Write My Life

While Jackie, Jennifer and I had a great reason to be tired the first morning (arriving at our hotel at 12:30 a.m. after traveling all day), it took several days for everyone to get adjusted to the time zone. In general, the girls were not tired at bedtime and they were getting up way later than usual. Jackie, who usually arises before 7 a.m., had to be woken at 8 a.m. It was an odd sight to see her struggling to wake up.

Not wanting to drive in Boston, we chose to walk.

Our Boston walking tour began on the historic Freedom Trail, an introduction to revolutionary Boston. A brick or red line marks the trail.

Photo by Kathy Gormish

Our subway stop began partially along the trail so we began near the North Station on the orange line. The sites we saw included:

Old State House. Here the Declaration of Independence was ready in Boston for the first time from the balcony. It was also in front of this building that the riot began that led to the Boston Massacre in 1770.

Faneuil Hall. This building has been a meeting hall and/or marketplace since 1742.

We continued our walk going through an Italian section of town and stopped at the

Paul Revere House. Built around 1680, this house is the oldest building in downtown Boston, and was the home of Paul Revere and his family.

Old North Church. From here Robert Newman signaled from the church’s steeple with lanterns the approach of the British soldiers. He used the following signal: “One if by land, and two if by sea.” We visited the church interior, noting its high box pews.

Interior photo by Elizabeth Gormish

We enjoyed the fact that the pews had the names of people on them.

We walked all the way across the Charlestown bridge to the

USS Constitution. Several of us toured this ship, the oldest commissioned warship afloat in the world. It was first launched in 1797. The USS Constitution earned the nickname “Old Ironsides,” because cannon balls glanced off its thick hull. Not any sleeping quarters I would enjoy – hotel beds are bad enough!

After our Duck Tour of Boston several people went back to the hotel. Some of us stayed and walked a little bit more of Boston, walking past Massachusetts General Hospital, through a section of Beacon Hill and through the Boston Common to the starting point of the Freedom Trail. I especially enjoyed walking through Beacon Hill and viewing the architecture of the building in that area.

Destination: Boston
Starting Point: Woburn, MA

For four nights we stayed in Woburn, MA. Two days we visited Boston by taking the subway into town. We boarded the subway in Wellington, MA then got off in the heart of the city. We learned to navigate the subway system. On one trip, we let Jackie lead the way, reading the maps and even navigating a transfer from the orange line to the blue line at State. Excellent job, Jackie!

http://www.carliner-remes.com/jacob/math/project/images/boston-subway.gif

It’s my birthday! Mike is gone but the girls are here to celebrate with me.

I opened presents in the morning. My main presents were cookie sheets and a cookie press from Mike’s mom. I’ll be baking cookies this week!

The girls also gave me some great handmade cards with wonderful sentiments on them.

The three of us went to the Redwood City downtown movie theater to see Prince Caspian. In the evening we went to dinner at the remodeled Mongolian BBQ restaurant in Mountain View. It’s the same food – a stir fry you put together yourself, then is cooked on top of this giant flat grill by the restaurant’s griller – but the decor is definitely ungraded and feels much more upscale than the plain restaurant we used to frequent.

Jennifer’s class took their final field trip of the year to Chinatown. We had a tour guide from the Chinese Culture Center in San Francisco. She took us walking through the streets and visiting a temple, Chinese cookie factory, herbal medicine store, and the market. We ate lunch in Chinatown as well.

What happened to May? It just seemed to disappear. I think this happens in May often between school events and birthday parties. A look at the calendar will reveal part of the story:

May 1-3: My trip to Pepperdine University Bible lectures in Malibu.

