge-listened to Mom Struggling Well, and it was a fantastic use of my time). I ordered room service for lunch and put in a to-go order from a nearby Panera for supper. I was SUPER ashamed of myself for getting Panera while in Boston. I basically refuse to eat non-Boston-based chain restaurants while there because there are so many incredible local options (exception while we lived there: driving to a nearby town to get Chick-Fil-A on occasion. Southerners must have Chick-Fil-A on occasion.).

However, Panera was my best option because a) it was less than 100 yards from our hotel entrance and b) I poured over the nutrition facts online to pick out the best options for my diabetic diet. I nearly blew away a la the nanny applicants in Mary Poppins while walking to pick up my food, thanks to the winds. I took an umbrella, but I gave up on it, as it kept trying to blow inside out. It definitely confirmed that staying in the hotel was the best plan.

Although there was some rather bad weather, we were still able to work in supper with two different sets of friends (2 separate nights), dessert with another family, and a morning at our Boston church. Those visits all ministered to our souls, and we were so grateful for them. We also walked around Quincy Market for a little while before we had to head to the airport. Not our most "Boston" of all Boston visits but really wonderful nonetheless.

Sunday morning service at Church of the Cross! This is a different building than we met in while we lived there, due to CotC adding a morning service and therefore needing a second location. It was neat to see the new location.

Great view of the Pru just down the street from the morning service location.

And a Regina's! Sadly, I did not get any Regina's (or Mike's) this visit. The weather didn't help, but diabetes was the real culprit.

Faneuil Hall

State House. One of my favorite buildings in the city. It's so interesting to see the juxtaposition of this quaint old building next to modern skyscrapers.

We had a wonderful visit, despite the weather. Boston is such a dear place to us, and it's always a gift to get to visit. 

While we were gone, the girls went to Johnson City with my in-laws. They actually went for several days longer than we were in Boston, due to scheduling (which ended up being helpful for me, as North Carolina bloomed that week, and I was SICK. As in, stuck-in-my-bed sick.). The girls were there for Claire's actual birthday, which was my first not to be with her in person, but Gran did a great job making sure she felt loved and celebrated! As did, Nana, though she wasn't physically present. Before the girls left for Tennessee, Mom mailed a few small gifts to me to pack in the girls' bags to open for Claire's birthday (including a few things for Lily). See necklaces and socks below. :)

The glasses/crowns weren't from Nana but definitely added to the awesomeness of the birthday. 

The glasses live in our van and are worn often.

Like Boston, Tennessee had quite a bit of rain that week/weekend, too, it seems. And both girls' seasonal allergies came out to play, but before all that, they had some fun times outside!

And, of course, there was birthday partying! Barbara made a fabulous cake (I obviously did not get any, but I can venture a guess, based on my prior experience, that is was fabulous), and Claire was very celebrated by our Tennessee family.

We are so grateful for Gran and Grandpa so cheerfully taking care of the girls for us, so that we could enjoy a long weekend in Boston. The girls had a wonderful time, and we could rest easy knowing that they were having a blast.

We classy.

Good times with Grandpa. And probably Super Why.

Our March definitely got off to a great start (minus all the allergies, bless us. This is why I hate Spring. We get SO SICK. Y'all can think I'm weird all you want, but hang out around here during the worst of the temp change + pollen, and you'll get it.). Thanks, Gran and Grandpa for making this happen for us!

Regina's Pizzeria: A Boston Favorite

I'm still a little behind on blogging in real time, so here's another one that I wrote a while ago.

I don't care if they have short-order stores in random malls, making people scoff at their legitimacy; the original Regina's is my favorite pizza in Boston. Truly. It's hand-tossed and wood-fired and fabulous. If you visited us for any amount of time, there's a really good chance we took you there. It's in a much-too-small corner building in the North End, and if you don't go early for lunch or dinner (or you accidentally plan to go on a night that the Bruins or Celtics have a home game...TD Gardens is just a few blocks away), you will wait in a long line that wraps around the building. Because people love it. Rain or shine. Heat or freezing. (We've done both, by the way.) All of the servers are so Boston. The accents, the mannerisms, everything (which means that they might say something in a way that offends a good Southerner, but let it roll off your back; it's just the Boston coming out of them. It's not personal. Oh, and they love babies.). I absolutely love it. It was a priority stop during both of our 2015 visits, even with all of the things we had on our agendas. We've tried a lot of different pizzas at Regina's, but the margherita is my all-time favorite. If you like cheese and basil, you will never be sorry that you ordered it. 

