Wii, Wii, Wii (and mostly stay home)

Maura and I haven’t been traveling much of late, even over the Christmas holiday. We did a bit of shopping one day and on Christmas Day we visited with friends. We also went to the movies twice. It’s one of our Christmas traditions. We saw Tangled on the day before Christmas and Tron Legacy the Monday after. Both were thoroughly appreciated, but not very far from home. There were no visits to museums or other attractions.

We’d planned some, at least a trip to the Science Museum in Boston, but early in the week after Christmas the weather was lousy (a blizzard hit during the night on Sunday) and then Maura came down with a fever so we wanted her to get plenty of rest and we didn’t want to expose too many other people to something that might be contagious. A call to the pediatrician convinced her mother and I that the fever wasn’t very serious and it was gone by New Year’s Day but it kept us at home for most of Maura’s vacation.

During the days Maura felt fine so we all played together at home. There were new Christmas gifts to play and play with. The gift that kept Maura busiest and given lots of fun to the whole family was the Wii game system that Maura’s grandma and grandpa gave her for Christmas. All three of us in the Ellett home have been spending much of our free time in front of the TV waving around the Wii remote.

I’m a bit worried that the Wii might aggravate Maura’s tendency to spend all of her time in front of the TV but provided we can keep that under control the Wii is a good game system for Maura, and me for that matter, to be playing on. We don’t have Wii Fit, which is designed for exercise, but many of the games we do have are active enough. They’re best played standing up and some of them can get your heart racing. Many of them are fun for the whole family to play together, so unlike the games we play on our computer, and many other video games, they are not isolating. On the whole I think playing on the Wii is healthy in moderation and it’s certainly fun. I’m not planning on making Maura stop (and I’ll play now and again myself). Next time Maura has a break, though, I hope the weather and our health give us a chance to get out and do something outside the house. If we never leave home I might have reason to worry.

Election Day Zoo

Last Tuesday was Election Day and it was a zoo—the Franklin Park Zoo, to be precise. After I had completed some necessary morning chores and cast my ballot I took Maura to the zoo. She has Election Day off every year because Weymouth uses the public schools as polling places and closes them for the day for the safety of students and the convenience of voters. The school closure does nothing for the convenience of parents but because I work evenings it was an opportunity for me to spend some quality time with my daughter.


We got to the zoo around 11:30 and spent three hours there. We had the place almost to ourselves, which surprised me. Weymouth is not the only town that closes its schools on Election Day but almost no one thought to visit the zoo besides us. Perhaps it was the weather. It was one of the chilliest days we’ve had so far this year. It wasn’t too bad to enjoy the zoo, however. It was dry, sunny most of the day, and not very windy. It was plenty comfortable outside if you were bundled up. Many of the zoo’s best exhibits are indoors anyway.

The best exhibit at the Franklin Park Zoo is probably the tropical forest exhibit which is indoors out of the weather. The zoo’s troop of gorillas lives there. Maura’s favorites ringed tailed lemurs live there too, as do free flying birds and many other fascinating animals. We spent over an hour exploring the exhibit. One thing that left me curious was the mice running around the bottom of the fruit bat enclosure. They didn’t trouble the fruit bats but I was left wondering whether the zoo has a mouse problem or if it was simply convenient to keep snake food in with the fruit bats. No signs mentioned the mice so I doubt they were intended to be on display.

The rest of our trip to the zoo was also enjoyable. We heard the lion roar, which we never have before, and we saw the prairie dogs popping in and out of their holes, which is always fun. At Franklin Farm a friendly zoo staffer introduced Maura to the animals and she got to pet the horse and feed the goats.

Our visit to the zoo was educational as well as entertaining. Zoo New England, which runs the Franklin Park Zoo, takes its educational responsibilities very seriously and signage gives a wealth of information about the animals and their habitats as well as about conservation. Maura is curious and smart so she didn’t need any prompting from me to read the signs. Watching her paying attention and learning was a big part of what made the afternoon enjoyable for me. I hope she never loses that curiosity and can still enjoy a visit to the zoo when she’s grown up, even if she doesn’t bring her own kids along. I think the chances of that are probably pretty good.

