Then more people came

Travelogue warning...boring recitation of my vacation.

Megan, Chad, Kyle, and Jess flew out a week later. The house was now reaching maximum capacity. Then Bryce and (Kyle's friend) Josh arrived and we officially met we-can't-fit-any-more-people-in-this-house level. Bryce arrived the night before Father's Day so I got to celebrate Father's Day with him and my dad. We even made them breakfast and got to church on time...which is some kind of record...especially with all the people that had to be showered, dressed, and transported to the church for that to happen. Because we know what the fathers in our lives like we went to the first hour of church and then left.

After church we had a Father's Day hamburger dinner (cooked inside...because it was....surprise!...raining). When we had finished eating Bryce and I packed up and took off for a kid-free night to celebrate our 7th anniversary which was the next day. We stayed at a previously mentioned Priceline-acquired hotel in Cambridge, MA. We found the hotel and dropped off our stuff and then headed to the airport to pick up my brother Michael who was flying in from California for the wedding festivities. Unfortunately, his Priceline bid did not put him at the same hotel as us so he was staying elsewhere in Cambridge. We drove around Harvard Square and were lucky enough to find a parking spot and ate at some pub kind of place. It was raining so we didn't walk around too much. The next morning we spent a while trying to figure out the logistics of how to pick up Michael from his hotel, leave our rental car somewhere, purchase T passes and then get to the T station to get into Boston.
We decided to start out just by going to the MIT museum, which was near our hotel, that Bryce had wanted to see. We spent about 1 1/2 hours there (about 5 minute's worth of that time I actually understood what they were talking about). Afterwards we tried to find a place to purchase an umbrella and eventually succeeded after driving by several places that we couldn't stop at because they did not have parking. A note about the MIT museum...if you call them and ask if they have parking they will tell you that there is parking behind the museum and that it is free. Then they will warn you that there are a limited number of parking spaces. When you get there you will find that "a limited number" = 3. As in three parking spaces. Total. By some miracle of the universe we got one...after putting all our quarters in a metered space down the street and then walking to the museum and finding the empty spot. We moved the car so we wouldn't have to worry about running out to put in more quarters.

After exhausting the fun of the MIT museum we set out to find food. For a college area, there was surprisingly little food (that we could find anyways). We didn't want to walk around a lot either, because...wait for it, wait for it....it was raining. We found a pizza shop that advertised Chicago style pizza. And if you thought that meant deep dish you are incorrect. It was thin crust. It was fine, but it was more fine until we noticed the cook in the back smoking his cigarette as he rolled out and topped the pizzas. Bryce says ash is that special touch that makes it true Boston Chicago-style pizza - kind of the poor man's equivalent of brick oven pizza.

After eating we weighed our options, determined that it was not going to stop raining, realized that we'd already paid about $12 in tolls just in driving to our hotel, the airport, and back and decided that there really was no point in trying to go across the river into Boston proper. The things we had wanted to do were mostly outdoor or required significant outdoor time so it sounded like a waste of money, time, and effort. So we waved to Boston from across the river and headed for our next hotel in Sudbury, MA where the whole family was staying before the wedding the next morning. Farewell Boston, we hardly knew ye!