Boston

This July, we took a big family trip with my entire side of the family to Boston to celebrate my parents' 50th anniversary. 13 of us from MN flew out together to stay at an Airbnb near my brother's place. A wonderful time was had by all. I think the cousins especially enjoyed having so much time together. 

Enjoying delicious Italian food in the Airbnb

The group of older cousins were able to go off and do things on their own, which was a big help and fun for them. They started off by going to watch the Red Sox vs the Dodgers at Fenway Stadium, which was a highlight for the boys for sure. 

The younger kids enjoyed both the Science Museum and the Aquarium. At each place we were able to put one adult with each kid - and it's a good thing we did with how much the kids ran from one exhibit to the next. We all agreed my mom got the biggest work-out following Frank. Getting him out of the museum was quite the feat since he wanted to check out everything he laid eyes on.

At the grave of "Mother Goose"

The grave of Samuel Adams

At the Samuel Adams tap room - Sam got a free coke when he showed them his name on his driver's license

At the Paul Revere House

Recreating a favorite childhood photo (this is now the 4th version we have of this!)

In preparation for the trip, Charlie ordered a Revolutionary War costume with plans to wear it while dropping tea into the Boston Harbor. I'm happy to say he was able to accomplish this - and he got much more use out of the costume than I anticipated. 

For starters, he wore it to our local 4th of July celebration at Independence Park. Frank also had a 4th of July suit for the occasion. Needless to say, they both made the newspaper along with Olivia and their cousin, Gabby. One kid asked to get his picture taken with Charlie. Later that week our librarian told me that she had skipped the celebrations due to the heat. Afterwards, her friends told her she should have come because she "should have seen this boy dressed as George Washington." 

Here are the pictures from our local 4th of July celebration:

Frank and Gabby, leading the Kid's March.

In Boston he wore the outfit for the entire Freedom Trail and even ran through the streets yelling "The British are Coming! The British are Coming!" When it came time to drop tea into the Boston Harbor, I thought he would just go up to the Harbor and drop in the tea. As you can see in the video below, he made it into a bit more of a production than that.

By Paul Revere's grave

Enjoying Dunkin' Donuts

At the Harbor

Enjoying Dunkin' Donuts with a Metro Transit worker

Riding a bronze donkey that is in Boston for no particular reason other than one of the founding fathers brought it back as a souvenir from Italy.

On our last day, we took a ferry ride to Spectacle Island. The water was much too cold for the adults, but the kids all dove right in. At least 3 of the MN cousins popped up out of the water and said, "Ah! It's salty!!" At one point a larger wave came up to shore and hit all of our belongings on the beach. We all frantically ran to grab purses, backpacks, phones, shoes, etc. Pretty much everything got wet, but amazingly nothing was lost or damaged. As we were all scrambling on the beach, Sam was blissfully body-surfing on the wave wondering why everyone was running away. 

On the ferry

The boys - digging a giant hole (which was later filled in by another rogue wave)

Our group, heading back to the airport with all of our luggage. We made the transfers from trolley to train to bus to airport with no problems. 

Just a few quotes

Olivia: Old. People. Are. Boring......but not you guys.

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Olivia: MOM! Where's my necklace?? It was RIGHT HERE!!! And it's blue and I CAN'T FIND IT!!!....Oh wait. I'm wearing it.

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Frank (watching The Amazing Spiderman movie): Imagine having to go pee really bad in the middle of a big fight.

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And I'm sure we'll be moving out of this phase before too long, but Olivia is still young enough to have a few remaining "creative" versions of words. Here are a few:

Boxelder bug = Bop-skelder bug, Spaghetti = Skabetti, regular = reglee-er, lemonade = ledomade

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Briar (my great-niece, whose dad works at a jail): Did you know that when you get arrested and go to jail, you only get 3 meals a day???!! They don't even give you any snacks.

Olivia: Well, that's rude!

Briar: I know....but police can't arrest their own daughters so I don't have to worry about going to jail.

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While I'm at it, here a picture and a video from Olivia and Briar's dance recital. In the video, Liv is the 3rd from the right in the front row.

Charlie and the Chocolate Chip Cookies

Charlie performed in the musical Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. He played Charlie's friend, James. It's a part no one really knows before seeing the show, but he was basically the next largest kid part after the 5 main kids. It was a great introductory role to theater, he made some good new friends and he had a great time! He performed very well, and I think he has definitely caught the acting bug. 

For the cast party, they did a pot luck, and Charlie wanted to bake cookies himself. He's made cookies before, but I usually helped him. This time he woke up early to make sure he had time and was determined to have as little help as possible. The only advice I gave him initially was to make sure to cream the butter, sugar and eggs really well before adding the flour. 

He got a little confused right off the bat looking at the directions since I told him to start with the butter. I said, "Oh yeah, they always tell you to mix the flour and stuff in a separate bowl, but I usually skip that part and just add that stuff later." That turned out to be a mistake, but we'll get to that later.

The butter and sugar went off without a hitch. Then he got to the eggs, and his first egg landed half in the bowl and half on the counter-top. So he ended up with 2.5 eggs instead of 2 - not a big deal, but you could tell it was runnier than usual after adding the eggs. 