Our Annual Trip to Nashoba

Last Sunday we had our annual trip to the Brews and Bluegrass Festival at the Nashoba Valley Winery. It was Maura’s ninth trip to a Nashoba fall festival. Her first was when she was only two months old. As every year, we had a good time, though unlike last year it was just the three of us at the festival. That was just fine. We have fun either way. The less than perfect weather we had didn’t put much of a damper on our trip either. There were a few showers but we’ve been to festivals at Nashoba when the weather was far worse.


The Brews and Bluegrass festival has something for the whole family, which is one of the reasons we go every year. I think the highlight for me was the beer. I had a wonderful bourbon barrel porter. It was a really good take on a beer style I really love. I wish I’d picked up a six pack to enjoy later but the lines were long and I wanted to save a bit of money. It was popular and a limited edition so I don’t expect they have any left.

Maura had a good time getting her face painted and guessing the number of candy corns in a jar. I suppose she guessed wrong since we haven't been notified that she won. We all enjoyed our lunch and the caramel covered cider donuts we had for desert. We also had a good time stomping our feet to the bluegrass music provided by Southern Rail. They’ve played the festival for several years now and I always enjoy hearing them play. I can’t claim to know much about bluegrass but I do enjoy it when I hear it. Maura and Jennifer seemed to be enjoying it, too. Maura got both of her parents dancing a bit to the music they played on the PA between live sets. When the band played live I watched. I find mandolin and banjo picking fascinating to see as well as listen to.

While the festival itself was fun as always (and we’ll be back next year) the trip had its share of hardship. On the way to the festival we got stuck in traffic for half an hour because of construction on route 128 around Dedham. The traffic jam wasn’t the result of particularly heavy traffic but instead resulted from poor planning as traffic got shifted first one way and then the other and lanes were closed seemingly at random. We had worse trouble on the way home. The clutch failed on our Toyota when we pulled off the highway to pick up some dinner from the Whole Foods Market in Dedham. Things could have been much worse. We made it home thanks to a ride from our friend Andrew Tittler and the car was back in working order in time for the next weekend. Fortunately we have two but rarely need to drive both at once, so we can get by.

A Visit to Drumlin Farm

Last Sunday we took advantage of gorgeous fall weather to pay a visit to Massachusetts Audubon’s Drumlin Farm Sanctuary in Lincoln, Massachusetts. The sanctuary has a small working farm operated for the benefit of both people and the numerous bird species that thrive in and around farm fields but do less well in woodlands or suburbia. The farm raises a variety of vegetables and also keeps chickens, cows, goats, pigs and sheep. The barns and coops are open to the public and well-done signage makes the visit educational but education is not the only purpose for the animals. Eggs are collected, cows and goats are milked, sheep are sheared and pigs go to market to end up as pork chops and sausages. The sanctuary has woodland as well as farmland and there are wild as well as domestic animals on display. The wild animals come from the Massachusetts Audubon Society’s wildlife rescue and rehabilitation efforts and are animals that were rescued but cannot be returned to the wild because they cannot fend for themselves either because of injuries or being habituated to human contact.


We made our visit to Drumlin Farms during the Harvest Festival. Jennifer thought Maura would enjoy it and of course she did. So did her parents. Besides exploring the farm and seeing the animals we ate cider donuts, drank hot cider and took a hayride around the vegetable fields. Maura made a pumpkin kite to take home as a souvenir and before we left we picked up a pumpkin and a goose necked gourd to make jack-o-lanterns for Halloween. We had wonderful sunny weather that was warm enough, but not unseasonable and the trees were beginning to show their fall colors, reminding us how few good weekends we are likely to have before our New England winter arrives and we spend most of the next four months inside.

Travels Without Maura

Last weekend was a rare opportunity for Jennifer and me. We had a weekend to ourselves without our daughter and were able to go away for a few days alone. While we missed our daughter from time to time we enjoyed the time spent alone together immensely.


We spent our time camping in Pearl Hill State Park. The campground was very nice, with large sites. We enjoyed the privacy we had without Maura. We arrived on Saturday and enjoyed a quiet evening together in camp sitting by our fire and retiring early to our tent.