In case you're ever in Boston and want to eat Regina's, take the green line to North Station (or the orange line to Haymarket, although the walk is a little farther), walk a few blocks (like, two) over to Thacher Street, and then follow the pizza smells. Also, you should know that the women's bathroom is ridiculously small. Just a tip from me to you. When you finish eating, walk a few more blocks over to Hanover Street and swing by Mike's Pastry for cannoli. Be sure to take cash to Mike's; it's all they accept. Bless. I recommend the Florentine cannoli. Be still my heart. After you get your cannoli, continue walking down Hanover Street to the left and a) you'll burn off some of the calories ingested and b) you'll come to the Old North Church and Paul Revere monument. Tours run regularly at the church, and there's an adorable little gift shop to peruse if you get there when it's not tour time. From there, you can follow the Freedom Trail path over to Paul Revere's house. You have to pay to go in and tour, but if you're cheap...I mean, frugal...there's a quaint seating area right outside the house where you can eat your cannoli, people watch, and enjoy the architecture. There. I just mapped out a fantastic little mini-tour of the North End for you.

If you go left out of Mike's, you can follow the crowds (and traffic) back toward downtown, which will take you to Quincy Market, Faneuil Hall, and the Old State building. It's a bit more walking than if you head to the Old North Church, but there's still plenty of great things to see.

You're welcome for the tips. :)

Oh, Regina's. You have my heart.

On our very first visit in 2012 with Karl and Karen. Karl was interning with the Romney campaign, and Karen had come for a visit. 

Us across the table from K and K. After dinner, we went to TD Gardens to watch the Celtics play. (Thus, I was wearing green. Go, Celts!)

We took family MANY times. Many.

Claire loved it, and they loved her, too!

Sights you see when you head back toward downtown. The customs building (the clocktower) is one of my favorites in Boston.

And a few blocks (well, a few more than a few) further past the above shot, is the Old State House. This was also the site of the Boston Massacre. And the State Street T stop from the blue and orange lines.

Look how happy we are eating our Regina's!

Being the West Wing fans that we are, we were pumped that Rob Lowe had eaten there and loved it, too.

The outside of Paul Revere's house. Probably 5 or 6 (city) blocks from Regina's.

If you're in Boston, give Regina's a try. I recommend getting there at 11 for lunch. Or being willing to eat at the bar (pizza by the slice). All the other activities I mentioned are just icing on the pizza (forgive the mixed metaphor).

Boston still has my heart.

We've been in North Carolina for a little over a year now. As much as I would like for it to feel like home, it still doesn't. And, as much as I would like to be "over" Boston, I'm not. Not to be overly dramatic, but I still feel like Boston and I were forced to break up. I'm still a little heartbroken. Sometime, I'll reflect on this a little more, but today, I'll focus on our most recent trip to Boston and what a glorious time we had.

Two of our favorite friends, Tim and Jess, got married, and we went to CELEBRATE! We've been around since the beginning of their relationship and wouldn't have missed the wedding for the world. Brad went up a day early and was able to be there for Tim's bachelor party, and I held down the fort until my parents got to Durham for 4 days of Claire-sitting. My sister (who had a few days of break) flew in to hang out with my parents and daughter while I was going to be out of town, but the good news was that she and I overlapped by 4 hours between flights. Yay!

Ice cream and Target with Bo before I got dropped off at the airport.

Just like our trip back in March, each day we were there was packed to the gills with visits with favorite people in favorite places. We stayed with our former upstairs neighbor, Anne, which is always a blast. She's one of THE most interesting people I've ever met and is an absolute hoot. It's always fun staying with her, but it is a little hard for me to be in our old building, knowing it's not ours. Such a bittersweet thing.

