Maura Turns Eight

Last week saw the arrival of Maura’s eighth birthday, celebrated in the Ellett household with a three day festival, occasioned both by her birthday and by the presence of my parents, whose visits are always an occasion for celebration.

Friday was her actual birthday and the celebrations began with dinner at Kelly’s Landing, Maura’s choice. She had a lobster. Maura loves to eat anything that once lived in the sea. I had almost as much fun watching her eat it as she had consuming it. After dinner we moved on for desert. We went to Michelle's, for ice cream. A local favorite, Michelle's offers dozens of flavors of soft serve mixed to order and almost as many flavors of hard ice cream. Later we went to an arcade to play games for a while. Maura, her grandfather and I played games and won tickets for Maura while her mother and grandmother did some shopping. We all had a good time and we won enough tickets for Maura to bring home a set of Japanese erasers, probably the best prize she’s ever won at the arcade, though it certainly cost a tiny fraction of what I spent on tokens. That mattered not at all. The fun we had was worth the money spent and would have been even if Maura had brought back no prize at all. I for one would happily have spent my small share of tokens on pinball and air hockey and Maura is a big fan of race games.

The festival continued the next day, Saturday, with a trip into Boston. We started in Chinatown for dim sum at a restaurant Jennifer had been to before and Maura wanted to try. Everyone enjoyed the meal. We all ate way too much. It was a good thing we took a walk afterwards, along the Greenway, through Quincy Market where we took in a street performance and on to City Hall Plaza where we spent some time at the Green Fair. When Maura had had her fill of bouncy houses we moved on to the Science Museum, one of our favorite destinations in Boston.

The highlight of our visit to the Science Museum was our visit to the butterfly garden, which we had not been to before. It was worth the extra charge to see it. The butterflies were beautiful and peaceful. I could have spent hours there, particularly watching the iridescent blue Common Morpho that took up residence on my dad’s hat and seemed content to stay there all day. In the end we had to gently shoo it off when it was time to leave.

Sunday was final day of the festival, the day we shared with more family and friends. Maura’s Aunt Andrea and Uncle Kevin brought her cousins. The Tittlers came by. So did our friend Joe and Maura’s friend Dominic from across the street. We had pizza from Denly Gardens, always a treat, and later cake and ice cream. It was raining so we stayed inside but everyone had a good time anyway. Maura got to show off her birthday gifts and the kids watched Fantasia for a while, which kept them almost quiet, a sure sign that it held their interest.