Saturday was our wedding anniversary. In the morning we took a long hike to Damon Pond and back. After lunch at camp we left the park for the evening. We drove to Fitchburg where we discovered the Fitchburg Art Museum, a very fine small museum. We spent several hours there taking in their permanent collections and special exhibitions. They have a particularly fine selection of works by Eleanor Norcross, who donated the original building for the museum.

After the museum we took a long drive through the towns west of Fitchburg looking for a good place to eat and something to do before dinner. We failed to find anything of interest to do along our route but we enjoyed our uninterrupted conversation. We did find an interesting looking restaurant, the Old Mill Restaurant in Westminster, Massachusetts. Occupying an 18th century building once used as a sawmill it turned out to be a good choice. We may eat there again if we’re ever in the area. The setting was enchanting, the food was well prepared and they had beer from the local Wachusett Brewery on tap. We very much enjoyed our meal there.

The next day we took our time getting back to the Boston area. We planned a stop at the Nashoba Valley Winery, one of our favorite spots which we visit at least annually. On the way we took a long detour looking for Davis’s Farm Land, and then got lost on the way back. We eventually made it to Nashoba where we took the tour of the winery and tasted several of their products including their newly released whiskey, which was very good. A romantic picnic in the shade of the wine shop patio finished our weekend trip.

Have no fear that Maura was languishing with some boring baby sitter while we went away without her. While Jennifer and I were off together she was having adventures of her own in Maine with my parents. She saw the chocolate moose, ate lobster and went sailing on a schooner. The best part of her trip was she got to spend it with her grandparents whom she sees only a few times a year as they live far away.

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.

Lowell National Historical Park

On Sunday Maura, Jennifer and I visited the Lowell National Historical Park, in Lowell, Massachusetts. We hadn’t been planning the trip but Lowell came up in conversation on Sunday morning and we decided to go that afternoon as soon as I was done with church. We loaded up the car and drove to Lowell, arriving around 1:30. At the Visitors’ Center we registered for a free trolley tour and picked up a Junior Ranger book for Maura. Because our tour started in an hour we explored the exhibits in the Visitors’ Center, starting with the multi-media program “An Industrial Revelation”, which was a good orientation for what we would see later in the day. After watching the program Maura worked on her Junior Ranger activities until it was time for the tour to start.


On the trolley tour we rode a restored antique trolley on old railroad tracks through Lowell. Along the way we learned about the trolleys that transported the mill workers around the city and the canals that brought water from the Merrimack River to power the mills. As part of the tour we got to see the River Transformed Exhibit at the Wannalancit Mills. The exhibit, which is rarely open to the public except for guided tours, showed the workings of the mill including the turbine that extracted power from the water flowing in the canal and the gears and flywheel system that transferred that power to the looms and other mill machinery.

From the Wannalancit Mills we rode the trolley to the Boott Cotton Mills where we left the trolley tour to spend some time at the Boott Cotton Mills Museum. There we learned more about textile manufacturing and the history of Lowell. Upstairs at the museum were some well put together but fairly standard exhibits on the history of the city and the manufacture of textiles but the most interesting exhibit in the museum was the working weaving room downstairs. The constant noise of the machinery in the large room closely packed with looms gave a real idea of what it would have been like to work there when the mill was still operating and working looms gave an idea of what was really produced there and how it was done. Only a half dozen or so looms were actually producing cloth under the eye of one worker in period costume but it was enough to conjure in my imagination the busy scene where dozens of workers tended hundreds of looms.

Our visit to the Boott Mills allowed Maura to complete her Junior Ranger requirements and since the Visitors’ Center would be closing soon we headed back, making a brief stop at the Mill Girls and Immigrants exhibit at the Mogan Cultural Center next to Boarding House Park. There we learned just a bit about the Mill Girls lives working in early Lowell. We didn’t have enough time to fully experience that museum and that is one of the reasons why we agreed that Lowell is worth a return trip. There is quite a bit that we didn’t see.

At the Visitors’ Center Maura collected her Junior Ranger badge. Then we made a pit stop at Brew’d Awakenings, a few blocks away, for a pick me up before heading back to Weymouth. We’d all enjoyed ourselves and leaned a lot about the history of Lowell and of industry in America.