Old Sturbridge Village

Old Sturbridge Village (OSV) is about an hour from here and is a "living history museum" with buildings from the 1790-1840 time frame, people in period dressing doing the work of the time, and animals and history lessons, of course.  We have been wanting to go there and it just happens that this past Friday was the summer "free Friday fun" day.  So, we packed up and headed out early in the morning.  Good thing, too, the parking was full when we left (they were parking in an open field).  We had a great time and look forward to going again next year on free Friday.

 

Daddy and Will by the bulls. 

 

Mommy and our little friend visiting the bulls. 

 

Will walking to see the turkeys. 

 

They were actually blacksmithing (if that is the correct term?) here.  It was cool that the people actually were doing the jobs of that time. 

Question

  How do you get a 2-year-old to eat his carrots?  Answer: Ketchup!  That magical sauce that makes everything taste better!  Hey, whatever works! And yes, he actually did eat the carrot, not just lick off the ketchup. :)

Happy Birthday!

Will turned 2 the other day, which is amazing.  He is such a big boy and saying many new things daily.  It's so fun to hear him just pop out words we didn't even know he knew.  Anyhow, we didn't have a big party here or anything because we had one when we were home recently on vacation.  He had a great time with all his cousins.  I'm getting caught up on pics from the trip, so this might be a bit boring to some, but I thought family would enjoy these.  :)

Singing "Happy Birthday". I'm pretty sure Will was singing along at this point. :)

Trying to explain that he has to blow out the candle.

He blew it out like a champ.

He has a cherry in his mouth here, which you can see was replaced on his cupcake.  He is not a huge cake fan, so he ate the cherries and dipped his finger in the frosting, licking it off as he went.  Makes for an easy clean-up!

Some of the family.

Cousin Ava is "teaching" Will her dance routine here.  You can see he's enjoying it. :)

Will got to drink 2 Capri Sun's on this special day, which I am pretty sure shows in the look on his face here.  He was pretty wired for a bit.  Daddy started to quickly regret that decision. ;)

After everyone had left, here's the birthday boy playing with one of his fun new toys.

Face-off

So I am finally getting another post up.  I will try diligently to not let a whole month go by before the next one.  We had a hectic couple weeks following my last post and have just returned from a 2 week vacation to see family (of which I will post pics later).  Anyhow, today Will cracked me up (as usual) and I thought I would share.  I was vacuuming with my monster Dyson (which I absolutely LOVE) and Will decided to take his rolling toy/"vacuum" and face-off with the Dyson.  Not sure why--ah, to know the mind of a 2-year-old--but it made me laugh.  He would roll his little toy to where it was just touching the Dyson head and hold it there as long as he could as I vacuumed straight ahead, with the rolling toy still touching the Dyson.  Too funny.  Love that kid.  :)

He would stand typically and walk along side the toy while it rolled, but of course when I get the camera out he decided to lay on the floor.  :)

Jump!

Will discovered how to jump last night, following Daddy's example while they were playing.  It was pretty exciting here (as you may imagine) and I took a few videos to share of our big boy conquering his latest physical feat.  :)  

He's still perfecting the landing, as you can see here.  :)

He never actually makes it off the ground in this one, but works his way toward me trying because he saw the camera.

He falls back and hits his head in this one, but it's very gentle...don't worry, no children were harmed in the filming of this video.  ;)

4th of July---Boston Style!

This year we decided to do the 4th in Boston.  This is something we had to do once (and only once!) while we are here--celebrate Independence Day where it all began!  It was great.  We had lots of fun making wonderful memories and Will made it through the long day like a champ.  We headed out of our house at 8am and returned at 11:30pm.  Long day!  Here are a few pics and videos from the days events.  Watch the piccolo and drum colonial band video for sure...they were fabulous!

First thing we did was go to the parade.  Here we are at the parade start before it began.  We were able to walk in the back of the parade as it went.  The parade stopped along the way at the graveyard where John Hancock and other historic figures are buried and ended at the Old State House where the Declaration was first read and they read it again aloud.

This was the colonial band.  They were totally awesome!  

For lunch we went to the Coast Guard base where the USO put on a bbq for active military.  Among the things offered there was free cotton candy.  So Will got his first taste.  At first he wasn't so sure, but quickly caught on! :)

The USS Constitution actually went out for a cruise and here it is coming back.  Pretty fascinating site.  

Later we took a rest at an MIT quad.

During our break Will was counting "2, 3!" and jumping off his stroller.

This cracked me up...set up an ATM in the middle of the firework spectators.

We met some friends for the fireworks...here's the kiddos.

End of the day...Will was exhausted, but it was fun!

Oh my!

So yesterday Will got into his baby powder.  Sorry the pictures are a little unclear...they are from my phone.  It was pretty hilarious to see him running around, which is his standard pace, with puffs of powder coming off him.  But, the funniest thing about the whole scene was that when I took Will into his room to change his powder-laden clothing he looked at his floor and said "Oh my!".  Ha!  Oh my is right!

Here's his floor.  

You can see he is white from about the middle of his torso down.  You can really see it on his shoes which are normally blue.  :)