Boston ~ Day Three

On Saturday we traveled to Rhode Island and went to the Beach.

 It was BEAUTIFUL! The drive was full of trees and amazing houses; each one with an American Flag flying strong. The Beach was beautiful and relaxing. I think everyone at least got their feet wet while we were there. The boys were body surfing and having fun farther out in the waves. I like to stay where I can touch the ocean floor. I promised I would put the picture of my brother in law Chris with his "BOO-BOO" on my blog. I guess he was body surfing and got pushed around a little by the waves and hit his head on some rocks. He is a big boy, he was fine and laughing about it after. So besides the ONE small accident; everything was AMAZING at the beach!

 The David Bird Family stopping to grab a bite to eat after the beach.

By the time we made it back from the beach outing it was time for the Bird Olympics and Dinner with Family Fun!! SO we went straight to the Boston Birds house and enjoyed hanging out with them before everyone else arrived. Aunt Diane took Aunt Susan and myself on a tour of the lake behind the house. SO neat!

 THEN we sat and chit chatted and got ready for DINNER...

 DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNNN.... Yeah we had "New England BBQ" as Aunt Diane called it. Before we all went at the food, she gave us a GREAT tutorial on how to break open a Lobster. I am sure the look on every one's faces during the demonstration was priceless... mine was SURE wide open.

Most everyone took a "crack at it" and opened their own lobster,

I however asked my lovely Aunt Diane to help a sista out...

 Despite the fact I had a hard time watching them get broken apart and all I was able to eat it.
And it was not bad. I think that is my FIRST and LAST encounter with lobster... at least when I have to watch it being prepared...

 After Dinner we had family fun time. Aunt Susan had asked family members to submit their favorite songs for everyone to guess. It was interesting to see what people's favorite songs were. We had smores' and hung out until the bugs started eating us bad then we hit the hotel. Saturday was our last FULL vacation day. We woke up early Sunday (Dad Birds Birthday) and headed for the Airport. We would have liked to spend the day with Dad on his birthday, but Matt had to get back to work! Luckily we got to spend a little time with him because he and Kevin went to drop us off from our WHIRLWIND VACATION of FUN!!
The flights home were great, and LUCKILY we had a 2 hour layover in LAX to get in the USA v. Brazil Women's Soccer Game. USA WONNNNNNNN!!! I was SO happy, but what made me EVEN happier was getting home and seeing THIS...

My family helped the kids make us a WELCOME HOME SIGN!!

It sure was nice to get home and hold my sweet babies!!

WE had a WONDERFUL Vacation

and look forward to MANY MANY more in the FAR OFF FUTURE!! :)

July FUN!!

I have been BUSY getting my pictures from the Reunion settled, but we have still been doing LOTS of other fun things. So I would like to interrupt the Reunion Blogs To Update what we have been Up To; To Date...

 We meet up with The Hardens and The Cluff's for some PARK fun! This park is near our Stake Center.

Hailey LOVES to "get stuck in the cage" and yell to me until I acknowledge she is stuck!

Check out Logan pickin' his nose! :)

 She loves this park because we can bring her scooter and ride around on it...

 And Landon got the special treatment and was pushed around... after playing at the park for a while we went home and did some WATER PARK FUN on the trampoline and on the slip n' slide.

One night Hailey kept telling me she needed to make a cake.

When I pulled out a regular cake mix she said NO MOMMY, the little cakes...

So we got out our little Cake Maker, she decided she wanted to make the carrot cake, and when I saw there was cream cheese in the frosting I was DOWN!

( I LOVE cream cheese...)

 It was AMAZING! The kids did a GREAT job helping make it!!

Here is Landon in his Swim Class.

We got a coupon for two free "daddy and me" lessons.

Hailey is taking swim lessons too, but I will do another post about that.

 We also enjoyed a nice Ballgame for Family Home Evening...

 Landon was hammin' it up the WHOLE time! He loved it!

 Hailey was asleep when we got there, but after we woke her up and did a little dancing she was super fun too!! Both kids said they wanted to go to the baseball game again!!

This picture is History in the making. Our Fresno State Bulldog Stadium got TURF!

Matt was super excited about it and wanted to go get his piece of history...

 It looks WAY nice. We are excited for the season to start.

We got season tickets with a family in our ward. We can't wait!!

 AND we found this fun little Splash Park...

