Monday July 24
Topic: Vacation 2006
I always try to take the kids somewhere educational/interesting on our trips to MA.We have been to the Boston Childrens museum- Plymouth Plantation, & the Mayflower in other years. & The Boston Museum of Science on our most recent vacation 2 years ago. We were going to check out the Salem Witch museum. But it would have meant driving back up to Salem on the day before going back to VA & of course I didn't want to do that! My mother was not interested in going & I had thought she was so right after we had arrived on the 11 & discovered that she didn't want to acompany us 16 & I began tossing ideas around as to where we should go. The N.E. Aquarium was the hands down fav

orite! I was especialy exited to see an Imax film since the last time I'd seen one I was pregnant with Miss 10! However on Monday We picked the wrong day to take the subway but the right day to go to the Aquarium! It was beastly hot & the Boston subway system is not even remotely air conditioned! You are pushing it to even hope for an air conditioned train! I also had forgotten how much fun it is to go to the aquarium via subway especialy since this was a week after the airport tunnel ceiling panel collapsed. Coming from the South Sh

ore we took a redline train to Boston & then changed to the orange line a t Downtown Crossing & then, after 1 stop on the orange line to the blue line each stop required a wait of about 15 minutes in a Hot dark tunnel. Normal operations were disrupted due to the airport tunnel closing & unintelligible voices were saying that the blue line trains were not 'mmpph mmpph'it turned out that the trains were not running past the Airport which is a co uple of stops past the Aquarium where we were getting off the train- so no big deal but upsetting when we could'nt understand what they were saying.
  So off we went, the harbour seals were great- I now know more than I ever wanted to know about jellyfish! & the big tank in the center is still my favorite part! The kids enjoyed it 16 most of all I think 10 finaly got her souvenier t shirt there too! After se eing everything & some things twice We then faced a predicament- it was 430 pm we had to either get right on a train to go back to the south shore or we had to stay in Town for about 2 or more hours. My money was getting shorter & so were everyone's tempers. 16, while opinionated on some subjects is useless wh
en I actually want her input. So I finaly decided to just get on the train, we stood on the redline train all the way to the stop before the one where the car was parked. It was fun though, took me back in time & it was amusing watching the kids learning how to keep their balance, I didn't even realize I knew how to do that! It comes back naturaly though, you just do it when you're on a subway!
  Back to my Mother's we packed the car next & miss 16 proved herself to be a master packer! Mostly because she was motivated to bring home a small computer my Uncle was letting her have & my mother's old monitor which she replaced this year with a whole new setup after her hard drive crashed. Then we had dinner- can't remember where- I'm writing this all nearly a month later now! & I slept for a few hours & we drove back to VA left around 10 or so & arrived Wednesday afternoon. Home Sweet Home.