To Boston to Boston….Part III

Day 3: Boston! 
By this time on our trip we were all tired out. We hadn’t been getting very good sleep. The 2nd night in the hotel was worse than the first night even though we separated all three boys. Rock had gotten no sleep due to a work release gone wrong and I didn’t get much more sleep than him. I suppose we were crazy to try and take on Boston, but we’d come this far and the boys (and I) were excited to see the sights, so we headed into town.

First stop: The  Boston temple!


Once in Boston we walked the Freedom Trail which takes you to most of the important historical sights.

Park Street Church

Granary Burying Ground where several big names are buried

Paul Revere


John Hancock


Samuel Adams

The Old South Meeting House, where the Boston Tea Party began

The boys LOVED the thought of the colonists dressing up as Indians here.


Paul Revere’s House



Our last stop was the Old North Church where hung the famous Two Lanterns. “One if by land, two if by sea.” This was another place I’ve longed to see all my life. Right there in that top window sat the two lanterns! That’s just so cool!

This huge statue of Revere stands in front of the church. He is truly larger than life now for my boys. A real hero for them.

Exhaustion took over at this point and we had to quit before we’d seen everything. The boys were really bummed they couldn’t go to Bunker Hill and reenact their favorite line, “Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes!” and I was really bummed not to be able to see the sight where the Boston Tea Party happened. But both were too far away and I had a long night of driving ahead of me so we called it quits. Someday Rock and I will go back so I can take all the tours and go in every building!  To ease the disappointment we took the kids to Dunkin Donuts. My wonderful exhausted husband took all the kids in by himself so I could get a 20 minute nap in the car.


Yum.

I then drove home by myself with the kids (Rock was staying in Boston for a conference.) It was the worst traffic I have ever driven in. A four hour trip took five and the only way I made it home awake was by eating lots of sugar and Doritos! My system revolted from all that junk that I haven’t eaten in a long time and it made my long day a very long night as well.

But it was worth it! The boys loved the trip and really got a lot out of it, I think. Hopefully they’ll be able to remember this trip years from now, but if not, I hope it at least instilled in them an appreciation for their country and the great men and women who fought to make it free.

My Name is Levi, But You Can Call Me Stitch

Yep, that’s right. Levi missed his second home in the ER too much and so today we had to take him back for a visit.
He was told over and over that on pain of death was he ever to touch Reagan’s pocket knife. Today the temptation became too great for him and he ended up with a BIG TIME natural consequence from of it. (And a very thorough tongue lashing from Dad.) While trying to close the knife he sliced his finger something awful. He tried to hide it by attempting to get his own band aid, but that didn’t work out too well for him and he had to call in a parent.
He is now so comfortable with the whole ER process that he just jabbered away telling the doctors and nurses all about his birthday plans and regaling them with renditions of The Itsy Bitsy Spider all while they were stitching him up. If only they served popcorn with the movie they put in for him, he’d never want to come home!
Do you think we could get some money out of the Guinness Book of World Records people when he wins ‘Most Stitches Before the Age of Five contest? By the way, for those who are curious, his total (after the five he got today) is now up to 30.

“Just call me Stitch.”

To Boston to Boston…Part II

Day 2: Plymouth and then Boston. Plymouth and the rest of Lexington and Concord.
This day the boys were up at 5:30 AM after keeping each other up until 10:30 the night before. I awoke to squealing from their room at 6:00 and walked in ready to knock some heads together. I opened the door and found them having a pillow fight. Well guess what? For once in my life I actually thought before I reacted and instead of yelling, I picked up a pillow and joined the fight! I know, it’s shocking. It’s so sad that it is shocking, but someday I WILL loosen up and these kinds of wonderful moments won’t be so few and far between. The kids were so stunned they didn’t know what to do with themselves. So naturally, I won.

After back tracking an hour to get to Plimoth Plantation, we found that Levi had a surprise for us. We discovered that rather than use the back seat beverage holder as intended, he had dumped his water bottle into the holder, hoping to…. lap it out??? Who knows. And no, I didn’t start a water fight with him, just in case you’re wondering.


Plimoth Plantation-as the Pilgrims would have known it. This was great. Actors dressed up, spoke and worked just like the Pilgrims.


Gardens

Homes

The Oven

One of the Pilgrims tried to convince us to move to Plimoth Colony and told us all about the land we’d get if we did. As we were leaving Cade said, “So can we move here, Mom?” Mmm, no. Pretty sure, NO. I like my microwave thank you very much.

Plimoth Plantation also has Indian homes as well.



We got to watch them burning out the inside of a tree to make a boat.

Next stop was Plymouth Rock which they have protected in this portico.


Sorry, the lighting was bad. Everything I heard about the rock before we came made it sound pretty uninteresting, but I thought it was plenty big and I loved seeing it.

