Boston

The Beaton/ Hoyle family has a tradition of traveling on Easter. This year 18 of us met up in Boston. The weekend was very well documented by the Aunts. Compared to our last transatlantic flight, the 1h 20 min flight to Boston was a breeze. Aunt Kate had a great itinerary lined up for us for the weekend. After checking into our AirBnb we went right to a tour of Fenway "Pak"

 

That evening was back to the house for Indian food and family shenanigans. 

The next day, we caught the first brewery tour of the morning at Samuel Adams. 

 

From the brewery, it was on to a picnic in Boston Commons and a visit to the Cheers bar.  The kids went nuts for the duck statues in the park, and for a strange busking one man show.

After lunch was a tour of the Freedom Trail, by a Prince Hall historical reenactor.

We had dinner at a fancy restaurant, then out to Howl at the Moon in our matching t-shirts.

 

The next day, the kids found their favourite place at the Children's museum, while the rest of the family explored the city more or slept off the night before. 

We picked up lunch at Quincy Market and ate it at the nearby Armenian Heritage Labyrinth park

Some had to go home Sunday, and we had an intense Easter search at the house for the grown ups after the kids were asleep.

Our flight got delayed on the way home, but luckily we found a good kids play area in the airport. Ellis threw up in the airport, but luckily made it through the flight without incident.

Week in Toronto

I had a conference to go to in Toronto, and decided to bring the whole family! As amazing as 2 nights of uninterrupted sleep in a hotel bed would have been, it was fun to have the kids there.

We stayed in the brand new Hotel X, right on the CNE grounds. We stayed there the first night it was open. It is definitely the fanciest hotel I've ever stayed in, and the customer service was "uncomfortably good".

 

The kids were in vehicle watching heaven, with Lakeshore blvd, the Gardiner Expressway and the Island Airport right out the window. They could have spent hours at that window, yelling "truck", "airplane", "truck" on repeat.  The hotel was also a part of the "library collection", so they had hundreds of books in the lobby for guests to borrow, including tons of kids books. Jasper was in heaven!

While I was at the conference, Pat took the kids to the aquarium. Uncle Colin took the GO train down to hang out for the day.

The hotel had a wine and cheese reception every evening from 5-7pm that had enough food to count as the kids' dinner. Once we put them to bed at 7, we had to hang out in the bathroom watching Netflix. Good thing it was such as fancy bathroom!

The next day, Pat took the kids to nearby Fort York and out to a pub for lunch.

He walked the kids all the way up to Kensington Market during nap to re-stock on vegetarian beef jerky.

On Friday, Pat took the kids up to visit Grandma Beaton and then after the conference finished, we went out to Bowmanville to see Aunt Heather's new place. Pictured below is Jasper pretending to be a cat with Heather's couch blanket.