A Trip to Lake Winnipesaukee (And My Baby Turns Four!)

We were able to spend half a week up at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire.  My parents had given us their timeshare, and we took over that three-bedroom condo like the overwhelmingly large bosses we are.

We arrived on Brendan's 4th birthday, after a breakfast of champions, and opened a few gifts to get the party started!  

Nana and Gramps sent this cool racing car kit:

Brendan, like most preschoolers, loves bubbles, and got a bubble gun and a bubble wand which he enthusiastically explained how they worked to his captured audience :)

I created a photo book for him on Shutterfly, ABC style for my little preschool man.  (You can create your own book for free.  I've done a few of these as bday gifts, and they are well loved!)

He wanted "Old McDonald's with a toy" for dinner.  A very Happy Meal it was!

We had a Stomp Rocket for a long time before it got stomped loved to death, so Brendan was happy to have TWO new stomp rockets to play with.

Not pictured presents included a long-desired slinky, water guns from his godmother, and a gumball machine with gumballs from Gammy and Grandpa.  That was a big hit with everyone :)

On the second day, we visited the lovely town of Meredith, New Hampshire.

Like kids in a candy store...one of the best I've ever seen!

There was a waterfall in the middle of the shopping plaza - so cool!

Then we ate a picnic lunch before heading over to rent canoes for the afternoon.

How beautiful is this place?  I could totally retire here.

We rented three canoes for four hours in order to fit everyone.  Phil and I took Brendan on ours.  It was a cool experience, but we were all tired after rowing for half an hour.  We tried to look for a place to land the canoes and then go swimming in the lake.  Unfortunately, there was NOWHERE to do that.  Every beach area was part of a private home or resort.  We kept rowing around for an hour, looking for a spot before deciding to turn back.  On the way back, I saw a beachy area across the lake, and we tried to head there.  Before this, we had been hugging the shoreline as we canooed, but now we were rowing across the lake.  Don't ya know it, the canoe with JP, Maggie, and Xander capsized right there in the middle of the lake where we couldn't touch the bottom.  JP and Maggie tried to flip it back over, but too much water had gotten in, and it was filled and floating right below the surface of the water.  Phil and I were trying to figure out what to do without getting out of our canoe for fear of not being able to climb back in without capsizing.  Poor JP tried so many times to flip it, pull it as he swam, but nothing.  It was soooooo heavy.  About 20 minutes into this ordeal, a nice family on a pontoon boat stopped to help us.  The wife jumped off and she and JP tried one last time to flip it over, but they couldn't do it.  The husband threw out a rope, the wife tied it to one end of the canoe, and then the husband lifted it out of the water while JP, Maggie, and Xander climbed onto their pontoon boat.  JP helped the man finish pulling it out of the water and they were able to drain the water out and then get back in.  We all rowed back to the rental place and happily turned in those canoes 2 hours early.  JP burned almost 1000 calories according to his apple watch during that time.  We were all sore the next day!

On Day Three, Phil, Andrew and Eamon went to golf nine holes and Haley arrived at the condo to visit for a night.

She and I took the rest of the kids to Weirs Beach, where the golfers met up with us later.

 The weather was just gorgeous!  We went back to the pool at the condo and grilled a cookout for an early dinner.  Then we got showered and headed to Funspot, the world's largest arcade.  We were masked and socially distanced and sanitized our hands a hundred times, but still managed to have fun!

After putting the younger kids to bed, Phil, Haley and I snuck out to a cool beach restaurant with sand under our feet, and docks for boats to pull up.  It was a fun island experience!

On Day Four, we drove to Concord, NH to meet up with my brother's family to hand off Andrew and Eamon who had been planning a sleepover with their NH cousins.  Then we took the rest of the kids to the Christa McAuliffe Space Center.  Alexander was especially thrilled to learn more about space, and the Planetarium show was cute and kept even the little guys enthralled.

A treadmill on the shuttle!

We ate our packed lunch in the car (we were very good about cooking and packing all our meals so as not to eat out) and headed to Canterbury Shaker Village.  The website had said there were outdoor tours, but that was a lie.  We did happen to talk to a very nice gardener who gave us a lot of info on the Shakers.  It was very interesting to hear about their celibate community.  We just walked around the land for a while before packing back up to get some homemade ice cream on the way back to Laconia.

Motorcycle Week started on this day, so there were bikers all around the Weirs Beach area.  They weren't that bad, especially considering our condo was set back from the road.  We saw one biker gang wearing "Soldiers for Christ" on their jackets, which was a nice reminder to see Christ in everyone :)  

We went to Mass and then went swimming in the evening.  Brendan did so well learning how to swim.  What a fish!  We had a late dinner and it was the perfect ending to a wonderful family vacation.  The next morning we woke up, packed up, and headed to my brother's house.  He lives ten minutes away from St. Anselm's College, so we did a car tour of the campus.

Then we drove back to Massachusetts.  It's always so nice to get away, but also so nice to return home.  Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home!