Day 2: Plymouth and then Boston. Plymouth and the rest of Lexington and Concord.
This day the boys were up at 5:30 AM after keeping each other up until 10:30 the night before. I awoke to squealing from their room at 6:00 and walked in ready to knock some heads together. I opened the door and found them having a pillow fight. Well guess what? For once in my life I actually thought before I reacted and instead of yelling, I picked up a pillow and joined the fight! I know, it’s shocking. It’s so sad that it is shocking, but someday I WILL loosen up and these kinds of wonderful moments won’t be so few and far between. The kids were so stunned they didn’t know what to do with themselves. So naturally, I won.
After back tracking an hour to get to Plimoth Plantation, we found that Levi had a surprise for us. We discovered that rather than use the back seat beverage holder as intended, he had dumped his water bottle into the holder, hoping to…. lap it out??? Who knows. And no, I didn’t start a water fight with him, just in case you’re wondering.
Plimoth Plantation-as the Pilgrims would have known it. This was great. Actors dressed up, spoke and worked just like the Pilgrims. 
Gardens 
Homes 
The Oven
One of the Pilgrims tried to convince us to move to Plimoth Colony and told us all about the land we’d get if we did. As we were leaving Cade said, “So can we move here, Mom?” Mmm, no. Pretty sure, NO. I like my microwave thank you very much.
Plimoth Plantation also has Indian homes as well. 
We got to watch them burning out the inside of a tree to make a boat.
Next stop was Plymouth Rock which they have protected in this portico. 
Sorry, the lighting was bad. Everything I heard about the rock before we came made it sound pretty uninteresting, but I thought it was plenty big and I loved seeing it.
The Mayflower II 
As we drove away from Plymouth, Rock and I were discussing the fact that Plimoth Plantation was not on the actual sight of the first Plymouth Colony, but actually a few miles away and that the people there were just actors. Cade overheard this and yelled with indignation from the back seat , “You mean it was all a fake!!!!”
Next stop was Lexington Green where the ‘shot heard round the world’ was fired.
Where the line of the minutemen stood. Cade decided to memorize this quote from Captain Parker:
The burial ground of all 8 men who died at Lexington.
Next we went on to Concord’s North Bridge. On the way we stopped on Liberty Street. 
In the parking lot by the North Bridge we ran into a Colonist who taught the boys how to shoot their guns. 
He was such a sweet man. When he said hello to Libby he asked what her name was. When we told him it was Liberty, he got a little choked up and said, “Wow, that just made my day. Welcome to Concord, Liberty.”
I would say these last two stops of the day were the highlight of the trip for me. These were very simple places, but the feeling was the same as at Valley Forge and Gettysburg. Whenever and wherever you stand where men died for a cause greater than themselves you tread on sacred ground. I wanted to share my feelings with the boys and explain to them why I’m teaching them all of this and how important it is for us to keep defending our liberties but I knew I would just become a blubbering fool if I tried to express it in words. It was so wonderful to see these places and to feel the history and heroic efforts of those who fought for our Liberty.
Short n Sweet 
These are wonderful posts, and emotional for me as well. Thank you for taking the time to tell about your experiences, and for teaching my grandchildren so well.
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Hi Kami! I love that you're doing this with your boys! I'm a history lover as well and would LOVE to do this one day with my own kids. We went to Lexington and Concord a few years ago and loved walking over that bridge and along the path. Such a beautiful spot! Keep posting your adventures I loved reading about them.
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