The Help, by Kathryn Stockett

My mom gave me this book for Christmas last year, and I sort of forgot about it until I noticed it on my shelf last week. I finished it today, and I loved it! I am a total crier with good books, it's true, but add this one to the list. I'm discovering more and more that I love books that are driven by their characters more than their plots. Not that the plots aren't good, just that the books are more about the people than the events. This one is about three women, two black and one white, in Jackson, Mississippi, in the 1960s. It's not quite like any other book I've read, so rather than make it sound weird by ineptly describing it, let me just recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone looking for a good fictional read!

And I've Never Been to Boston in the Fall!

But I did get to go last summer with my family! I totally forgot that I took my camera on that trip (really? Who wouldn't take a camera with them to New England?) until I got it out for something else just now and found all these pictures. So without further ado, I give you our trip to Boston:

Mom and Aaron and I went on a Duck tour, which is an amphibious tour of the city/harbor in a vintage WWII landing craft. Some of them are more vintage than others, but I took a picture of this one because it looks significantly less ridiculous than the one we rode aboard. We also ate fancy dinner at the hotel that invented Boston Cream Pie, and let me say, it was delicious indeed.

The three of us also walked most of the Freedom Trail through Boston's Revolutionary sites. The picture above is a statue of Paul Revere in the foreground (too bad for the other guy whose last name just didn't rhyme with 'hear'), and the Old North Church in the background (where the signal lanterns went up). In a successful attempt to evade capture for hanging said signal lanterns, the man who hung them jumped out of a second story window and ran away. Way to go!

We also visited Cape Cod where it was great to just lay on the beach and pretend you're rich like a Kennedy. The sand and the water were just gorgeous!

Aaron did studly stuff like dive into one foot deep water and scrape the better part of his stomach off, while Mom and I did studly stuff like not let people take pictures of us in our swim suits.

We were actually staying in New Hampshire near Dad's work, and on the last day we stopped by the Minuteman national park or monument in Lexington or Concord and learned more about that poor guy whose name no one can remember...Revere is just so catchy! Then we went to Walden Pond, and first things first, we need to have a little talk with those New Englanders about what constitutes a 'pond.' It was very relaxing, especially the part where I made my travelling companions listen to the Little Women soundtrack multiple times.

The water level was really high, causing parts of the trail around the pond to be closed off, and apparently causing us to almost match our shirts.

Dad is not a good sport about being photographed, but he was a pretty good sport about the Little Women business, so I guess we'll keep him.