Massachusetts: Part 1

Any trip is not complete without a pretrip mani or pedi!  Mama and Rachel were very patriotic in theirs.
  I can't even begin to express how blessed I am to have married into such a generous, loving, family-oriented, humorous family!  It was such a wonderful trip for Hubby and me.  We got to spend a lot of time getting to know his grandparents and aunts and uncles, and cousins.  There were so many favorite parts to the trip that I felt I owed it to you all to not try to cram it all into one post.  I wanted to devote enough time to each thing, but also not overwhelm you! 
   
  We landed at the Boston airport round noon on June 30. His grandparents picked us up at the airport and drove us to their house in Quincy, which is about a 20 min drive (in good traffic) from Boston.  That night, we had a fun cook out where I got to meet everyone!  As you can see in the place setting picture below, there were quite a few of us!  I was ok with knocking elbows with people at the table if that meant that everyone got to sit in the same room so we could visit.  We had ribs, sausages, grilled cut steak, potato salad, grilled asparagus and a curious dish called 'Sleeper Salad.'  I was curious ad dubious at first, as the spoon cut into the solid looking orange surface of the salad to a custard like consistency.  But after the first bite, I couldn't stop eating it!!  It was like a smoother version ofthat orange and marshmallow salad that everyone has around Thanksgiving!  It was delicious.  Our bellies pleasantly stuffed with food and wine, we sat around the table conversing and getting to know each other.    

                     {Leaving Tulsa International Airport}              

{Here we are at Plymouth Rock!  I didn't include a picture of the actual rock because if you've seen one rock, then you've seen this one.  I was very surprised at how small it was! But the Plymouth area was beautiful!  We ate at a little (well not really little...) seaide restaurant with excellent food!  I had fried clams.  Mm-mm.  And Hubby tried getting filleted fish, whose name I can't quite recall.  He's not a fish person, but he really liked it and the fried scallops!}

{This is in Duxbury, MA.  This actually used to be a shipyard run by David's family.  This is all that's left of it now though.  A highway has been built through it and most of the docks are gone.}

{Blue Hydrangeas were everywhere!  All over Massachusetts.  And boy were they beautiful.  I cou;dn't get enough of how pretty and blue they were, not to mention the huge size of the bushes.}

On our day in Boston on the trolley tours, some of the highlights included:

{The Opera House}

{Burial Grounds: Paul Revere's grave}

{Eating at the original Cheers! (though really that wasn't the original name of the restaurant/pub.  They changed it to Cheers after the named show took off .)}

{Trolley ride that took us all over Boston!  We were able to get on and off at all the stops as much as we wanted.  Trolleys ran every 15 minutes.  I would highly recommend Old Towne Trolley Tours for anyone visiting Boston.  The only drawback was that their booth to redeem our online tickets was so hard to find!  But aside from that, the tour was amazing!}