Beantown

We left early on Friday morning to head to Boston. Nothing to eventful until we hit the Delaware and Jersey boarder where we took a wrong turn and drove in circles and paid tolls twice to figure out where we went wrong. A navigator, I am not. Finally get on the Jersey turnpike and head to NYC. Aileen loved seeing the New York skyline, I was pretty impressed myself. Then we hit the New York traffic. After 2 panic attacks, 3 near accidents, and a want for 4 margarita's we got out of there in one piece. We made it to Boston in 13 hours. The kids did great. The best $200 we ever spent was on DVD players for the car. Get to the hotel and my dad informs us that we are heading to my uncle's in 15 minutes. Not what we had in mind because that was another 40 minutes in the car. But we went and we had a good time and Aiden enjoyed terrorizing a new house and Aileen and Lauren had a blast playing with Pete's step daughter Ali. Got back to the hotel and we all fell asleep hard. Got up the nest morning and headed to Marblehead where my Grandparents used to live and we would spend summers. My family got to see our old house, the cemetery Stewart and I played in and the school I used to go to. We went down to the pier, had lunch at Maddies (a family institution, every James has worked there at one point or another and my cousins work there now while attending college), went to the lighthouse, then headed to my uncle's for my Dad's party. There was a lot of beer, a lot of people, a ton of food, and more laughter and jokes then should be allowed. I learned things about my dad and uncles as teenagers that is maybe best left unknown (something about a magic bus). We left the party and Stewart took the girls swimming at the hotel pool. Again we crashed hard. Sunday we got up and loaded the truck up again. By this point Aiden was done with the whole get in the truck thing. So the 10 hours home sucked. Aiden whined and fussed (Fletcher did too) the whole way home. We had a great time and really enjoyed seeing everyone again. My godmother held Aiden for a good 2 hours and he loved that, then she stole Fletcher so I was really grateful to have some time with everyone without worrying about what Aiden was into. We are supposed to do it again in November.