Massachusetts Days 1 and 2

Saturday August 30 and Saturday August 31, 2013

Perhaps for about the third or fourth time in our marriage, it has worked out for the family to tag along with Chris on a business trip, which is why we spent last week in Massachusetts! We last visited our friends the U-----s there three and a half years and four babies ago! Then we were two couples with two children each and now we have four each, ages six and under, making for quite a gang.

Our travel day began with attending a Solemn Requiem Mass with the priests wearing our parish's newly acquired and refurbished set of antique black velvet vestments. I was anxious about using up the two-year-old's sitting-still time before an airplane ride, so she and I walked around outside in the sunshine most of the time, but the two older children did beautifully in Mass. It was a special event because it may have been decades since a Requiem Mass was last celebrated in our diocese.

We left the Mass about ten minutes early to race onward to the airport to board our plane.

The flight went ideally well! Margaret and Joseph went promptly to sleep when the plane took off, with not a cry out of them. The two older children were pleasant and quiet companions: they colored a bunch of photocopies of bird pictures I had brought and listened to me read "Voyage of the Dawn Treader."

Welcome to Boston!

The U----s feted our arrival with a delicious homemade meal of pulled pork sandwiches, macaroni and cheese, salad from the garden, and a melange of tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil. Our lodging was the best of both worlds of hotel and home: our hosts' home has not one but two contiguous basement apartments of which they gave us the run. We had numerous bedrooms from which to choose, a kitchen stocked with dishes and food, and an office. I felt we were so well cared for!

Big sister reading to little sister before sleeping

For Sunday Mass, we attended at St. Anne's House, home of the Sisters of St. Benedict Center, Slaves of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. The traditional Mass was lovely and especially charming because of it being held in such a tiny chapel, bursting at the seams with families.

Afterward, we ate lunch at Bolton Orchards, a quaint grocery store establishment with great, homey food.

Our two tables full of children did draw many stares: I like to hope it was because people were surprised to see such a well-behaved group of young ones because they certainly were!

Six of eight children, at a restaurant for dinner

Katherine and Rebecca, dear friends since pregnancies with our first, now mothers of four each!

Our restaurant meal ended a bit abruptly, I ended up eating the bulk of my dinner out of a take-out container late at night, and plans for ice cream out were scrapped because of a certain two-year-old (mine, not Rebecca's!) who experienced a 'nuclear meltdown.' These things happen sometimes!