Good Times Before COVID-19 - Part 2

We continued on, not knowing what was ahead of us...

I just love these people.  My sweet nephew Gordon, my mother in law, my babies and my beautiful and incredibly smart niece Lauren.  Grammi and her grandbabies.  Also, is it me or does Grant look like GoGo??? Minus the beard, of course.

And then... THEN!  THEN there was the great flood of 2020!  Natalie captured these pictures as Todd and I were freaking out because the hot water pipe under the sink burst at our AirBnB! It was spewing super hot water across the kitchen - and LOTS of it.  Todd had to don a raincoat to prevent from getting burned as he went under the sink with a wrench to turn it off.  I honestly have no idea what I would have done if he wasn't home when that happened!

I felt super bad because we obviously had to call Mike (who we rented from) and it went straight to voice mail because he was with his mother in her last hours of life.  Eventually, he came back and supplied us with some towels for the cleanup.

The kids really missed Moe's when we lived in Europe, so of course, we had to go there.  Little did we know COVID-19 would mark the end of Moe's in Natick.

Grant and I were also able to meet up with his preschool girlfriends, Ava and Sophia for dinner at Ziti's in Natick one night.  Can't believe how all of the kids have grown so much!

Kathleen also watched the kids for a weekend when Todd and I went to Wellfleet with our friends Cooch and Karen!  Which of course, means a visit to Provincetown.

Provincetown is pretty quiet in the winter, but still really beautiful... especially since there wasn't any snow! It was nice to see the Pilgrim Monument which was built between 1907 and 1910 to commemorate the spot where the Pilgrims ACTUALLY first landed.  They spent about five weeks in Provincetown before continuing on to Plymouth.

Of course, this was only about two weeks before we all went into lockdown and people were already out there losing their MINDS over the coronavirus.  People ACTUALLY thought Corona beer could give you the virus (spoiler alert: None of us got the virus!)

We went out and had a nice time anyway.  Some restaurants and bars were still open, as were some shops.

Todd found this bench he liked made of shells and wire.

One stop we made was to the Provincetown Brewing company, in which Cooch is a part owner!  Not only do they have some tasty brews - but this particular beer, the Asphalt GLITTER beer is a coffee stout with GLITTER in it.  I'm not even kidding.

We had a hard time capturing the glitter because of the lighting, but we tried to make it work with cell phone flash lights.

And then there's the Smurf themed bathroom!  Some Smurfs cannot be shown because this is a family friendly blog, but I did like the one who sat near the soap!

The walls even had some Smurfalicious wall paper!

After our day in Provincetown, we went back to Wellfleet.  Cooch and Todd made us a great dinner and then we all enjoyed some adult beverages with the cat - especially Karen, who wanted to reenact some Dirty Dancing (or something!) 

AND, as if Cooch and Karen weren't already the coolest friends, they got us (ME) THIS!  What???

As we entered the month of March, COVID-19 had already made it's way into the Boston area.  Todd was still going to work at the time, where he finally received his medal that Dan had put him up for!  And yes, it's okay if you call him "a true force multiplier." He likes that.

One of the last fun things Natalie and I did was go to cousin Caroline's bridal shower!  She is getting married in August (unfortunately for us on the same day our nephew/cousin Ryan is getting married to Mackenzie!)  But we were excited to celebrate Caroline with cousins Emily and Abby!  These are the next generation Sears girls!  Caroline, Emily and Abby are all the daughters of Todd's cousins on his mom's side.

Meanwhile, Todd and Grant went to play at Dick's Sporting Goods in Natick.  My little lefty, swinging for the fence!

Future PGA Champion, perhaps?

Nah nah... gonna be dunking in the NBA!  Who even needs an actual basketball?

Lastly, Natalie went to a BTS Suga's birthday cup sleeve event in Boston. #2ScoopsofSUGA

Gotta get your bubble tea when you're at a K-Pop event!  Suga isn't even her bias wrecker, but he certainly is mine... mostly for his love of naps!

The one and only time any of us have been in the city since we got back!  Todd gets the super awesome dad award for taking her.

Last but not least, we had the inspection at our new house.  The Hall Family, who we bought our house from supplied us with chocolate chip cookies and bottled water. Wasn't that sweet?  We got everything done just in time... when the lengthy coronavirus probation began....

