2015 :: week 1

December 28

Lauren crashed around 6:30 pm Sunday night. It's always such a gamble with kids and sleep. She had been really grouchy so we decided we'd take the sleep when we got it. It was dark outside and she hadn't fallen asleep until about 10:30 pm the night before so we knew she was tired. Unfortunately she woke up about an hour later when we were putting the rest of the kids to bed. Adapting sleep schedules is probably the most difficult part of traveling with young kids.

December 29

Happy Birthday, Anthony! In the ten years that I have known him I think we've celebrated his birthday in Boston five times. I guess that's what happens when your birthday is so close to Christmas. Hillary made an amazing white chocolate raspberry cheesecake for the adults and brownies for the kids. We tried to go see a movie that night, but it was sold out and ended up renting The Giver from redbox instead.

December 30

I was pleasantly surprised with how much Will liked the babies. When Lauren was born he was pretty indifferent, but lately he has been saying he wants to have another baby at our house. He didn't dote on them nearly as much as Lauren did, but that's a pretty high bar. From left to right: Derek, Will and Nolan, three of the four John boy cousins.

December 31

Elder Matthew John returned home from his LDS mission to Boise, Idaho on New Years Eve! His homecoming was the reason we traveled to Boston and we were there to greet him.

January 1

We took the kids to the church Thursday morning and let them run around the gym to let them work off some excess energy. We had a large group spending the day at Papa and Nana's house which made it hard for the kids to really spread out and play. The kids had fun pulling Nana around the gym. Actually, Sadie pulled Nana and the rest of the kids held on to the rope.

January 2

Families started heading home Friday. Will was sad that his best-buddy-cousin and partner-in-crime Sadie left, but thankfully Papa got tickets for the remaining John men (5 and up) to go to a Celtics game. Will had fun cheering for the Celtics even though they lost and has added Celtics related signs to his artistic repertoire. 

January 3

Ugh. Our direct flight home was schedule to leave at 7:15pm, but kept getting pushed back. The only time it snowed while we were in Boston started about an hour before we left for the airport. Our plane was coming from Baltimore and it was temporarily diverted to Vermont because it wasn't safe to land in Boston. The ticket agent promised me that the flight would not be cancelled. We might not get home until 3am, but they weren't going to cancel the flight. We decided we were in. It was going to be awful, but we were going to hold out. Unfortunately around 11pm the flight was cancelled because the crew had maxed out their hours. I opted to rebook us on an early flight because I just wanted to get home asap. This meant that we had about 6 hours between when we left the airport and when we had to get back. It was a rough night.