The wedding was in our church, which is a gorgeous old building (hello, it's Boston) but oh so extremely hot in the summer. It has this beautiful, tall ceiling (that traps all the hot- yes really hot, even up north- summer air) and no air conditioning. We knew ahead of time that it was going to be miserable...because the wedding was scheduled for 12:00 noon. This caused us to ask, "WHY??" The answer made sense: Fenway is, quite literally, right across the street from the church, and there was a game scheduled for 2:00, which was the originally intended wedding time. During games, there is basically no parking for blocks in any direction. Thus: the hardest part of the day.

Go Sox!

The ceremony was lovely and so sweet. She looked beautiful, the decorations were so them, and we got to celebrate their wedding with so many of our dearest friends. 

Now, remember how the wedding had to be at noon because of the baseball game? The reception had already been booked for 4:00, so we had several hours to kill between the ceremony and the reception. Therefore, we had a multi-hour tapas lunch with friends! Things you do when you're in Boston without kids...

We drove out to Concord for the reception, which was on a farm (the bride grew up on a farm in Iowa) and was SO FUN! Excellent food, great conversations with friends, lots of lawn games and dancing. Could not have been more fun.

Brad and Tim

Tim and Jess: the first dance

The next day, Sunday, was BUSY. Brunch (Mexican brunch...SO YUM) with friends, a quick pre-honeymoon-flight hangout with the bride and groom, Settlers and snacks with Bobby and Karli, church (yay!), brief post-church visit with more friends, and a long chat with our friends who currently live in our old apartment. It was a ridiculously long day but one of my favorites in recent memory.

Views that I love

A few favorite friends and a favorite game

Silhouette of our church's steeple

Monday started off with a long coffee and chat with Sam and Edith, who are natives of Massachusetts, live in the most quintessentially New England-style home, and have lived there for decades. They are full of wisdom and lively conversation. Brad and I both left so encouraged and uplifted. Wish we could hang out with them every week. We lunched with our friend, Elissa, who is just a gem of a human being. She ministers to students at MIT and is on staff with her church. Given that she is one of the busiest people I know, I was thrilled she had a few open hours for lunch with us (at Regina's, of course!). Lunch was entirely too short. We followed it up with cannoli and window shopping on Newbury St. before heading to Cambridge to meet Drew and Hannah for supper at Mr. Bartley's Burger Cottage. Great food and conversation. We miss our friends.

My favorite bridge, just around the corner from Regina's

The Harbor Walk: a great place to eat cannoli.

I miss these buildings.

Little break on a hot day

My favorite thing about Harvard Square. And, yes, I have a mug like that on my shelf.

We took a quick walk at the reservoir, an old haunt of ours. You can see Gasson Hall (at Boston College) peeking over the trees.

We grabbed ice cream before heading back to visit with Anne for just a taddy bit longer before heading to bed; our head-to-the-airport time was 4:30 a.m. Oi. It got us home by 8:00, so I guess it was efficient. Mom and Dad picked us up from the airport, and we headed to Monuts for morning donuts! A very nice consolation prize for having to leave Boston and then (almost) immediately sending my parents on their way home. 

Fun at Monuts! If you come visit, I'll take you, too.

I'm so very thankful that the Lord has allowed me two return trips to Boston within a year of our move. I've been grieving our move in a very real and very hard way since we found out that we were moving from Massachusetts to North Carolina (as excited as I was for Brad to get into Duke because DUKE!). I wish I could say it's gotten easier, but it just hasn't. We've found ways to cope and things to like about our new home, as well as new friends. We're so grateful for those blessings and are looking for new things to love about this new city we call home. Despite those things, my heart breaks a little every time I watch a movie or tv show set in Boston or when I find out people we know are moving there or when people ask me if I like North Carolina. It's miserably hard; just as hard as it was last July. It's also really hard for me to wrestle with the fact that as a very Southern girl, it's expected that I'm happier to be back in the South. I get asked about that a lot. And the truth is: I'm just not. (side note: I don't consider the Research Triangle area of North Carolina to be the South, but that's a ramble for another post)

But on a fun, less serious note, when we got home, Claire asked to wear her Red Sox hat and lobster shirt and kept saying she wanted to go to Boston. That's my girl! She's a Yankee by birth, but don't worry: she can drawl like the best of 'em!