Swans in Boston Common

Now we are in Boston to visit Tia. I talk about going to Boston to see her a lot so I'm glad to be here. Mommy and Daddy took me to Boston when I was a baby but I don't remember.


We rode on a swan boat around a pond. I thought that I could ride on the swan but they don't let you. Only the person driving the boat sits on the swan. And they pedal like a bike. We saw 2 real swans. They were so beautiful!

Lady Liberty

I saw the Statue of Liberty. She is really big. I've seen her on TV before but I didn't know how big she was.

To get there we rode on a boat to an island. The statue stands on an island.

Then we had to climb a bunch of stairs to go look outside. Mommy carried me up the stairs and Daddy carried me down the stairs. (200 stairs)

Making a candy bar

At the Hershey chocolate place we got to make our own chocolate candy bars. You went to a computer and got to pick what it was like.


You have to put these things on your head so you don't get any hair in the candy bars. That would be yucky to have hair in your candy bar.


They made Daddy put one on his face because he has a beard. He looks silly. Ha ha ha!


I'm watching my candy bar go down the line. You get to pick what goes in it. I picked almonds and pieces of cookies.


Oooohhhh...look at the chocolate going all over it! I didn't know chocolate could look like water. We also saw a big tub of chocolate and Daddy said that he wanted to swim it. That was funny so I told Mommy that I wanted to swim in it too.

I put sprinkles on mine.

Here is the Riley bar! I got to make my own wrapper for it. It says my name and it is in pink. Pink is my favorite color.

Mommy said that I was being so good today. I said "because I love chocolate." It was a good day.

Gettysburg

We stopped in a place called Gettysburg. Here is a picture at the train station. Right we took this picture a train came down the tracks. It was really loud and covered my ears while we watched it.

We went on a bus ride and drove around while this guy was talking about people fighting with guns. I was listening and asking Daddy questions about it. Here are some of things that I learned about:

• I learned that the guys fighting were called soldiers. Daddy tried to explain soldiers to me but I interrupted him and said "I know soldiers, Daddy."

• When the soldiers were fighting, a lot of people hid in their basements. The guy on the bus told us that there was a girl who was shot in her kitchen and she died. After I thought about that for a minute, I said "no one else died because everyone else was hiding in their basements and they were real quiet."

• The guy on the bus told a joke about a lady dropping a dog off this tower. And he tried to catch it but he didn't and he got ketchup and mustard on him. It wasn't a real dog, it was a hot dog! That was a funny joke! I kept talking to Daddy about that joke more than anything else.

Here is a picture of me and Daddy on top of a big hill (Little Round Top).

There are a lot statues in the places. One of the statues was really big and it was a castle. It was up on the big hill. You had to climb these little stairs to get up here. Here is a picture of me and Daddy up on the castle.

I liked this big statue because it has an angel on top of it. I really like angels. Gram has a lot of angels in her house.


And here is a picture for Poppy. This is in front of a statue that was for one of Poppy's old cousins. Mommy and Daddy said he would like this picture of us with the statue.


(Daddy note: The best moment of the day was Riley asking me why I brought her here during the bus tour. I tried to explain that it is good to learn about history and what happened in different places. It's hard to explain to a 3 yr old but she seemed to accept my answer and she was very involved with the bus tour. She listened to the tour guide commentary and asked me a ton of questions. She was wanting to know about how people died and what happened. The people around us in the bus were impressed with her questions too. I see an "A" in history class for her someday.)

On The Road Again

We are driving to Boston to visit Tia Adrienne. Grandma is going with us this time. These are pictures from a place called Maryland. It is like my Great Aunt Mary and the girl who had a little lamb. I want there to be a Rileyland.

We're Home

We are back to our real house after we moved out of our Florida house. Aunt Sissy rode back with us. It was a really fun vacation. Luciana and me are lucky that Mommy and Daddy do so much stuff for us. We are going on another trip soon so check back in about 1 week. Until then here are some pictures of us on the beach:

My first roller coaster ride

We went to Sea World yesterday. Luciana blogged about it. I was just tall enough to ride a roller coaster at Sea World! Daddy had looked on the computer and they measured me to see if I was tall enough before we went. So I knew about it all day and finally after I asked about 6 times, Mommy and I rode it. It was called the Shamu Express. Mommy said that I looked excited but a little nervous. I wasn't scared though.

It was pretty fun, here is the video that Daddy took: