A wonderful weekend

Will and I took the train down to Boston for the weekend. We left early Friday morning and arrived at 10:30 am. Will was so excited for everything.

Because Will is who he is, it was important to head down to bean town with a plan. We decided on the aquarium for Friday, the Quincy Market. The aquarium was great, they have a touch tank of rays and sharks. How cool is that! I couldn't believe how soft and velvety the rays were. However, Will was done pretty quickly. We never got to walk around the giant tank or see the other floors. What a bummer, especially after I spent all that money. (I like to get my monies worth). But, when you have a child with AD you have to be flexible and listen to your child. The verbal and non-verbal cues. All Wills cues were saying: "I'm done!". So, with that we left.

We then made our way to Quincy Market where we got lunch, and looked at a few stores. Build-A-Bear was the hit of the market. Will even got independent and wanted to go in by himself. So the nervous mommy sat outside with eyes glued on the door

We watched some of the performers in the market as well, what fun! We especially liked the balloon hat man. He was very entertaining, and Will got a great hat. (we "accidentally" left it at uncle Lazers house)

Thankfully uncle Lazer left work early and met up with us there. We had ice cream and did a little more walking before going to get the car and see aunt Meg. Uncle Lazer gave us the tour of their home, and we relaxed there, got some pizza for supper. When aunt Meg came home and we ordered a movie in pay-per-view. I LOVE the Muppets! Good times-good times.

Will went to bed very easily for being in a new place. We had a bedroom to share. My brother made a trundle bed so we would both have a place to stay. I made Will sleep on it, as I am old and sleeping so low to the ground makes a struggle to get up in the morning. ;~}. When I came back up a couple hours later Will had moved to the regular bed. I struggled in the morning. (not really that much- and VERY comfy bed!! Way to go Lazer!)

My brother made pancakes for breakfast. Will decided they were terrible (they weren't. Lazer is a great cook) after a little time we all left for the zoo. OMGoodness! So much fun. We had a few moments from Will but he really enjoyed seeing all the animals. I think the gorillas were our favorites.

We went out to lunch then back to Lazer and Meg's home. We watched another movie instead of going anywhere else.

Lazer and Meg were so awesome! They were great hosts, they were racking their brains to figure out what else we could do. They don't have kids, and they certainly don't have a child with special needs.

Will had a few rough moments throughout our stay but I was so proud of him. I hope Lazer and Meg realize they were great hosts, and that a child like Will cant have too many "big" plans. It's just too overwhelming, having a lot of down time in between is just as important, if not more important. All in all, it was perfect.

Then it was time to leave, and Will was just as excited to come home. We both slept very well last night. It's wonderful to go away sometimes, but it's just as wonderful to come home.

Quiet day today, can't handle a lot today, Will, because he's still overwhelmed from the last 2 days, me because I'm having an MS day from all the walking we did. Laying on the couch dozing is the order of the day.

Here are a few pictures from our adventures.

What I did on Christmas vacation

Well, for starters, I worked.  I did not get to take the week off just because Will had it off.  I did however get Christmas day off as my clients had gone home for the holiday.  Yeah!  So, other than work what did I do?  I spent that time with Will and/or reading.  That's right, no computer time for me.  No TV (ok, well maybe an hour or 2 of TV for the week, but for me that's saying a lot!)

I spent Christmas eve at my parents home with Will, my parents, and my brother and his wife Meg.  We had a great time.  Will got a trampoline and many other gifts.  We had a great meal and lots of family time until it was time for Will and I to go home.

Will at dinner wearing his crown from the Christmas popper

Joshua and Meg wearing their crowns

Mom and Dad wearing their crowns and dad holding up some lobster meat from the stew.  Not sure why that had to make it in the shot......

So, we got home, I let Will play with some of his new toys before bed.  He didn't realize that the present from Josh and Meg was a trampoline till I put it together.  He's spent more time on that than I can tell.  Thanks uncle Lazer and aunt Meg.... (don't ask about the name, Joshua won't recognize Will calling for him unless he's called uncle Lazer.)

Lots of bouncing.....

Had to make him stop to get a picture that wasn't blurry...

So, off to bed to wait for Santa........problem was he couldn't fall asleep.  I have never seen him this excited about Santa before.  He kept calling down asking if he'd been yet.  I had to keep going upstairs and laying with him till he fell asleep, but he kept waking up.  Thank goodness his presents were already wrapped.  All I had to do was put them under the tree and do the stocking.  I ended up with him "sleeping" in my bed. (tossing and turning and constantly waking up to ask if he could go down and check if Santa had been yet.)  Needless to say, no sleep for mommy.

Christmas morning saw us up and down stairs (more or less awake) at 5am.  What a morning that was.  He even asked if Santa brought me any presents, he seemed a little sad that I didn't get anything under the tree- but soon lost himself to the excitement and wonder of too many toys and games. :-)

The smiles are such a wonderful thing to see.

STAY AWAY FROM THE TOYS!

The rest of the time we spent playing and just being with each other.  We played all of his games.  Scrabble, Battleship, Mencala, Cranium, I spy, and our favorite by a mile........Sequence.  Now, we already had Scrabble, but this was different, it had 6 boards, so we could play it 6 ways.  It was a lot of fun.
Of course, there was also a lot of wii.  As he got 3 new games for that, as well as some for his Nintendo DS.  Way too much time on electronics, but it was vacation so he had a little (LOT) of leeway.  We also did some crafts and other activities:

made a hedgehog, raccoon, and a bone out of some model magic type stuff.

He was looking for gems and minerals in this clay brick.  There are 13 in there.  We will get back to digging as soon as I get him some more comfortable goggles.  I tried these and he's right.  They hurt!

And lots of drawing and paper crafts.  He is very imaginative and thanks to his Grampy, he has all the paper he could want to make his computers, games etc.....

 Vacation was such a nice time with Will and I already miss it.  I spent a lot of the time not talking to anyone else and jealously hoarding all my time with Will.  I guess it's time to start coming out of my hibernation and joining the world again.  Although, I don't think I'll spend as much time with computers and TV as I used to.  I definitely enjoyed not being a slave to them this past week.

Hope your vacation was great as well.