 The kids played for over three hours NON STOP!

 They literally had a BLAST!!

 AND last night my sweet neighbor Melissa (yes we have the same name, LOVE HER ALREADY) brought over PEACHES! She said they have WAY too many and she will be back to give us more...

 So with all those peaches we decided we needed to make a PIE. I don't have pie shells just laying around so we made EVERYTHING FROM SCRATCH... TRULY homemade!! (Hailey was being Vanna White here, don't you LOVE her hair??)

Landon helped me put all the cut up peaches in the pie shell...

And here my pie sits just waiting for me to take a bite...

We have been having a great summer. I LOVE enjoying things with my sweet little kiddos!

Boston ~ Day TWO

Day Two in Boston was the Official Start to the Family Reunion. And our first day was PACKED with fun! First we went to Northeastern University where my Uncle Alan works to check it out. After that we went on a TROLLEY TOUR. Our Tour Guide was Fun. We saw some of the same sites as the day before when we went on the Duck Tour but we also got to see things we had missed out on. We saw most of the Boston Colleges; MIT, Harvard, BU, Boston College of Music, Paul Revers house, Fenway Park, things on the Freedom Trail, AND we drove over where the Boston Tea Party happened. Near the end Matt pointed out the Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts. The tour guide did not say anything about it, but Matt knows of my interest in this group. I am DYING to know what is going on in there and WHO is part of the group... ANYHOW... her is my collage of the Trolley Tour.

After the tour we had a FAB lunch (thanks Boston Birds) at Northeastern and then headed to the

Boston Temple.

PERFECT opportunity for some Family Pictures!!

This flag was between the parking spaces at the temple.

 It was just BEAUTIFUL!

Matt and I ~

A little Cousin FUN!! With a cute niece on the top!

(Cami ~ I think you are taller than me... look at poor crocked Rylie)

The David A. Bird Family (minus our lovely kids of course)

Uncle Matt and his sweet niece Jillian Imel.

Grandma and Grandpa Bird

The Dee Bird Children and Spouses; PLUS Chris... yeah...

(Chris stood in for Aunt MayLynn's Hubby Bryan to be photo shopped in later... LOL)

The Bird Cousins and Spouses and Kids...

On the road again to travel to Concord. Funny little side note... they have amazing bathrooms. The toilet in the museum with the HUGE RED door was self cleaning... never seen that before... fun experience!

ANYWHO... Here Matt and John are showing us their Football Heisman Poses.

Then we headed down the path to the bridge where we heard about "the shot heard 'round the world" referring to the beginning of the American Revolutionary War. This 1775 proverbial first shot was fired during an armed stand-off between British forces and local militia in Lexington, escalating into engagements at the Old North Bridge in the battles of Lexington and Concord.

(check out the hyperlinks for more info)

This statue, Minute Man,  is adjacent to the North Bridge.
The statue looks toward the bridge, and here we are looking at it before we crossed over the bridge onto the side where the British Soldiers were laid to rest.

Cami, Aunt Diane, and Matt relaxing.
Can you see the Concord River in the background?
LOVED this area! So scenic!

We got to sit and listen to a volunteer tell us the story about the Concord Fight. It was interesting hearing all the details she had to share with us. I remember learning about this in school, but the way she shared the story AND by being there it made the whole ordeal SO real to me. The most interesting part for me was that they were not fighting for FREEDOM like many believe, they just did not want to be taxed. I guess it would be considered Freedom from being taxed if you think about it however...

The museum with the amazing self cleaning toilets...
We headed back to the hotel to clean up and get ready for dinner. It was raining a little bit so we meet at the local Church Building. We had a traditional BBQ with hamburgers and all the fixin's. Grandma and Grandpa Bird passed out some presents. It was so sweet. Our children got Walk in the Light pens that they LOVE to color with, Matt got a scroll pen that has the articles of faith in it, and we got a wall hanging about Family for our house.

Uncle Alan planned some fun games for us to play, and not surprisingly the teams I was on WON! ha ha... I am SO good and SO HUMBLE! After that The "ADULTS" had family council and we "KIDS" stayed and played, gossiped, and just had FUN! We are so blessed to have FAMILY to spend time with!