The Mayflower II



As we drove away from Plymouth, Rock and I were discussing the fact that Plimoth Plantation was not on the actual sight of the first Plymouth Colony, but actually a few miles away and that the people there were just actors. Cade overheard this and yelled with indignation from the back seat , “You mean it was all a fake!!!!”

Next stop was Lexington Green where the ‘shot heard round the world’ was fired.

Where the line of the minutemen stood. Cade decided to memorize this quote from Captain Parker:

The burial ground of all 8 men who died at Lexington.

Next we went on to Concord’s North Bridge. On the way we stopped on Liberty Street.


In the parking lot by the North Bridge we ran into a Colonist who taught the boys how to shoot their guns.

He was such a sweet man. When he said hello to Libby he asked what her name was. When we told him it was Liberty, he got a little choked up and said, “Wow, that just made my day. Welcome to Concord, Liberty.”

I would say these last two stops of the day were the highlight of the trip for me. These were very simple places, but the feeling was the same as at Valley Forge and Gettysburg. Whenever and wherever you stand where men died for a cause greater than themselves you tread on sacred ground. I wanted to share my feelings with the boys and explain to them why I’m teaching them all of this and how important it is for us to keep defending our liberties but I knew I would just become a blubbering fool if I tried to express it in words. It was so wonderful to see these places and to feel the history and heroic efforts of those who fought for our Liberty.

To Boston to Boston… Part I

I’m a little behind in my blogging thanks to the storm, so here, finally, is our trip to Boston. 

My dream is to see EVERY important history sight on the East Coast and even though that is impossible, we are slowly checking the big ones off our list.  At the end of October we went to Boston.  We spent the month prior to the trip studying all about the American Revolution so the boys would be able to appreciate what they were seeing and understand its significance.   I have to say that I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams.  They ate up every detail, every book and every activity we did in preparation for this trip.  They could not get enough!   By the time we left on our trip they really knew their stuff.  They were so excited to see these places from such an important time in our country’s history.  I was thrilled because one of my main goals of homeschooling is to help them understand and love their country,  its founding principles and its founding fathers. Was it an easy trip?  Nope, not with four little kids.  But I think I can say it was worth it.

The Preparations:

As part of our studies we learned about the Boston Tea Party and had our own tea party with homemade scones from the time period, hot chocolate and our own homemade candles.  I did try the real beeswax dipping process, but the instructions I got online must have been bogus because it didn’t work!  We gave up on the dipping and dumped the wax into some Styrofoam cups.  Not as authentic as I’d hoped, but the kids were happy.

Long live the king!!  ( I know, cheesy beyond belief, but so fun!)

Here is the stack of books on the Revolution that we read during our study.

The librarians think I’m a nut.  I suppose I am.  I could fill 2 laundry baskets with the books I get on each trip to the library.  But my boys are reading so voraciously now I cannot keep them in books!

They made a big timeline showing all the events leading up to the Revolution. 

It’s pretty fun, so
Here it is up close:

The French and Indian War

The Boston Massacre

Paul Revere’s Ride

The Battles of Lexington

and Concord (the North Bridge)

The Battle of Bunker Hill- “Don’t shoot till you see the whites of their eyes!”  The boys thought this was the coolest thing ever said.  That, and Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!”

And..

The Declaration of Independence
Note the biggest signature of John Hancock.  Also something they thought was very cool.  Reagan especially liked the idea of being a big time rebel.  Go figure.

So then it was off to Boston.  I had carefully planned out what we would see each day in what order so as to stay true to the history timeline.  Of course those plans went out the window pretty early on.  Between traffic, sight closing times and the occasional “I have to go to the bathroom but mom and dad can’t find a bathroom in suburban Connecticut” our well laid plans had to be totally changed just about every day.  Here’s what it looked like:

Day 1: Drive to Plymouth, then go to the hotel.  Drive to Lexington, then  the hotel.  (Plymouth was 5 hours away and when we realized we weren’t going to make it before it closed we had to head change course and then only had time for Lexington)

We managed to get to the Minute Man National Park in time to pick up these awesome souvenirs and walk along the path that Paul Revere took on his midnight ride. 





He’ll grow into it.


Shooting the Redcoats on the Battle road as they ran away from the Colonists.  (Reagan’s favorite part of the whole war)

 
More along the battle road, path of Paul Revere’s ride
They were very excited to be retracing Revere’s steps.  Of course I was more excited than all of them put together, but that’s beside the point.


They were dutifully respectful when we found this grave marker for two British soldiers.

Ok, really this was their first reaction:
 

Reenacting Paul Revere’s arrest right where it happened!!!  I’m sorry, this was just so cool to me.  I know some of you are just snoring, but I can’t tell you how exciting it was for me to see these places!  In his journal Reagan titled this one, “Paul Reveagan”

And then it was too dark to do anything else, so we found a Mexican restaurant to celebrate Reagan’s real 9th birthday.
I don’t know which he was more excited about, the gun or the sombrero.

Stay tuned for part II!