July 4th Boston Trip

I can always tell when we've had a whirlwind trip to visit my nephew and nieces in Boston because I don't get a chance to blog while I'm in town with them. I've got plenty I want to share, but am either playing with the kiddies or recovering from exhaustion due to playing with them.

This last weekend we had a chance to visit two new spots in Boston. The first was Garden in the Woods, which is associated with the New England Wildflower Society. The second was Spectacle Island, which is one of the harbor islands I always see when I fly into Boston.

On Thursday, we visited Garden in the Woods. It's located about 25 minutes outside of Boston, and provides a slightly scaled down nature experience; one especially appropriate for kids. We saw turtles and frogs in the lily pond and the kids loved walking over the various bridges. One of the highlights was finding a worm in the trail, and having it "tickle" the Dovid's finger as it squirmed away from him. They talked about this event the entire weekend. And have no fear, the worm wasn't harmed in the experience.

On Friday, we took a relatively short, but definitely exciting for the kids, ferry ride to Spectacle Island. Our plan: to catch a little beach time on this island, with Downtown Boston in the distance. We had no problem accomplishing this. We got off the ferry, and the relatively small beach was located right at the end of the dock in front of a large visitors center. The beach is more the stone and rock variety, rather than soft sand I'm used to. The kids quickly went to work digging in the stones of the beach and even worked up the courage to wade ankle deep into the waves. This took no small amount of prodding from Shira to make happen.

Spectacle Island is know for its large amount of sea glass which can be discovered on the beach. Sea Glass is glass, china or other material which has been weathered by the water and rocks till it's smooth and quite attractive. I found that with only a little bit of digging I was able to find some delightful samples, something an older kid would probably get quite a kick out of.

Both of these sites really were really kid friendly and worked well for both the 2 and 4 year old age groups. You absolutely positively need water shoes for Spectacle Island, but if you bring those, you'll be all set.

Some other highlights from the weekend:

- Watching Tzipora have such pleasure scooping up bunches of leaves from the edge of the trail and spilling them into the center of the trail. And then reversing the process; moving the leaves in the center, back to the edge. This girl loves her dirt.

- Listening to Dovid recite "I'm a beauuuuuutiful ladybug" with great sincerity. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to record video of him saying this. I'm sure he'd want it played at his High School graduation.

- Chana remembered playing Red-Light-Green-Light on our last trip to Rochester. As we made our way along the sidewalk calls for her to stop went pretty much ignored. Then Shira called out "Red Light" and she froze in place. We realized we had our solution for getting the kids to follow instructions as to when to run and when to stop.

Boy did we have fun and I can't wait to see them again!

Spectacle Island Photos Garden in the Woods Photos