We are now 3 days into our vacation in New Hampshire. It was a very rough three days. So rough, that we have been considering coming home. The car ride up was actually not too bad in terms of the kids. They were pretty well behaved. Avi got a little upset about being in the third row at some point so he and Noam switched (which made Noam happy) and that solved some of the issues. The real problem with the ride up was the traffic. Essentially we had traffic from New York City up through all of Connecticut. It got better and worse at different points. We left our house at 10:30 am. We pulled into the parking lot of the resort in Lincoln, NH at 7:20 pm with only a few minutes to spare for Shabbat. We had to quickly get the oven going and the hot plate on so that we could have our hot food for Shabbat. Dinner went fine and basically we all just collapsed after dinner.
Shabbat was a different story. After being cooped up all day on Friday, we had to keep the kids in for Shabbat. It was a rainy day yesterday so it made it hard to go out. We went to the indoor pool in the am and that was ok, but then we were in the apartment for a lot of time during the afternoon. We tried to take a walk, but Avi was just too difficult. We were able to get back to the pool in the later afternoon (outdoor this time) and got some nice time in the hot tub there (much to the happiness of my muscles). I am not really hitting on how difficult Avi was. He did some bad things which I am not going to write about, and we already started talking about coming home. We decided to stick it out since being cooped up for two days is very hard for anyone.
Today we got up and we decided to do a small hike near the resort and to go on a local train ride which follows the Pemigewasset River. (can you pronounce it?) The hike was ok, but the kids wanted to go back too soon. Then we had some lunch and went to the train. It started out nice. Avi was looking out the window and helping me to take some photos. Suddenly, they came down the car with a snack cart and that set him off. I told him he could not have anything as we had our own snacks and he lost it. Basically for the next hour he cried and carried on. I got him basically calmed down by the time the ride ended.
We got back to the apartment and relaxed a bit. We talked with Avi to find out what he really wanted to do and to try and deal with the snack problem. Over the past year food has been a major problem for Avi. He eats little at meal times and sneaks junk food in his room. We try very hard to stop this but it is hard at times. Marsha went to the store to get a few things, and picked up some extra snacks so hopefully Avi will have an easier time.
Tomorrow is Marsha’s birthday. Our plan is to drive to Norwich, VT. There is a kids science center there and we will make pilgrimage to the King Arthur Flour Company. Avi likes museums so hopefully it will be an easier day. On Tuesday, we plan on going to Franconia Notch state park. There is a gondola ride up a mountain which the kids should like as well as the flume gorge where you can walk through a gorge and see beautiful waterfalls. Hopefully the kids will like that as well. If we have time we will go see where the old man on the mountain used to be.
If we make it through Tuesday, we might go to Story Land which is a popular kids amusement park up here.
That’s all for now.