Boston Strong

One of Carder's favorite experiences in Boston was a trip to Sugar Heaven with his dad. It just made me sick to see the storefront directly in the background of the Marathon Bombing coverage.

Since being married we have lived through quite a few disasters (natural or otherwise) and been blessed to have had little or no consequence due to them. When we were living in San Diego there were the fires  and a shooting right outside my work (fortunately no one was injured it was just drug deal-related business, but I will never forget that bone chilling sound of an actual live bullet being shot on a city street). While we were in Hawaii a few years ago there was the tsunami (fortunately we slept through that one and actually had no idea anything was even going on until we woke up the next morning and found Waikiki to be a ghost town). We experienced the crazy wind storms in Bountiful and then we had hurricane Sandy and the blizzard Nemo while living in Boston, but by far the scariest thing that we had been exposed to were the events surrounding the Boston Bombings.  

We had planned on going to check out the Boston Marathon on Patriots Day, but ended up stuck in our house due to us catching a bug. The day started out as a joyful holiday, but quickly turned to terror by midafternoon. I had several friends as well as my sister and her kids who went to the marathon that day to cheer on the runners. We were watching it on TV and saw the bombs go off on Boylston Street. We frantically called Brittany and were finally able to get a hold of her and found out that she had left some time before the dreadful event occurred. After that we made contact with several of our other friends that we had known to be there that day and were so glad to find out that they were all safe and sound as well.

That week had been sobering to say the least, but come Thursday night/Friday terror really hit home for us. Jake and I were up late Thursday night watching Parks and Rec when all of the sudden a notice came across the bottom of the screen saying that there had been a shooting at MIT. We immediately changed the channel to find out what was going on. I remember turning to each other asking "What the heck is going on in Boston?" We watched the chaos unfold where, the reporters didn't even know what was going on yet and we were basically watching it all real time. It was reported that a campus officer had been shot and killed, and then after a bit of a lull emergency vehicles and police jetted off in what looked like a car chase. By this time it was super late, so I decided that I'd attempt to turn in for the night. When I went to bed I heard this eerie hollow sound a couple of times, the closest thing I can describe it as was sounding like a metal grate had been dropped closed off in the distance. I came out of the bedroom because it sort of spooked me, only to learn that there was a shoot out happening in Watertown. As it turns out the shoot out occurred 1.2 miles from our home. I later learned that the sound had been the pressure cooker bombs going off that the suspects had been throwing into the streets that night. Feeling a little frazzled with the situation and the closeness in proximity to our house, I had Jake help me move the kids into our bed and I snuggled them tight while I prayed that we'd be protected and that I'd be able to fall asleep. I was able to fall asleep on and off while trying to get my mind to stop thinking about the horrible events unfolding, but Jake stayed glued to the TV all through the night.

When we woke up I asked Jake if they'd caught the suspects. He told me that they had not and filled me in on what had unfolded through out the night. I just felt ill! We lived in a town called Belmont. Our house was located right where Belmont, Cambridge and Watertown met. Watertown was where Carder went to preschool (fortunately this was the week of spring break). They had closed down schools, public transportation, and we had all been asked to stay inside. 

We learned from our upstairs neighbor that earlier that morning our backyard had been combed through by a national guardsman, and that there were 30 more with machine guns down the street. We watched the news a little bit, but after Carder saw one of the graphics on the screen and asked us what that bloody foot was all about, we decided that we would just follow the feed on our phones and let the kids watch kids shows. Jake and I both felt violated, like a little bit of our innocence had been stripped, (like literally I felt sick to my stomach). We didn't want our kids to feel unsafe or scared at all, so we just kept our eye on the Boston PD newsfeed on our phones and made them think we were having a fun day indoors (which since we had been sick earlier in the week, luckily ended up being a no questions kind of day). We could hear law enforcement vehicles driving down our street all day and would occasional peek out the window. One of these times we saw a van parked right in front of our house and out came several people in FBI jackets with their K-9 companion who they ran up the street with.

The bombings on Monday had been close enough to home, this was literally in our back (and front) yard. The living spaces in Boston are pretty small, with all these nooks and crannys. Most houses have been broken down into several apts with people living on the different floors and then having a separate enterance for the basement. They were advising us to stay away from windows, and in our itty bitty 2 bedroom apt, I am thinking where can we go that you aren't directly by a window being totally exposed if anything were to go down. (the only place that fit that criteria would be the bathroom). Beside having the scary thought cross my mind of this scary guy being at large who has nothing to lose and my family possibly being in danger, I just thought of how lucky we are as American citizens to live in a country that our children don't normally have to experience the constant presence of military, or have men wearing machine guns be some kind of norm. I don't know how mothers in other countries deal with that, because just dealing with it for less than 24 hours I was ready to go bonkers!

We felt so fortunate to be checked on by all of our family and friends that day. We found out that our friend Nikki was in town babysitting her cousins an hour outside of the city and had offered for us to come up and stay the night. By the evening the suspect had yet to be caught but they lifted the lockdown for some reason (it was put back into place a little bit later). Not wanting to deal with another sleepless night we quickly packed our stuff into plastic bags (I was way too freaked out to go down and get suitcases from our dungy basement with the culprit(s) still on the loose) and rushed ourselves and our kids into our car and headed out to Wrentham, needing so badly a good night sleep after our previous night of uncertainty followed by an exhausting day of feeling unsafe and scared.

The kids thought it was awesome to play with these friends and have all this space to run around (this house was a mansion compared to our tiny dwelling we had been occupying for the past several months). We were relieved to learn later that night that they had caught the suspect (only 1.7 miles from our house) and that we could feel safe in our home again. 

We had a blast with Nikki and the kids. Carder almost instantly made best friends with the two boys (one who was his age and another that was just a year or two older). They had a fun movie night and then spent the next day enjoying playing outside and exploring with each other.

Upper Left: The Kids in their PJs enjoying Star Wars Episode 1. Lower Left: Carder and his new best bud Titan. Lower Right Carder entertaining himself in the car by taking silly faced selfies.

Brenn is our little miss independent. She needed to do the swing by herself rather than have help from Mom and/or Dad so swinging her self on her tummy it was. She just loved running up and down their lawn with the grass under her bare feet.

Right below their house was a little lake. There was a trail leading down from their backyard, so Carder quite enjoyed exploring that with the boys.

The suspect was caught late Friday night. It rained just after and then all of the sudden it seemed like all of the flowers and trees started to bloom that Saturday and Sunday.  It was sort of ironic in a way. We decided that we'd take the afternoon to go enjoy all this new greenery by going to one of our favorite spots--the Mount Auburn Cemetery. We climbed the "Rapunzel Tower," and Carder and Jake showed us a new spot that they had discovered that had a little pond and just enjoyed walking around and soaking in all the beauty the start of spring time brings.

Brenn just absolutely loved to climb and run around

There were these amazing pink blossoms blooming, so I made the kids sit for some pictures for me while I once again attempted to get a photo of them looking and smiling normal at me simultaneously (one day )...