Wally World it up

And, we finally did it. We took the kids on a theme park, amusement ride, good ol' American summer vacation last weekend. We didn't end up at Disneyland like I've been trying to get in the works for over a year now, but we had a great little tour of northern New Hampshire and all it has to offer in the way of kiddie fun.
We also checked off 2 other things from our "need to do" list. 1 - take the kids camping on the East Coast (take them camping at all - Hattie has never been.) 2 - Grace has been lamenting that she has never stayed in a real hotel. Oh, poor thing, she's stayed in ski condo's, beach houses, and the sort, but never in a regular hotel room. I'm playing a tiny violin for her sad story.

For amusement park fun, NH has a couple of REALLY nice places for the 2-12 year-old crowd. Storyland and Santa's Village were both super fun, nice, and relaxed, and perfect for our kids and their interests. I think I liked Santa's Village the most. Who can resist Christmas everywhere you look on a nice day in July? Christmas music playing, a barn filled with Santa's reindeer, and even the Jolly Old Elf, himself made for a pretty fun day.

Camping around here is, well, not like the camping David and I really like to do in Utah where you can get away from everything and everyone up in the mountains. But, we found a campground right next to Storyland complete with flushing toilets, showers, and a swimming pool. I decided trading peace and quiet for a flusher was worth it - especially with 2 girls, one newly potty trained! It was actually pretty nice when we pulled in and seemed very clean. Not too shabby. So, we pitched our tent, hooked up the camping stove, and settled in for a night under the stars (well, under the tree canopy anyway.)

(Day 1 - dry tent, happy girls)

THEN, came the second night. We came back from a day of fun at Storyland and pulled into the campground to find a complete assortment of New Hampshire's "finest", um, red-necks (what's the politically correct term here?) The once really clean bathrooms and showers were now, well, disgusting, after the volume of new people using them. The crowd that had gathered in the neighboring tent site was delightful fun, full of Metallica blaring, beer drinking, kids. Sweet. Nice place to put your little girls to sleep.(Day 2 - roasting weinies in the rain)

It started raining too, rained all night. We woke up in a very moist tent full of water, and wet towels and swimming suits that we had hoped would dry hanging up in the tent. Ya right. Still, we pressed on.

Grace wouldn't get out of bed all morning. We thought she was pouting. She was homesick and not happy with the tent situation anymore. We finally rolled her out of bed and threw her in the car to head to Santa's Village. On the way out of the tent site, she said "mom, I need to vomit." Lovely. We got out of the car quick and sure enough... It didn't end there. She was sick ALL day at Santa's Village, ran a 103 fever. We pushed her around in the stroller all day, but she basically missed everything. I felt so bad. She LOVES Christmas and everything that goes with it. She would have had such a great time there.

What to do? Pack up and go home? Sleep in a wet tent with a vomiting child next to the party crowd? I didn't actually say anything about it, not wanting to crush David's camping spirit. On his own, he said "why don't you call the Attitash ski resort and see if we can stay there tonight." Are you kidding? Did he really say that? YES! He CAN read my mind after nearly 12 years of marriage. AND, he agreed with me! I didn't waste any time calling and quickly made the reservation before he could change his mind.

So, we doubled the total cost of the trip and checked into civilization. As we pulled up to the pretty yuppie place, WE felt like the red-necks with our packed-to-the-gills subaru station wagon, mismatched duffle bags, camping gear, stuff strapped to the top of the car, grocery sacs full of wet crap, and sporting our classy camping fashion. Good thing we were still in New England where no one really cares what you look like 99% of the time.

We prayed that Grace only had a 24 hour bug and would be healthy the next day. David even gave her a blessing. In good faith, we bought tickets to do the alpine slide at Attitash for the next day. Little did we know that we had actually bought day passes to their entire resort which also included a water park, ski lift rides, and bungy trampoline.

(Hattie and I don't look too happy here because for the 1/2 hour ride up the lift, I spent the whole time trying to keep her from dropping something or squirming out of the chair. It was torture!)

Miraculously, Grace DID wake up the next morning feeling 100% better and we were all able to have a blast for the rest of our salvaged trip. And, Grace got her hotel wish!

I do feel bad that David didn't get to camp the whole time and he missed out on driving to the top of Mount Washington, but we did see it from our view at the top of Mount Attitash :-) I'm so grateful to have such a nice hubby and super dad that he let us wimpy girls crash in a hotel when the camping got iffy. I would have been fine if all the days were like the first day, but seriously.

Our list of favorite things:

1- Bamboo Chutes (log flume ride) at Storyland
2- Yule Log (log flume ride) at Santa's Village
(can I just say that Hattie went on these over and over and over and finally asked if we could just put one in our back-yard! the kid LOVED it!)
3- beautiful flower gardens at both parks
4- super darling themes for the rides and attractions at both parks

(Grace and Hattie in the 3 bears' house. I always call them my Goldilocks!)

(Princess Hattie and her Prince Charming sitting in Cinderella's Pumpkin Coach)

5- getting to meet all of Santa's reindeer
6- riding the longest Alpine slide in North America. I didn't know it was the longest one, but when we got off, I said "wow, that was a really long Alpine slide" and David said "duh."
7- the circus at Storyland, cool magic tricks and performing house cats!