QUACK-QUACK!

(Yup. It's still Boston.)

I have done a fair amount of travel in my life, from the days when my parents took their five children to the edges of the United States in a 1948 school bus that had been converted into a camper (and now you know why they're my heroes), to my stint in the Peace Corps, to the dozen years we spent herding the Boys through any museum near where we'd set up the pop-up camper. (Little known fact: Any space can be called a museum, and many of these "museums" are strangely mesmerizing. Barbed wire anyone?)

But because I was often traveling with a tribe, travel activities tended to be limited to the low-cost option--the self-guided tours, the campgrounds, the historic sites.

I had never been on a Duck Tour.

Now, though, I can cross that off my bucket list. Our recent trip to Boston included a city/water tour on one of these amphibious buses, and it was a hoot. To know why this was so much fun, though, you need to know that a primary reason for this Boston vacation was to meet Boy#2's future in-laws.

We have known Two's Lovely Girl for some time now, and she is enchanting. Smart, funny, beautiful, she is the perfect other half to our smart, funny, handsome son. In fact, she is so wonderful that it was a little intimidating to meet her parents. What kind of human beings raise the kind of daughter who can not only fit in at TWO Ivy League colleges but also in the House on the Corner?

That Tuesday when we met J. and L. we found the answer to that question. Her energy? Her intelligence? Her effervescence? Turns out they're genetic.

So when her mom suggested we go on a Duck Tour, then made that event happen, it wasn't surprising but it was delightful. It was so much fun, in fact, that the only picture I remembered to take was a shot of the Lovely Girl herself taking a picture of our replica World War II landing craft.

Today's beauty shot was taken right before we piled on the bus/boat and joined what seemed like dozens of other Ducks rolling through Boston. It was the perfect getting-to-know-you activity, even though the sheer volume of the tour and the fact we were sitting on different bus benches meant the parents of the groom didn't talk much to the parents of the bride. But we gawked at the Boston sights together, and laughed at the corny conDucktor (tm), and screamed QUACK-QUACK at the other Ducks when we passed on the streets.

When we piled back off North End Norma at the end of the tour, it felt as if we were one joyful, raucous, face-splittingly corny shared experience deep into this new world of shared family, and joyful, raucous, and corny are among my favorite descriptors of any family.

Quack-quack, everyone. This is going to be fun.