The past two weeks has been full of emotions for our city of Boston.  First the bombings on Marathon Monday, hundreds injured and in surgeries all week, the manhunt on Friday that closed down the city, and now a week of funerals for those lost.  Running my virtual 5K for Boston seems so insignificant compared to the pourout of support from around the world for Boston.  Can you believe the charity fund created has passed 21 million dollars!?  We did our part to help.  I bought ‘One Boston’ T shirts for my parents & Vinay (They didn’t have my size because they sold out fast).

It took a little research to find legit T shirts, because there are already so many scams out there (so sad).  I found them on adidas’ website – the same company that makes all Boston Marathon gear, and 100% of the proceeds of these shirts go to One Fund Boston!  In no way will money replace what was lost, but the commradery of Bostonians and runners around the world is just such an amazing tribute to those affected by the horrible events last week – and we’re so happy we can do a little to help.

For those of you that don’t know, I work in Watertown, Mass.  Yeah, the sleepy little suburb of Boston that was the epicenter of last Friday’s manhunt for the second bombing suspect.  I had no idea what was going on until I was about to step out of the kitchen at 6:15am to head to work and a coworker called me and told me not to go in because the office was closed.  Closed!?  Why would they close the office?  The office never closes – unless the city is shut down – which it was for the Hurricane warning last fall, and this time… something even scarier – a marathon bomber was on the loose!   We switched on the tube and after catching up on the lockdown in Watertown, we decided I would stay home with Avery.  I was itching to make a trip to the gym, and send Avery to daycare for a 1/2 day (it was paid for so why not?) but because they kept saying on the news that they had no idea where the guy was, we weren’t going to risk it.

So, Avery and I stayed home while Vinay headed off to work.  We snuggled on the couch while I caught up on the events on TV.

Then we did some stacking – Avery loves this toy….

And even some laundry…

Vinay worked in Boston, which wasn’t affected with the lock-down (yet).  He got halfway to work when he had to turn around because they put Boston on lock down too.  When he got back, we decided to make our (previously scheduled) trip to NYC a three-day weekend.  We were already packed up from the night before, so we loaded into the car and got far away from the city.

We were happily on the road at 930AM and I had the pleasure of playing with Avery in the back seat.  Someone was in good spirits…

That’s his ‘cheese’ face.

And of course a 4 hour ride for a toddler isn’t fun for long…. so after we ran out of toys and games (I could only hide the stuffed dog in so many places and wearing toys as hats wasn’t funny to Avery after 10 minutes of that), I let Avery watch some “Elle”.  AKA Elmo.

Avery is too cute… he tries to say ‘Elmo’ but gets stuck on with his tongue on the ‘L’  That kept us occupied until we stopped for lunch 2 1/2 hours later.  Wendys!  Avery ate some apple slices and nuggets.  He was thrilled to get out of the car and say ‘hi’ to every person that walked into the restaurant.  When we got back in the car, Avery took a nap.

When he woke up, we were in NYC and someone was very happy to see him.

Avery was a little shy and sat reading his book (the kids meal prize from Wendys) before he started running around the place.

We had a fun day visiting Vinay’s Mom, Aunt, and Grandma. After Avery went down that night, we put the news back on and were updated on the events in Boston.  Vinay and I headed out for desert together (mini date) and when we came back, they had caught him!

The rest of the weekend we visited, played outside, Vinay and I snuck away during Avery’s nap Saturday and caught the new G.I.Joe movie.  Then Sunday it was time to head home.

But before we left, Avery had to play in a different kind of laundry basket while we waited for Daddy to bring the car.

Vinay’s family was sad to see Avery go, but at least we had an extra day with them.

How often do you get to visit with parents and in-laws?   Are they around the corner or accross the country?  Luckily ours are within a short enough drive to make a weekend visit.