Boston, through the lens of my children by Snively '11

Yesterday (October 14, 2025) I returned home from Boston after 28 hours of driving, four nights in hotels (the cost of hotels in Cambridge is outrageous and is borderline criminal), and a whole new outlook on things I thought I understood well.

I attended MIT from 2007 through 2011. For those counting at home, that means I was admitted to MIT nearly 20 years ago and graduated 14 years ago. For those REALLY counting, that means I am as far removed from my college experience as my youngest son currently is, and I’m not totally sure how I feel about that yet. BUT WAIT, for those REALLY REALLY counting at home, I’m more than twice as old as I was when I was admitted to MIT.

Ok, we’re going to stop this now.

For the third time in four years I found myself in the greater Boston area. In 2022 I attended CPW and live-streamed a marathon cross stitch session. Here I am with 3 hours of sleep and 50+ hours of stitching.

By the end of the weekend I had created this masterpiece.

In 2023 I was there for similar reasons and generated this beauty.

Looking back at it, I cannot believe I chose to backstitch numbers that are only 1 stitch wide using sating floss. What was I thinking? Also, look at all that metallic floss – yikes, I was a obviously living high in the moment.

 

Anyway.

 

No Boston trip in 2024 – too expensive and I was busy building a deck in my backyard.

2025, though, brought me back, THIS TIME WITH CHILDREN! Why was I in Boston? I’m sure somebody will write something about it in the near future, but suffice it to say it was very MIT-themed and there were a LOT of bloggers past and present. Like, lots.

I have two children – Archer (3) and Cooper (6).

Having separated from my wife back in March, and with me having the kiddos for Fall Break (it’s a midwest thing), it only seemed right that the boys and I take a trip to Boston together. I loaded up the car with all the things you typically take on a 13.5 hour drive (sticker books, toys, non-sticker-books, FunnyPlaying GBC, Nintendo Switch, etc etc etc) and hit the road at 3AM from Indiana to Boston. Believe it or not it was an almost entirely uneventful drive, given the duration. We made it to Natick, MA in the early evening and checked into a sketchy hotel (because what’s a road trip without being catfished by a hotel online only to discover you may not survive the night) before heading over to Level99. Level99 was created/founded/birthed by the same company I worked at when I graduated MIT and I was super excited to see what it was all about. As it turns out, it’s all about ….. awesome. Highly recommend, and I’m super excited for them to be opening a location at Disney Springs. Here’s Cooper navigating axes.

We dined, we dodged, and then we crashed, getting a good sleep before a big long exciting Saturday in Boston :)

I lived in Cambridge for 4 years while I attended MIT and I lived about 45 minutes south of Boston in Norwood for about 2 years after I graduated MIT. During those 6 years I was an educated, young, energetic, healthy, and independent individual who experienced all of the things such an individual could ever hope to experience in Boston. For this trip I returned to Boston slightly less educated (because all that learnin’ starts to leak out, trust me), less young, less energetic, less healthy, and very much NOT an independent individual, so I was excited to see what Boston felt like from this new perspective. The first thing I discovered is that the T is just a train when you’re in college, but when you’re a kid it’s priority number one and quite possibly the coolest thing in the world.

From the time we parked the car (pahked the cah?) to when we were sitting in a red line car was, oh, about 90 seconds. They literally ran to the T stop. Where were we going? I don’t know. Inbound, I guess. I learned long ago not to try to plan my days out when I’m with these two goobers and to just let the chaos energy take hold and guide us.

We popped out at Park St Station and began breakfast hunting. As a student/resident I ended up at fancy cafes and little local spots. This time? “DADDY! LOOK! DUNKIN DONUTS! DADDY, LOOK, ANOTHER DUNKIN DONUTS! DADDY, WHY ARE THERE SO MANY DUNKIN DONUTS!?” The result? Spider donut.

We attempted a little bit of historical Boston, under the naive thought that maybe they’d be interested in history. “Yo, kiddos, see this brick line? If you follow it it’ll lead you to cool stuff.”

“Daddy, this is boring, I hate this line. ARCHER, LET’S CLIMB THIS FENCE AND RACE TO THE END!”

Several fences, a bunch of chased pigeons, and even more Dunkin Donuts later, we ended up at Faneuil Hall, where we entered a store I never thought I’d ever ever ever enter. And I wouldn’t ever have, had it not been for the goobers.

The Crocs Store.

Not only did we enter, but we left with an assortment of Spongebob charms and a shiny new pair of white Crocs. Archer was the bag man.

At this point I really had no idea what to do next, so we just started walking and I hoped things would jump out at us, and jump out they did. We found some type of cool maze thing that soaked up about 20 minutes.

And then it happened. We found “the playground.” It’s a playground in the heart of Boston that didn’t exist back when I was at MIT, and it’s absolutely badass. And apparently, it’s famous and I had no idea. 