Then he added the flour. As he was mixing in the last little big, I looked at the measuring cups he used and asked, "Did you use this cup for the 1/4 cup?" "Yes," he replied. "This is a 1/2 cup." Unfortunately, our 1/2 cup has a little lip half-way down that says 1/4 c. so he thought the whole thing was a 1/4 cup. So...too much flour, but we still weren't worried. We added a little extra butter to try to balance things out.

Next, I got a pan of 16 cookies ready to bake and put them in the oven. As they were baking, I told Charlie about a time I accidentally put 1 Tablespoon of soda in my cookies instead of 1 teaspoon, and they turned out terrible. He said, "Was I supposed to put soda in those?" Turns out, when I told him to skip mixing the dry ingredients, he got to the "add the flour mixture" part and just put in flour, skipping the soda and salt. We figured we'd let them cook and see how they tasted, but I wasn't too optimistic. We added soda and salt to the rest of the dough and mixed it as well as we could and hoped for the best.

The next mistake was my fault. I confused the soda-less cookies with the new ones because the ones without soda looked less done (even though they had been in the oven a full 10 minutes longer), so I pulled out the "good" cookies thinking they were the bad ones before they were done backing. It took me a minute to catch my mistake and I tried baking them longer, but they ended up a little stickier than they should have been.

In the end, we ended up with 10 good cookies, 16 slightly undercooked cookies and 16 edible-but-definitely-sub-par cookies. 

On the bright side: Charlie learned A LOT about how to make cookies! And his other cast members enjoyed them so much, he's now convinced he's discovered the secret to making the perfect chocolate chip cookies. He made another batch to bring to the last performance and replicated it exactly - down to the extra half an egg, the little bit of extra butter added after the flour and the soda/salt added after the chocolate chips. I advised him next time that he really should put the soda in with the flour to avoid soda pockets, but he didn't seem convinced.

And She's Off!

Elena's graduation has come and gone. She left to work as a missionary with the Totus Tuus program of our diocese just 4 days after graduating. (For those unfamiliar, with Totus Tuus she will be working with a team of 3 other young adults who will go to parishes around Southern MN leading youth programs for the Church.) She pretty much ripped off the band-aid of our first-born leaving the nest with no hesitation. Fortunately, we know she's in good hands and that she will have a fun, faith-filled summer. She'll get a couple of breaks to come back home and see us and then she'll have a few more weeks to spend at home before leaving for college, so that helps. 

Olivia came with me to drop her off for training. A few tears were shed, and there have been a few debates over what exactly will happen with Elena's room in her absence, but the adjustment has been going OK. The day of the drop-off, Olivia had her cousin over to play, and it quickly became apparent that she was processing everything through her play. I overheard her saying to Briar, "How about you're the older sister, Elena, and you're leaving for Totus Tuus in Sleepy Eye. And I'm the little sister, and I want to stay with you, but I can't." This was followed by lots of "No! I don't want you to leave" and "It'll be Ok."

We've been able to talk with Elena once so far and all is going well. When I see her empty room (honestly the most beautiful and well-cared for space in the house), knowing that before long it will be taken over and changed by siblings, it's tempting to be a little sad. But I know the alternative of having her unable or afraid or unmotivated to go out into the world and find her way would be worse. 

Here's a few senior photos and glimpses of the last bits of her senior year. We got almost none from graduation, but that's probably Ok since her face was a bit swollen (for the 3rd time!) after having further wisdom tooth removal complications. 

My favorite prom picture by far! Her date was a very good sport.

More of Charlie

"Propel" "Precision" "Price" "Pretzel" "Pterodactyl".... I am writing this post to the sound of Elena and Charlie going back and forth stating words starting with the letter P to see who gets stumped first.  This has been going on for several minutes with no indication of slowing down anytime soon.

Although this anecdote doesn't have much to do with anything, it does relate nicely to the topic of this post, which is simply to share some of Charlie's recent Charlie-like behavior. 

I recently showed the boys how to use Canva to create posters/flyers/etc. for a school project. Last night Charlie suddenly started working on the computer making "Vote for Charlie" posters for Student Council Elections. He kept spitting out idea after idea until I finally had to kick him off the computer to get ready for bed. I feel I should add that elections will be sometime next fall. If he keeps going at this rate all summer, the school isn't going to have enough wall space to hold all of his flyers. I'll share them below. (You have to look closely to find his face on some of these)

Side note: I'm not sure if the P competition is still going on, but I assume it is. I thought Elena was going to give up when she said, "Ok, I really need to work on some stuff upstairs," but then she continued with, "so you're going to have to come with me." 

I should explain that he often goes by Dr. Charles at school. It all started when he titled his Google Doc assignment "Queen Anne's Mashed Potato Sauce" and made some comment about pickle smelling salts. His very artistic teacher created these advertisements and hung them up in the classroom.  (I recommend zooming in to read the fine print on the smelling salts.)

And then the other day, we left a bag of little hair-ties out right next to the game of Mouse Trap. And Charlie noticed. When I came back into the room later that day, there were various Star Wars and superhero characters trapped in the game:

And lastly, there is this impersonation Charlie did of Elena. Frank was telling Elena she should get married by 20 so he can be a young uncle. And Charlie said, "That's never going to happen because she's to picky." He started imitating her, and she quickly grabbed her phone and took a video.