Good Times Before COVID-19 - Part 1

Between our move back to Boston in early January and the beginning of our lockdown on March 13, we had a few fun times as we were getting readjusted to living in America.



First, Grant finally got to have his Christmas.  We had mailed all of his gifts to Plymouth so you might recall he opened up a bunch of pictures of gifts on Christmas Day in Amsterdam.  He was happy, I guess!



Meanwhile, Todd got a ticket to the Patriots wildcard playoff game against Tennessee, which was Tom Brady's LAST game as a Patriot.



Unfortunately for Todd, big Tom (there on the sidelines) lost his last home game here.  Todd was funny... he didn't really want to go because I think he felt kind of bad that his friend only had one ticket and I couldn't go.  And it's never a cheap ticket.  So I had to actually CONVINCE him to go to this game!



We had a little late Christmas with Todd's family too. Natalie got some new wall art for her room!  The cute boys of BTS on the cover of Time Magazine!



Todd and I had to get the kids registered for school in Holliston, so naturally we stopped by Dah Mee in Natick for some yummy Thai food.



The kids and I also visited Auntie KK's 1st grade class where we did a little meteorology lesson!



I don't know who this is, but they're my new best friend.  Love the Bavarian flag sticker on the back window, too!



Little did we know this would be Grant's last haircut for a super long time.  Grammi always gives him a big boy special!



One of the things we did a few times was drive by our old house on Speen Street in Natick, especially after we moved to Holliston because it wasn't too far away.

Once we were in Holliston, we would randomly get Amazon packages that were being sent to a similar address in Hopkinton (which as we all know is different than Holliston.)  I contacted Amazon about it and they said to "just keep them or throw them away." I got some seriously weird stuff!

I also got to see my Massachusetts besties!  This is pretty much one of the biggest reasons why I love living here!

We also went down to Grammi and Bean's house for a little birthday party for KK (who is hiding behind Madison on the far left!)

While we were there, we had to borrow some tools to fix a wire that had broken on Natalie's braces. Boo.  Good news... I fixed it with the needle nose pliers!



If the weather was good, which it pretty much was this winter, we went on walks on the Holliston Rail Trail.  A LOT of walks.

Natalie was freaking out when BTS was on the Grammy's.  Namjoon did all of the speaking of course as he learned to speak English by watching the show Friends!

And on this day, I felt like I was back in Germany when I took Natalie to the orthodontist and I ran into Heather when I was there!  (We would run into people we knew all over the place in Europe!)

Grant also had four teeth pulled as the orthodontist recommended it because other teeth were right behind the baby teeth that he had to have taken out.  Poor kiddo.

The last time we really saw Todd's family was when we had a bon voyage party for Madison (on the right with GoGo and his girlfriend Anna) who was heading to South Korea to teach English.  This was, of course, right when Covid-19 was peaking over there, so we were all really worried for her. But she is loving it there!



THEN there was that time that Todd thought he had Grant's trainer EpiPen and was showing his mother how to use it (as we were going out on a date and they were watching the kids.)  I had the EpiPen in my hand and was showing her what to do with it when he took it from me and stabbed it into his own leg (which he was reenacting here.)  I looked at him totally horrified and said, "That's not the trainer pen, that's the REAL PEN!!!"



The only "trip" I got to take since we've been back in America was on the train down to New York City and then on the commuter rail down to Edison, New Jersey to pick up George Jetta!



When you ship your car, you are supposed to leave it with under a quarter of a tank of gas, which I did.  When I picked the car up, I literally had 0 miles left.  They completely emptied my tank!  The guy that was at the vehicle pick up building was nice enough to try to give me a TINY amount of gas so that I could make it to the gas station which was 3 miles away.  Phew!



Thankfully the rest of the drive back was uneventful!  Finally George was in Massachusetts and he's already been honking at the questionable drivers here!



While unable to really leave our 2 bedroom AirBnB, we let Natalie put up some posters so that it gave some resemblance of home.



We also took a much anticipated trip to Bill's Pizzeria in Natick - the kids were SO happy!



And of course, we had a nice Valentine's Day.  Well, I did... anyway!