We have been in Massachusetts for 2 months now. We are still staying with friends in Douglas, MA. It's a great location in terms of the amount of property and it's beautiful, but hard to get used to the amount of driving required to get most places. We've been looking for houses to buy closer to Boston...basically half way between Ben's school and Boston, but haven't found anything yet. We've narrowed down the area to a few towns, but every house seems to be lacking one of the essentials for us. We aren't in a huge rush and are still set up with a rental house starting August 1st, so we'll continue to look until we find something ideal.
For Fathers Day we went to the beach north of Boston. We checked out Gloucester, Rockport and Salem. We absolutely loved this area. We may end up moving closer to the beach once Ben is done with school. It was very much like Cape Cod. Lots of people walking around, hip restaurants, cute shops, beautiful ocean views. I also really like Northampton...so for a permanent location it will be a toss up between these two areas! Central Massachusetts (where we will be near Tufts) is beautiful, but I feel like we don't fit in as well as we would in another part of the state. Oh and our our house in Seattle is officially closed!
Finley is on the strangest sleeping schedule right now. She sleeps a lot! A typical day for her starts at around 11 am and then a nap from 3- 5 and then to bed around 10 pm. It's hard to get her off the cycle. When I go in her room in the morning. She sits up and says "good" and nods her head. She has been doing wonderfully in her new big girl bed. At first we put up a gate around it, but she actually just stays in bed until someone comes to get her. She also loves jumping up and down and saying "new bed!" "new bed!"
After getting up she typically starts talking about what she wants for breakfast. Lately all she wants is hummus and crackers with juice. But in the interest of keeping her eating a wide variety of foods, I try to give her something different everyday. After breakfast we usually go on some outing. Yesterday we went to Worcester to check out a locally owned toy store, where she got some toy cars and wooden blocks. We also usually take a scenic drive and look at the farm animals along the way. Then we come home and have lunch, which is usually leftovers from dinner, we play for a little while and then it's time for a nap. In the morning before 11 I usually have sometime to get stuff done and then during her nap I cook dinner and exercise the dogs. Although lately I've been running the dogs in the morning too.
Since Finley is up until 10 pm, we've been able to go out at night. On Saturday we went out to eat in Grafton at the Post Office Pub right near our future house. There was a live band and Finley had fun doing a little dancing. After that we went to watch the Millbury fireworks. We were pretty far away and all Finley cared about where the cars down below our viewpoint, but it was a fun night!
Last night we went of to a Food Festival on Shrewsbury St in Worcester. It was $25 for all you can eat samples at most of the restaurants on the street. We did a ton of walking and eating. It always feels weird to have that many different types of food, but most of it was really good. We had pasta, chicken wings, gelato, cream puffs, smoothies, sushi, tacos and pizza! Finley was a trooper and stayed in her stroller most of the time. I was impressed by the number of people there. The city is a little rough around the edges, but has a lot of character.
