A weekend at Battleship Cove

This weekend Colin, Tristan and I, along with others from our cub scout pack visited Battleship Cove for their Nautical Nights Program. It was a fun filled (if sleepless) weekend, A great time for boys. There are many naval and WW2 things at Battleship Cove, the ship we slept on is called the USS Massachusetts. There was also a submarine, a Destroyer and so much more. Many other cub scouts and boy scouts were spending the weekend as well. There are also weekends set aide for family groups, I would highly recommend Nautical Nights if you have children. I took lots of pictures as did the boys so I'll mainly let the pictures speak for themselves with a few comments.

Ready to go, Tristan is packed and waiting for us to set off.


Battleship Cove is about 3 hours away from where we live. We drove with another scout family. This is the tunnel in Boston so we were less than an hour from our destination.



Bathroom Break!



We arrive and then....wait. One family from our scout pack was running late and we had to enter the building as a group. We had to wait nearly an hour which was terribly hard for the boys. Many other Boy and Cub scout groups were arriving.



Finally we go in and explore. Many things to see, look in, try out, climb up or under or through.

Massive anchor

Tristan said "what a great anchor, it has a built in slide"!

We check out the bunks. Very...rustic or something!

We had dinner, then back out to explore more.

It was fun being on the deck at night.

We saw a film and heard a talk about the USS Massachusetts and the talk and QandA session was led by a veteran who actually served on this ship it's entire time of service, very cool. Later there was a movie, well a series of shorts of old Disney war time cartoon.

Lights out at 11:00

There was very little sleep to be had! The bunks were not comfortable and there was a lot of noise, about 300 scouts and families stayed the night. One fun part of the weekend was taking Colin a d a scout friend who's Mom was asleep, for a bathroom break about 1:00AM. I wasn't asleep anyway and they thought it was awesome to see out onto the water in the middle of the night and wander the public areas for a few minutes. A little like Night at the Museum!

Morning! Reveille played at 6:30.

Breakfast time and a maple syrup incident. Tristan wouldn't believe me that the round "things" were some sort of potato product. The dinner had been really good but the breakfast not so much.

Then another day to explore the ships and museums! Cloudy but the rain held off until later in the day.

10:00AM and Tristan says "I need a rest"!

Ship JAIL!!!

The boys loved the many weapons and war memorabilia.

There was even a Scout room!

Down, down, down to lower decks to explore.

We had lunch and then explored a little more outside before heading home.

silly rain poncho was good for a laugh in the wind

A quick play on the seaweed, he really HAD to, it's the ocean after all!

Time to leave the Battleships and head home.

back on the road

through tunnel, over bridge...

First sighting of a this way to NH sign even though we're still miles away in Boston.

One last pit stop and then we drove the last few miles home.

We can't wait to go back and bring the rest of the family for a day trip (and show them how uncomfortable the bunks were since they asked why we were tired!).

Halt Freeze

Below Hayley's 1 year old puppy Freeze models his latest restraint wear.


He looks smashing in this harness and Halti.

Metal links and buckles coupled with confusing closures are a sure winner.

This combination is all the rage on the catwalks...make that dogwalks all over the world.

Or maybe we're just trying the latest combination of things to try and walk Freeze without him escaping, breaking the harness or collar or all of the above.

So far we can't quite figure out the "Halti" device but the fetching new blue harness seems to work much better than the last one we tried.

Walking Freeze continues to be an adventure but dare I say he does seem to be catching on to some amount of training now. We still say daily (hourly?) we've never had a dog like this before... but Freeze ads lots of laughs to our lives so it's all good.

Park Day

Today was a homeschool park day at one of the nearby (well half an hour away) playgrounds. I had fun catching up with other homeschool moms and the kids had fun playing.

Playground pictures are always so fun it's hard to decide which to load. Hayley took most of these.

Monkey Colin!


What is up there.....



Colin's shoe, which he kicked off while swinging!

A "very flexible" big boy fetched it down for Colin! LOL

Can't go over it, supposed to go around IT, MIGHT AS WELL GO UNDER IT....oh Colin!



Hayley having fun

Tunnel slide

Tristan thinks.....

I really want to climb up there...

but I probably shouldn't with my cast....

I just can't resist though!

a fun day and no new injuries!

Scenes from a rainy day

Another rainy day here in NH. In the morning we did some 3R's and I read aloud some short books. Later kids went onto individual pursuits such as video games, reading, crafts, silly string & playing with pets.

Tristan is finding that he can draw with chunky markers. He can't get a good grip on pens and pencils with the bulky cast but markers are just right.



When I went upstairs I found this:

Hayley had Freeze on her bed, her TOP BUNK BED! She used to take him up there sometimes when he was little but now he is very big! I wondered how she gets him up there!

Freeze stands on her desk.....


and a carrot (one of Freeze's favorite treats) and a brother help with the rest.

I have strongly advised against doing this any longer, kids dogs or both could get hurt! Freeze will just have to stick to the bottom bunk!