Lexi Lately

By Lexi - June 01, 2015

Fun With The In-Laws! Part 1

Shawn's parents came out to visit last week and it was a blast!!! We had so much fun in the six days that they were here! We walked over 50 miles and I'm pretty sure we were all beat at the end of that trip.

They flew in late Tuesday night and we didn't waste any time. On Wednesday Shawn had a quick test at school so Lenny, Mary Ann and I rode the subway downtown with him. While he took his test we went over to the Boston Public Library to check it out. No, we didn't go to rent books haha. We went to see the amazing architecture and history of this building in downtown Boston. It totally exceeded my expectations! I never thought I would enjoy walking through an old building, but I loved every little detail! The wood work, marble, and structure in general are so awesome. It's hard to describe in words how beautiful this building is, so I had to post a bunch of pictures (which still don't do it justice!). One of my favorite parts about our visit to the library was the "Special Collections" area. This section of the library is on a lower level where it's dark and temperatures are kept substantially lower than the rest of the building in order to preserve the books. Books in here are extremely old and fragile, some dating back to the B.C era. It was neat to see some of the original leather bindings and covers of the first religious books to ever be printed. A lady was there answering all of our questions and telling us a bunch of stories and facts. She told us that John Adams' personal collection is also featured in this area of the library. How cool?!

After the library, we headed to Boston Common (Boston's "Central Park") and had a picnic lunch while we waited for Shawn to meet us. Once we met up with Shawn we walked just outside of Boston Common to where the "Cheers" Bar is located. I've never seen the show Cheers, but apparently this is where it was filmed so it's kind of a big deal. Needless to say, we took our picture in front of the sign. The State Capital is right there on the same road as Cheers so of course we had to stop and take a selfie haha! The building has an awesome gold dome that can be seen from miles away! On our walk back through Boston Common to catch the subway, we saw the coolest thing being done for Memorial Day that weekend! People were coming together and placing thousands of miniature American Flags in the grass. We later found out that there were 37,000 flags: one for each fallen soldier from Massachusetts since the Revolutionary War. Neat! My faith in humanity has been restored :) We had to get back pretty quick because we had tickets to see Avengers: Age of Ultron that night in IMAX 3-D! So we grabbed some Dominos pizza and ate while we drove to the theater. The movie was so good! I had high expectations and thank goodness I wasn't let down. Those movies are definitely some of my favorite! Oh and the cute little kid looking place is called "Beantown"! Everything in there is made out of jelly beans. They have a lot of fun little activities for kids to do and an ice cream place to eat at. After the movie, Shawn's parents still weren't tired so we played a game of LIFE. Getting my father-in-law to play a game was a miracle...let alone a long game like LIFE :)

On Thursday, Shawn had one last test of the semester! So Lenny, Mary Ann, and I went to the New England Aquarium while he was busy with that. I seriously thought the aquarium would be lame, but it was so cool! I never knew HOW MANY different kinds of fish and sea animals there are. It's mind blowing! I'm pretty sure we saw almost every single character off of "Finding Nemo" and "The Little Mermaid". Oh yeah, we got to touch sting rays! I had to put my big girl panties on and give myself a pep talk first though. So fun, but so gross! They are the weirdest feeling of "slimy"! We spent a few hours there and then met up with Shawn at his school. He's officially done with his 1st year of dental school!!! We could all tell how happy he was from the cute pictures of him smiling below! Since we had just seen all these colorful, vibrant fish, we decided it'd be fun to have some for dinner! Haha just kidding, but we did really have sushi. We taught Lenny and Mary Ann how to make it. They were good sports and tried everything. I love homemade sushi and will never go back to paying outrageous prices at restaurants. We hit the sack pretty early that night because the next day we were going to NYC!