Rejuvenation

Derek has been on vacation for a full week now. He managed to stay awake for 24 hours on his first day off in order to start the brutal process of flipping his sleep schedule. He was pretty delirious up until Thursday, when he pushed himself through a band practice and didn't come to bed until 1am. He finally started to feel more normal on Friday... I was in a statistics workshop at Harvard Medical School the last half of the week, so he picked me up when it finished on Friday and we stopped for a cocktail before heading home!

We went to a BBQ at Teresa & Tim's house on Saturday afternoon. Being able to do something like this as a family is so simple but so unusual for us. It was great - the two sets of twins played in the pool and water table before dinner,

Then we enjoyed a beautiful dinner outside.

I started plotting and planning a 24-hour getaway for us a few months ago. We asked Derek's parents to come and stay the night so that we could go downtown to Hotel Nine Zero. This is where we stayed on our wedding night!

This was the view from our room on 10/11/08,

And this was the view from our room on 7/31/11!

We relaxed, walked around, and enjoyed a lovely dinner at Lala Rokh on Beacon Hill. On Monday morning we slept in and then ordered a big room services breakfast!

We thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful view while we ate.

After check-out we decided to do some shopping. We both got some stuff at Marshall's for our beach vacation in Maine next week, and each of us splurged on new sandals at DSW. We are so appreciative to Derek's parents for helping us make this time away from home possible!!! It was the definition of rejuvenating.