: This is cool because it’s six different puzzles and each one has a specific colored border. It’s a little on the tough side (for, mmm, all of us? Seriously, Steve and I laugh as we do it like, “Okay this is not THAT easy!”) but Parker helps by finding the right border color and we work in from there. It easily gives us 30 minutes of play. Assisted play, yes, but luckily I like puzzles too.
2. Melissa & Doug Alphabet Teaching Puzzle Cards
: This one helps with letters (no duh!) and sounds and Parker can nearly do it by himself. I still help by placing the card with the image on it out in alphabetical order and he finds the matching letters. He really likes this one.
3. Schleich Knights
: Only just realized, having searched for what these are on Amazon, what a gold mine Parker inherited from having older brothers. These knight figures are expensive! I don’t think we’ve purchased a one since he’s been born, but they’ve been gifted, and bought for Hunt boys, starting with Nathaniel straight on through the years. Parker loves these. He sets up elaborate scenes all over the desk, the piano, the floor, and I will hear him totally role-playing with them. I love that. Steve is so much better than I am at using his imagination and making up these whole scenes with Parker wherein they’re catching knights and putting them in jail, so on and so forth.
4. Pre-School Color Memory Game
: This is one of my favorites. There are more cards than shown here and he’s actually surprisingly good at finding matches. We declare what color each one is as we turn them over and try to play by the rules (the person who finds the match gets to go again, so on and so forth. “Mama found the match! Mama goes again. Mama found another match! Mama goes again!” Haha – just kidding, promise.). 
it’s become a joke between steve and i. by the time he gets home from work, i’m already in sweats for the night. they go on between approximately 3 and 5 pm depending on the day, and most of the time he’s not home till after that. if he cared to see me in my “nice outfit” for the day, well, he’d just shuffle around his class schedule so he can be home in time. you snooze, you lose. (though, who am i kidding, many days they never come off and those days are particularly good ones. or, there are days when it’s sweats till noon, nice outfit till 3, sweats till bed. so can we count those as non-sweats days then?) and when a pair of sweats can double as pants to bum around in outside the house? woah. in fact, i have those second ones up there from f21 and i have in fact worn them out and about and i don’t thiiiiink i get many second looks. i chose not to wear them with a crop top as shown, but opted for converse and a v-neck instead. a safer choice, i think.
so anyway, these aren’t all sweats, obviously, but they’re comfortable and attractive. win.
i really should settle down on the sweatpants talk, right? it’s a season in my life. this is the season of the sweatpant. i’m ok with it.
the rules of the game are simple.
throw out songs and then what they remind you of.
i love songs and i love memory lane so put the two together and what do you have?!
throwback thursday: song edition!
baba o’reilly by the who: x-c races my junior year. i listened to this song before every single race. probably on a discman.
dave matthews band: high school through and through. and an ex, actually. i went to 14 concerts. definitely considered myself a groupie. dave didn’t know me, does he have to know me for me to be considered a groupie? my fave for a long time was jimi thing, but then later on it was rapunzel. and warehouse. oh don’t make me choose. there were many. oh and i was definitely guilty guilty guilty of AIM away messages being lyrics: “but it’s not the colors that matter, just that we all fade away.” god, that’s deep.
the whole sara evans ‘born to fly’ cd: dating steve. we both were listening to it a lot, but i was in nj and he was in ma (christmas break) and those songs bring me riiiiiight back. could not ask for more was our wedding song!
like i am and you from rascal flatts ‘melt’ album: making out with steve in cars. we logged a lot of time making out in cars.
fool in the rain by led zeppelin: i was just obsessed with this song and listened to it nonstop in middle school. funny fact: for a health course in 6th grade, we had to do a report on drugs and alcohol and read it aloud to the class. i talked about how “led zeppelin died of alcohol poisoning” and my friend john pointed out afterwards that it was actually not “led zeppelin” but the drummer. i was so embarrassed.
pat benetar: driving home from spring track. i got a ride home with this upperclassmen who i thought was so cool and she used to listen to pat benetar all the time. shadows of the night and we belong became a fast favorites. i was in looooove with shadows of the night for a good long while. in fact, i’d say it’s still an awesome song and i’m listening to it as we speak.
show me love by robyn: um, fourth grade? fifth grade? did any girl in the late 90s NOT listen go that song??
alright, i better wrap this up because i could go on… and on… and on.
will you share some of your own in the comments? i sort of love this stuff.
Thanks again, Rachael. You’ll all do well to follow her tips when planning a trip to this great city. She put it together via Pinterest in map form so you’ll get a good feel for location as you browse. She included her own commentary under each spot she recommends. Really helpful.
From Rachael:
So I’ve tried to set up these boards to help you plan how do to that for yourself. Four boards focusing on the four major neighborhoods of Boston. Thanks to Pinterest’s awesomeness, these boards have a handy map backdrop. So with a little bit of study you can decide which direction to head in and what to focus on. And I’ve included plenty of green spaces because that’s what city travel is often about–moving from green space to green space. Use these as rough outlines for your trip, and I feel confident that everything you encounter on the way will fill in the rest.
You can drop in things like a game at Fenway (load of great places to eat over there), a walk around Harvard Square or MIT’s campus in Cambridge, perhaps a boat ride out to the Harbor Islands.
Restaurant-wise I’ve barely brushed the surface. I encourage you to check out yelp or Eater for glances at some of the many many great spots to eat in Boston these days. Same with hotels–I don’t go into this. There are lots to choose from and it’s hard to generalize prices and preferences.
Resources:
// Boston street food app–as you walk around, you can track where all those food trucks are.
// Boston City Pass–a grouped discount ticket to some of the best museums in the city.
// Foursquare List–an extremely extensive list of great places to eat.
// Dear Friend Blog–Anna’s photos inspire me in my own city!