BOSTON BABY ~

Day ONE of our Boston Trip was special because of TWO reasons. ONE we were with Family and TWO it was Mom's Birthday. (Matthew's mother Lynette) Matt and I got an early start to the day because we had a rental car to pick up and some little things to do in the morning. Chris dropped us off at the Rental Car Place (THANKS CHRIS FOR WAKING UP EARLY FOR US) and we waited for a while until someone showed up. I guess we were renting from a satellite office, which means someone is only there if you make an appointment. We DID make an appointment, however somehow they thought we were going to be at the regular location. Not sure why... ANYHOW we got our rental car, a NICE discount, and we were on our way. We meet up with the family every morning at the hotel they were all staying at. Matt and I stayed at a hotel down the road because we did a priceline and got set up at Red Roof Inn. It was nice, and luckily BOTH the hotels on the trip had wonderfully working AC so the humidity only hit us when we were away! Back to the DAY, we went over to the other hotel and had a nice little Birthday Party for Mom. Then we decided to head into Boston and go on the DUCK TOUR...

 We got Tattoo's before the trip. Matt put his on his KNEE CREVASSE...

 and I put mine where every girl wants a high class DUCK tat... 

 on my ankle!!

 And next to Dad Bird is our "DUCK." As you can tell it was decorated after the Boston Red Socks Baseball team... ever heard of em'? This is a W.W.II style amphibious landing vehicle. Ours was a newer model and was quite fun!! We saw ALL of Boston ~ First the Boston Public Garden, it was beautiful!

 In the Boston Public Garden is the Make Way for the Ducklings bronze statues from a well loved children's book. It is about a family of Mallard Ducks that decide to raise their family on an island in the lagoon of the Boston Public Garden. If you look REAL close to the picture below you can see them...

 Below is the Boston State House. In 1874, the dome was gilded for the first time with 23.5 karat gold leaf. Before then, it was sheathed with a thick layer of copper, because the original design leaked and they wanted it water tight. One of the interesting facts I learned was that the highway signs indicating distance to Boston are not measuring the miles to the city limits, but to the State House Dome!

 Another site on the tour was the TD Garden. Since its grand opening in 1995, more than 30 million people have come to the TD Garden to see the arena's famous tenants, the NHL's Boston Bruins, NBA's Boston Celtics, and the NLL's Boston Blazers. As you can tell... they LOVE their teams!!

 Below is the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge (or Zakim Bridge). The bridge and connecting tunnel were built as part of the Big Dig, the largest highway construction project in the United States. The tour guide tells us that if you ask ANY local what they think about THE BIG DIG you will get a negative response every time. You can tell that the top of the Bridge looks just like the Bunker Hill memorial.

 Which leads us TO... dun dun DUNNNNN... None other than Bunker Hill. You should read up on the Battle of Bunker Hill. It was neat to see where all the early American Revolutionary War stuff took place...

 We also caught a glimpse of the U.S.S. Constitution. It is the worlds oldest commissioned warship still afloat. Matt and I REALLY wanted to go and visit it, but all we got was to drive by...

 But one of the highlights of the DUCK TOUR was next, we drove into the water and then toured Boston by sea... I was not aware of this but Boston is known for some of the country's most respected hospitals and clinics. One of the hospitals pictured below.

After we got out of the water we were able to drive by a four-ton piece of Cold War history on permanent display in Cambridge. This piece of the Berlin Wall was a gift from the German government, given to the EF’s (a travel and international language education and cultural exchange company) owner—“in recognition of his work in breaking down barriers through educational travel and cultural exchanges.” Cool Huh?

AND this is one of the last buildings still standing from Downtown Boston. It is a GREAT place to advertise, it had two huge billboards on each side. People still occupy this building. It was just neat because it was all alone in the middle of Boston!

And I just found this building interesting. If you look REAL close you can see the renovations being done at the top. It must be the "renovator" in me that spotted that...

And here is the reflection of the OLD John Hancock Building in the NEW John Hancock Building.

Just beautiful!

After our tour we went on a little walk in search for a place to eat for Mom's Birthday Dinner. We found this cute little Cafe and decided it would be perfect. The food was AMAZING and the company was too!

Matt took this picture of me just "taking it all in".

The David A. Bird Family.

(Me, Matt, Dad, Melissa, Baby Jillian, Kevin, Nate, Mom, Chris, Erin & Rylie)
You can almost make us all out in this photo.

LOVIN' our first day in BOSTON!!