Let the wedding...begin!

In which Kyle and Jess are successfully married off.

I bought Bryce a GPS for a Father's Day present. We actually already own a GPS, but it was a little too fancy for us. As in, we never figured out how to use it. I once thought I succeeded in telling it to take me to a dress store up in Sandy, but somewhere along I-15 it started urgently insisting that I take a left turn. When I failed to turn left on the highway it gave up and wouldn't give us any more directions. So I bought Bryce a GPS for a Father's Day present. Never has a more fortuitous gift been given. We would not have survived Boston without it. I had warned Bryce that driving in Boston is not an experience that anyone sane will enjoy, but after giving it a go I think he actually believed me. Michael may have had to live at the airport. Have you ever heard this song?

Let me tell you the story
Of a man named Charlie
On a tragic and fateful day
He put ten cents in his pocket,
Kissed his wife and family
Went to ride on the MTA

Charlie handed in his dime
At the Kendall Square Station ----> This really is where we wanted to get on, but gave up.
And he changed for Jamaica Plain
When he got there the conductor told him,
"One more nickel."
Charlie could not get off that train.

Chorus:
Did he ever return,
No he never returned
And his fate is still unlearn'd
He may ride forever
'neath the streets of Boston
He's the man who never returned.

Now all night long
Charlie rides through the station
Crying, "What will become of me?
How can I afford to see
My sister in Chelsea
Or my cousin in Roxbury?"

Charlie's wife goes down
To the Scollay Square station
Every day at quarter past two
And through the open window
She hands Charlie a sandwich ---> I kept picturing someone handing us an umbrella as
As the train comes rumblin' through. we drove past the markets with no parking.

As his train rolled on
underneath Greater Boston
Charlie looked around and sighed:
"Well, I'm sore and disgusted
And I'm absolutely busted;
I guess this is my last long ride."

Now you citizens of Boston,
Don't you think it's a scandal
That the people have to pay and pay
Fight the fare increase!
Vote for George O'Brien!
Get poor Charlie off the MTA.

Chorus:
Or else he'll never return,
No he'll never return
And his fate will be unlearned
He may ride forever
'neath the streets of Boston ---> or ON the streets of Boston, as the case may be
He's the man who never returned.
He's the man who never returned.
He's the man who never returned.

That pretty much sums up traveling in Boston. Back to the GPS. It faithfully led us to the Clarion Carriage House Inn where the whole family was staying for the night before the wedding. It was also the site of the wedding luncheon the next day. We happened to pull in at the exact same moment as Mom, Dad, Mollie, Megan, Chad, and my boys. The hotel was having a small problem with their door keys. We went through about 4 before we got one that actually worked consistently. On the plus side, each room had a little basket of free snacks and bottled water. On the minus side, when I was waiting at the counter to exchange another non-working key, I overhead this phone conversation at the front desk "So you booked it online for the $65 rate? Ok, I'll go ahead and put that rate in for the next night too." Hmmm...we booked our room for the "special-you-are-holding-an-event-here" rate of $107/night plus taxes and fees. Us = losers.

Megan: nut free

Although it was...raining...we decided to head over to the long-awaited bakery, candy shop, and country store down the street. Turns out we missed our chance to go to the bakery. We got there at about 4:30 and saw Kyle and others looking at it and turning around. I asked him when it closed and the response was "Mondays." So, it being a Monday, no luck there. We did find some things to buy at the candy store and the connected country gift shop. I bought some maple sugar candy, a metal cricket for my some-day fireplace hearth, and a couple presents for birthdays I was missing while on our trip. It was a fun, wooden-floored shop with a barrel full of pickles. Yes, we all had to check individually that it was actually full of pickles as the sign indicated. Not packaged pickles, just big pickles floating in brine. So as to avoid any incidents or unintentional mingling the shop kindly provided separate seating for Republicans and Democrats and we positioned ourselves accordingly.

The antique shop next door which I think was closed at the time.

That night we had dinner at the local Friendly's complete with more ice cream. We put the kids to bed and hung around in an adjoining room for a while before everyone decided to go to bed. The next morning we headed over to the temple in Belmont. (There is no GPS address for the temple, in case you ever need to know, the official street address is not recognized and the best you can do is the nearby ward building which is one driveway down. This caused a bit of a problem when we couldn't get anyone to answer their phone and didn't know where we were going. Luckily, I texted my question to Google and they texted me back with the temple phone number that gave us the ward building address to plug in to the GPS. Did you know you can do that? Just text your question to "Google"-- you know, spell it out with numbers -- and they text you back the answer...your standard text messaging rate applies, but it is free otherwise. Very convenient. Now what were we talking about?) We arrived at the temple and watched Kyle and Jess's sealing (marriage ceremony) which was short and sweet. Then Michael, Evan, and Mollie showed up with my boys and we took pictures outside of the temple.

Extra bright...for fun.

Jess takes advantage of down time while Michael changes lenses by learning to whistle.
Josh is Little Miss Sunshine.

After pictures we headed back to the Inn for the wedding luncheon which provided enormous amounts of food and then told us that we weren't allowed to take any of it with us. Most of us probably ate about half our meal and the rest had to be thrown away. Sad. Bryce and Evan were sent on a covert mission to purchase shoe polish and we decorated the car the newlyweds were driving while they changed and packed. Not sure how long it lasted since the car was wet and it was...raining. Once they left the rest of us packed up and headed back to my parents' house 2 hours away. When we arrived, Mollie and I frantically tried to do something to our hair while Megan got hers done at the local salon (la dee da). Then we drove to the reception which was 40 minutes away in Wolcott at the Lily Lake Inn. We were late (no surprise there)...but we had more tasty food and the kids actually did really well considering it was a long couple of days for them. After the reception we drove back home and put the kids to bed while we did laundry and packed to fly home the next day.

The next morning my former babysitting employer/Young Women's president/physician's assistant extraordinaire came over and irrigated Will's ears. He hadn't been able to hear anything for weeks so he was quite thrilled to rediscover the wonder of sound. And it saved us a $30 co-pay and trip to the doctor's office so that was pretty great. The flight home was long, but uneventful. I can handle flying much better now that I discovered the magic combo of sinus medication + dramamine which clears up my major flying issues (motion sickness and sinus headaches from the pressurized cabin) and makes me feel mostly human. The kids didn't do as well as they did on the way out, but they did better than I had feared considering the amount of sleep they hadn't gotten over the last few days.

And thus we arrived back in Salt Lake City where Mollie and I stood outside waiting for Bryce to come with the car and commented on the fact that it was "warm!"...leading the guy next to us to wonder out loud where we had been that led us to be so surprised by warm weather at the end of June.