(no subject)

We had a mini vacation this weekend! Friday we took off to the northern climes of the White Mountains. Left around 10 am, stopped in Woodstock NH for lunch at a brewpub that turned out to be really awesome. It's a brewpup attached to an inn, in a cute little town at the foot of the mountains, Woodstock Inn, and I would love to go back for a night sans-child, that would be fun. So then we moseyed up to Jefferson, checked into our motel room, and then went off for Super Fun Times.

We took West to Santa's Village, a magical wonderland of whimsy and joy. Ok, I am laying it on thick, but I went there a handful of times as a kid and really loved it (though, to be totally honest, Storyland was always my favorite, and Santa's Village was my brother's favorite... so we went to Santa's Village more often). Went into the park for a couple of hours at the end of the day so we could do a few rides and get a return pass for the next day free. We returned to the motel, which was just a two minute walk down the road, hopped into the car, and drove for miles in search of decent food. The closest we could come to decent food was Pizza Hut, which tells you the dire state of culinary opportunities in that area. Got back to the motel and let West run wild in the playground for a bit, then the motel had a scheduled camp fire with smore's. West was running on fumes at that point, it was past his bed time, and he barely kept it together for whimsical marshmallow roasting and eating.

The next day we took one look at the motel's free breakfast and made a break for a local diner instead. After breakfast we drove north for a while in a vain attempt to get West to nap a bit because he was already cracked out from not sleeping enough during the night. Drove into Vermont, saw plenty of creepy broken down barns, and then it was time for Santa's Village Round Two, with incandes_flower's family. We had a great time, and the kids had so much fun together. Of course, wrangling two 3 year olds is not exactly a picnic, and there were plenty of tears and pointless struggles and West refusing to do things he would enjoy if he would just try, but overall, I think he's going to have very fond memories of the trip. It is a lot of thankless and difficult work for parents to manage a day like that. I actually have some serious gratitude that my parents took us to so many amusement parks and little vacations when we were kids, because now I know it was probably mostly annoying and exhausting and exasperating to deal with my brother and me probably running around being cranky/tired/ungrateful/fighty. At least with just West we don't have to listen to two children fighting all the time.

This morning we all went back to the Water Wheel for breakfast, then hit the road. This afternoon I went grocery shopping and realized that was a BIG MISTAKE because apparently Market Basket employees are protesting the shenanigans going on among the family that owns the stores, so their food trucks made no deliveries this weekend to their stores. The produce and meat shelves were literally barren. It was a kind of scary reminder of just how much we depend on a potentially precarious food supply chain. So groceries took like two and a half hours today because I had started my shopping at Market Basket in Danvers and had to go to Beverly to actually get all the perishables goods I needed. Sigh. Now I should really go to sleep, but I have a new Maggie Stiefvater book and if I start reading I will probably stay up way too late.