My son likes to play Minecraft, and watch YouTube videos of others playing Minecraft. He has his favorite YouTubers, and even subscribes to their channels to get notifications about new videos. He found out that some of his favorites, including Jerome (his most favorite) were going to be at PAX East 2015, so he wanted to go to meet them. He got tickets as a Christmas present. He was particularly excited because the first day of the convention was on his birthday!
I took the day off work, and it turns out the schools were closed that day because of a heavy snowfall. What a perfect time for a snow day! We got ready, packed the car, and were on our way. We were a little concerned about the snow – there was quite a bit where we live, but we had been hearing about all of the snow in Boston, where PAX East is held. There was a record breaking amount of snow – by March 15, more than 100 inches had fallen, and it appears that the majority (more than 90 inches) of that was from late January until late February. That made our mere ten inch snowfall on March 5 seem like a dusting!
Of course I took pictures on the way up. When I was a child, we didn’t have anything else to do in the car, so I used to look at the scenery, and I still do. I saw a sign for Jerome Street, which seemed kind of funny, since Jerome is the name of the person my son was hoping to meet the most.
We got to the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center (BCEC) a little before 9. It was incredibly cold out, and there was a bit of a walk from the parking lot to the building. The snow was plowed into big mountains that were taller than we are. Once we got inside, we started to look around and try to figure out where Jerome and his friends were. We walked around and asked different people where they might be. There were staff members who work there to assist and answer questions. While we were looking around everywhere, we were able to get a good idea of where everything was. Except for the YouTubers, of course! Finally, we found out they had already left and gone to get something to eat. We went to the restaurant where they went, but they were already gone. Well, we tried, and tomorrow was another day.
We saw ice and huge piles of snow all over Massachusetts the entire weekend.
On Saturday, we found out that someone sprayed our car with silly string, which was funny. We stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast. We would’ve gone to a regular sit down restaurant, but we wanted to get to the convention center as soon as possible. My husband and son were the only ones going, since we only had two passes for Saturday. After dropping them off, my daughter and I headed back to the hotel. We stopped and did some grocery shopping on the way back. Then we hung out in the hotel and looked for something to do. We didn’t really find much of anything, so we decided to stay there and relax. My daughter had fun playing Duck Life and we did a jigsaw puzzle.
I texted my husband to find out if they were able to find the Minecraft YouTubers. I had asked him to make sure to get pictures if that happened. There were several text messages back and forth, and finally they heard that the guys were going to be meeting outside. They went and waited, and it finally paid off! Here it is in my son’s words:
“ When we arrived at the Convention Center, we went inside and started to look around for the YouTubers. Shortly after we arrived, one of them posted on Twitter that they would be having a meet up right outside of the Convention Center. We went to the designated location and anxiously awaited their arrival. We soon saw Mitch, one of the YouTubers, and started to go over to the large crowd of people around him. I greeted him, shook his hand, and got his autograph just as several of the other YouTubers started to arrive. All of them were really nice and seemed very excited to meet a bunch of their fans. Throughout the meet up, I got to meet Mitch (BajanCanadian), Ryan (xrpmx13), Rob (Woofless), Lauchlan (CraftBattleDuty), Preston (TBNRfrags), and Gizzy. I even got Ryan to sing me a song on camera for my birthday! That was the highlight of my day. I was really hoping to meet Jerome, but he took too long to get ready so the others left him at the hotel. Despite not meeting him, it was still an amazing experience since I got to meet all of those other YouTubers.”
Not only did my husband get quite a few pictures, but he even got a video of Ryan (YouTube name: xrpmx13) singing my son a song called “The Milkman Song” for his birthday. It was almost as good (for me) as being there! It was really nice for my son as a late birthday present.
We stopped for some things at Walmart later that night on the way back to the hotel. While we were in there, the fire alarm went off, and we had to leave our cart where it was and leave the store. We moved our car to the parking lot next door; then stood in a safe place to watch what was going on. Apparently it was a burst pipe in the parking lot. Once it was under control, we were able to go back in and pay for our items. We went back to the hotel, and had some dinner.
The next day we packed up and went home. It was a wonderful weekend, and it was kind of sad to get back to our ‘regular’ lives that evening. We’ll always have the memories of our trip, and the priceless pictures and a video of the happiness on my son’s face, though.