Yes, apparently, “Cop Slide” is a thing.

What I loved most about this playground is that whoever designed it very clearly said to themselves “I want this playground to be exceedingly dangerous, but then we’ll just sorta make the ground squishy and then round off some of the sharp edges, and then people will be ok with it.”

Seriously, the potential for harm at this place was boundless and the kids LOVED IT! Smashing into concrete blocks, rolling down hills, burning hot metal slides, suspended cargo nets with massive holes in them, blind spots everywhere for unsupervised play, it was the best! No broken limbs in the Snively camp, just 2 hours of mid-90s danger play.

     

Then it was back to the train to go explore MIT.

  

So this is the part where I tell you that, as much as you may love MIT, and as amazing as MIT may be, and as much history as has happened at MIT, and as much prestige as it may have, MIT is BORING AS HELL to a couple of little kids.

“Cooper, look at that crazy building, isn’t it crazy!?”

“Daddy, I don’t care about buildings, where’s the fun stuff?”

“Uh, well, MIT is mostly just a bunch of cool looking buildings.”

“DAAADDDDYYYY!!!!!”

Here are the highlights of MIT through the eyes of my children.

1. Hide and Seek in Killian

2. Vending machines (note the first appearance of the new Crocs) 3. Playing with number blocks in a lounge off the infinite  4. Whatever this thing is 5. Boba and more number blocks

Didn’t give a sh*t about the tunnels, about where hacks had happened, about the lecture halls, about the cool acoustic architecture, about where daddy used to nap between classes, NONE OF IT.

This is the part of the story where Archer’s little body just gave up and collapsed. Sleep took him into its gentle arms and whispered sweet nothings into his ear, so I undertook the time-honored parental tradition of carrying your child vast distances while they do their best impression of a drooling sack of flour.

I told Cooper that our hotel was ready for us and we should walk back to it. It was a short walk across campus to Kendall Square to get to the hotel.

“Daddy, let’s take the train.”
“The train isn’t on the way.”
“Let’s take it anyway.”
“Ok, well, we’ll have to walk 15 minutes down this road in order to take the train, is that ok?”
“Yes.”

So this is how I ended up hauling Sleepy-Face McGoo all down Mass Ave to the central T stop so that we could ride it to Kendall and go to our hotel.

When we finally got to the hotel my right arm was completely seized and cramped and was ready to just fall off and wander away. We checked in, made it to the fifth floor, and then I just flopped the monster onto the bed before sitting down and just breathing quietly for a while.

We spent a few hours in our room, it was great. We were staying in an old fire station and the kids thought that was the coolest thing ever. What was even cooler was, after learning all about fire fighters and fire stations, we went out to watch people play with fire. Because that’s how the world works. And that’s why growing up as a kid is confusing.

“Don’t play with fire.”
“Ok.”
“Let’s go watch people play with fire.”
“Ok.”

We watched until well into the evening before walking back to our hotel. The next morning there was bacon.

And then, you guessed it, MORE TRAIN RIDING!

   

We proceeded to spend the part of the day in the Boston Museum of Science. No exposition required here, just some fun pictures.

      

What next? MORE TRAIN RIDING! Now with a stuffed wolf from the science museum.

Now, after a day of driving, a day of playing, and a day of science museum, it was time for the actual reason we were in Boston, and this required dressing up. Look at these cuties, omg, I can’t handle it. The big one thinks he’s super cool. The little one knows just exactly how cute he is.

The little one is also a CRAZY dancer. I’ve got 10 minutes of him just absolutely cooking on the dance floor, but here’s just a quick snippet.

Cooper is also a dancing fiend, though I didn’t catch any video of him. There was a wonderful moment when I was chatting with EChoe and looked over her shoulder to see Cooper doing the Gangnam Style dance in front of a bunch of cheering admissions bloggers. It was amazing.

And, after a night of dancing and being generally adorable, it was all over. We went back to our fire station hotel for one more sleepy night and then headed home.

I spent weeks wondering what we were going to do in Boston. Duck Boats? Too expensive. Freedom trail? Too boring. Boston Common? We have grass in Indiana. As it turns out, planning is for suckers. Kids know what they want and what they don’t want, and they’re not shy about keeping their opinions to themselves. Every once in a while it’s important to make them do something or see something that they wouldn’t ordinarily want to, but for most of the trip we just winged it and it was great! Archer won’t remember hardly any of it, but Cooper will, and part of what makes being a parent so fun is watching memories like this form, knowing I’ll be hearing about this trip from him in stories for the next thirty years.

I’m not entirely sure what I want you to take away from this post – most of you reading won’t relate to any of this until after you’re admitted, graduated, and have children. But I wanted a place to post pictures and talk about Boston, and this seemed appropriate, so consider it a break from all the admissions talk and I hope you enjoyed.