East Coast Travels: Boston, Framingham & Nahant, Massachussettes

We are back and I have lots of thoughts from our travels. Here it goes:

1. Travelling with toddlers is not a small feat. We flew out of Seattle to Portland then to Boston. LONG day and who's idea was it to have a 6am flight??! Okay it was mine. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We were up at 3:30 in the AM. Yuck. The boys were happy though and said "YAY!" most of the drive to the airport. I thought they would of fallen asleep but they were a little too excited. They travelled in their jammies all day.

2. We flew Alaska and I highly recommend renting their "digee" player for 10 bucks if you are on a long flight. 30+ movies, cartoons, games, internet = totally worth your bucks.

3. We cleaned out all of our airline miles that we have been building up over the last 7 years. It was worth every one of them. A week long trip to the other side of the country for a family of four for under 700 bucks that included hotel and rental car costs is pretty amazing. The plane tickets alone were 600 a piece so I think we made out pretty good. Gotta stay on a budget! :)

3. And piggy backing off of that - sometimes trying to say a few dollars is not worth your sanity. We only checked one bag. A week of travel with four people all stuffed in one suitcase - I thought it was a good idea until it weigh 54 lbs and we sat there stuffing 4 lbs worth into our 3 carry-ons. Less carry-ons with kiddos is the way to go next time because our kids fell asleep and both needed to be carried. You should of seen me lugging Sterling over my shoulder (fireman carry style) with my purse and another bag. That was about 60 lbs to carry through the airport. Not a good idea. Pretty sure I was sweating and people looked at me like I was a crazy lady.

4. I packed WAY too many clothes. If you are in a good hotel or seeing family - pack light and do laundry. I wasn't sure what weather was going to be like and with attending a wedding I went a little overboard to have all options available to us. It was too much. You live, you learn. 

5. The East coast has some serious crazy driving going on. Last time we were there was 6 years ago and we didn't do our own driving. We rented a car this time (got a Jetta going through priceline.com for $16 bucks a day - not bad!). Justin is an expert at getting up to speed and weaving through traffic now. I couldn't watch because my gasping and holding of the dashboard freaks him out. I think I win an award for awesome passenger this trip because I usually suck at it.

6. The boys got to meet their cousin Kian on this trip and I met one of my cousins, Alex for the first time. I think it's pretty neat to spend time with family. Something about sharing the same blood and last name is pretty awesome. My dad's side of the family is a hoot!

7. My sister found a great hotel that we all were able to get rooms at! When travelling with kids here are some things to look for in a hotel: a pool with all day open hours (and when they close to be afraid to ask if they could open - the worst they can say is "no". They let us swim beyond closing times. Pretty nice!) , continental breakfast with trays to take back to your room (totally stocked up on fruit and milk), a room that is somewhat divided to spread out for better sleeping and a fridge for our continental breakfast stock up! It was perfect.

That's it for now. Here are some pictures of our first 3 days of travelling in Massachussettes! More posts to follow with some other states!

My uncles (all my dad's brothers). Joey, Ed, Bob and my dad. They definitely look related!

Always attempting a family picture!

My cousins! Danielle (the bride) with sisters Emily and Lyndsy. Kind of crazy that the first time I met Danielle was at my own wedding 7 years ago. I am so pumped I got to attend hers! This was only my second time meeting Emily and Lyndsy. There are too many miles between these families! I wish I got to see all of the Muri's more often.

Great memories!!

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