May 4: Mike’s 75 mile supported bike ride.
May 6: School prayer group, groceries and laundry.
May 8: Jury Duty. Thankfully I got excused for being a mom with children in my daily care.
May 9-10: Birthday parties. It was the ultimate weekend for birthday parties with Jackie attending 2 and Jennifer 1. Jackie had to decline on one other party because we just couldn’t swing the logistics. The first was an overnighter, of which I think she got 4-5 hours of sleep.
May 10 evening: Eating out early for Mother’s Day at Outback Steakhouse
May 11: Mother’s Day. Grilling in the backyard with friends. I made carrot cake.
May 12: Finish Scrapjazz article. Brownie Girl Scout meeting to plan and prepare for Camporee.
May 13: Groceries and laundry.
May 14: 3rd grade walking field trip to the San Mateo Historical Museum for a program on immigrants. Pretty hot for a walking field trip.
May 15: 7th grade Renaissance Day, serving and eating at the lunch feast. Brownie Girl Scouts at my house for skit rehearsal.
May 16: I’m sick. I lay around the house and endure the 95+ degree heat.
May 17-18: A little sick but take the Brownie Girl Scouts to Camporee. Stay overnight and leave about 10 a.m. the next morning.
May 19: Sleep all day long to recover!
May 20: School prayer group, groceries and laundry.
May 21: Cook and provide dinner for our church group of about 15. I served BBQ beef sandwiches, Spring Radish Salad, Strawberry Spinach Salad, Cauliflower Gratin and Chocolate & Peanut Butter Cheesecake bars.
May 22: North Star Academy dinner and open house. Glad to not be cooking!
May 24-25: Cadette Girl Scout trip kayaking at Elkhorn Slough and staying overnight at the Santa Cruz hostel with Jackie’s troop.
May 25: Mike leaves for Japan. One of Jackie’s friends from church sleeps overnight with us. We eat out at Chili’s restaurant.
May 26: Memorial Day and no school. To entertain the girls, we hit the mall for a few hours then come home and make Ghirardelli Milk Chocolate Chips cookies.
May 27: Our wedding anniversary. Mike isn’t here but I create a digital layout in celebration.
May 28: 3rd grade International feast. I brought Irish Soda bread, which I made for the first time ever the day beforehand. Luckily, Jennifer liked it!
May 28-29: 7th grade San Francisco Zoo overnight trip for Jackie. Jennifer and I enjoy the evening together. She takes a disposable camera, but doesn’t take any pictures!
May 30: Finally, a hike! This is usually a weekly event but it has kinda fallen by the wayside. So we hike Windy Hill for 5 or 6 miles. A good hike but I can tell I haven’t been hiking – I am so tired! Mike returns from Japan. Overnight birthday party for Jackie.

I also sneaked in quite a bit of gardening this month. What I didn’t so is bring the camera along much. Not much of this has been photographed. 🙁

I see all this and wonder how I scrapped so many pages this month! I guess I took advantage of any relaxing times to work on those pages.

19 years…so happy and so blessed…

4/7/2008

7:53:05 p.m.

This is Mike, watching one of the greatest University of Kansas basketball comebacks in history – to win the 2008 National Championship! Kansas defeated Memphis 75-68 in overtime, rallying from a nine-point deficit in the final 2:12 of regulation.

Throughout the entire basketball tournament our kids have been watching us with a certain caution. They don’t like it when we get LOUD and emotionally charged. That’s bound to happen when we watch the college basketball tournament so they kinda keep away from us. On the night of the final game, Jaclyn sat outside reading a book so she wouldn’t hear us. Jennifer sat in the same room, but on the far side. They celebrated with us, but until it was all over and they were pretty sure that their parents were returning back to “normal” behavior.

ROCK CHALK JAYHAWK KU!!!!

Ahhh, it’s the best thing about vacation – family time. We had lots of it on this vacation. We hadn’t planned a full day of activities so we had time to rest and relax together. Yes, we read books, but we also played games, watched a video, talked and even had a “variety show” one night. As with our last trip, we took the dogs and enjoyed the time with them as well.

Our home base was a Murphy vacation rental cottage, i.e. the little yellow cottage.

In the day we visited several California state parks, Moaning Caverns, ate pizza at Firewood in Murphys and hiked. All of it together, of coarse.

Our Spring break vacation this year took us back to Murphys, CA and an exploration of the California Gold country. We visited several state parks know either for their historic significance or natural beauty.

We started outside Sacramento at the Marshall Gold Discovery State Park. Here James W. Marshall discovered gold in 1848 on the South Fork of the American River. We walked along the river and viewed a replica of the sawmill Marshall and his partner were building when they discovered gold.

The next day we visited Railtown 1897 State Historic Park. Located in Jamestown, it has steam trains and an authentic roundhouse. Mike, being as engineer, was especially intrigued by the tour of the trains and roundhouse and all the information about how the trains operated. This site has also been the home of many TV shows and movies including “Petticoat Junction,” “The Wild, Wild West,” “High Noon,” “The Virginian,” and the railroad portion of “Back to the Future Part III.”

The next day we visited Columbia State Historic Park, a preserved California gold rush town.

Everyone enjoyed the candy store the most, but the girls also enjoyed playing on the large boulders on the outskirts of town.

On the way home we stopped at Caswell Memorial State Park. The park is located along the Stanislaus River and protects the declining riparian oak woodland, which once flourished throughout California’s Central Valley.