NH 2012: Midweek

I'm a day behind and my parents are arriving tomorrow.  Robin & Jeff and the kids left this morning, so I'm taking this chance tonight to catch up. I'll do it by covering two days in one since we did a bunch, but didn't get a ton of pictures.

Wednesday we woke up after staying up a little too late, eating too much cheese and drinking a little too much wine (well me at least).  I made dutch babies for everyone (after setting off the fire alarms by trying to use a springform pan for one.  Shockingly you can't really melt butter in the bottom of one of those - take note).  Then we got ourselves ready (no small feat with 4 children under 6 in the house) and went off to Attitash for some climbing and sliding.  I remember going to the Alpine Slide with my parents when I was a kid, but wasn't sure how much else there was to do there.  Turns out going mid-week on a beautiful day at the end of the season is a fantastic idea.  We basically had the place to ourselves and had a great time.  We started off with the Alpine slide - all the kids loved it.  Then we got in some climbing on the rock wall - well Lily, Cybele and Gordon did at least.

Next up was lunch and then we decided to be the only crazy fools at the water slides.  It was a nice day, but not really a hot, jump in freezing-cold water kind of day.  Lily LOVED the water slides, but she was the only one.  I went down once and was pretty freaked out by how fast they were - I had forgotten that.  Also - they were cold.  Quinn walked up to the top took one look and decided to use his feet to get back down.  There are no pictures from the slides since the camera was tucked away in a locker. So here are some pics of the boys being goofballs at lunch instead.

Despite the chilliness we spent some time at the kiddie pool area and Lily discovered the water slide that you go down on tubes.  She and Gordon did it a bunch and then she got me up there. It was SO MUCH FUN.  The only issue was that I had a hard time lugging the double tube back up to the top - so we only went down 3 times.  But man, that was definitely my favorite thing in the park - Lily's too.  She was so excited that I wasn't afraid of it.  The whole way down she'd chant "Mommy likes it! Mommy likes it!"  Totally cracked us up.

We wrapped up the day there with some bungee-trampoline action - well the girls did.  The adults were too wiped out to be bothered.    Dinner that night was burgers on the grill followed by a lot of tired people finally making their way to bed.  All in all Attitash was a huge win.  Lily told me today that it was her favorite thing we've done so far, with Santa's Village coming in second.  And we didn't even make it onto the mountain coaster!  Oh well, next time I suppose.

Thursday morning we said goodbye to our pals - they're staying up here but doing activities on a slightly different schedule and moving lodging to make room for my parents (who arrive tomorrow).  The kids hugged each other goodbye and we took off in our car to visit another of the area waterfalls.  We drove a little way up 302 to Pinkham Notch, parked at the AMC camp and hiked a short, but pretty 0.3 miles to Crystal Cascade - a two-tiered waterall over about a 60 foot drop.  The hike was nice and short and included a little pre-falls action with a nice rushing stream and little bridge - a perfect photo spot.  Here are some cute - and goofy - shots we managed to get.

We came back to the house after the short hike, changed into bathing suits and drove down to North Conway to do some kayaking on the Saco.  We rented a couple of kayaks from these guys and took a short - 3 miles - trip down the river.  The water was cold, but the weather was perfect and we had a great time.  We even stopped about half-way down and the kids took a little dip.  At first Gordon was in a double kayak with both Lily and Quinn while I had my own.  Then we swapped and I propelled the double along with Lily with Gordon and Quinn took the single.  Man the double kayak was MUCH harder to move.  My arms were thankful we chose the shortest of the three trips.  We'll try some longer trips when the kids can paddle themselves - or at least help out (though Lily did try).

We wrapped up the day with a quick round of mini golf at Pirates Cove. Make no mistake, mini-golf with a 3 and a 5 year-old is something just a little shy of fun. Thankfully it wasn't very crowded so it was totally fine that Q was wandering around dropping the ball into holes and generally making a nuisance of himself.  Lily managed to play a game, but had a bit of a hard time with the rules and tended to break down in tears when her stroke count went above 3.  She cheered up when she managed a hole in one though and that seemed to keep her happy through the rest of the game.  Gordon won, of course.  We had dinner down that road at Muddy Moose and ran in to Robin, Jeff, Cybele and Jake there - a perfect end to a somewhat lazy, but fun day.