On Wednesday night, JP came to join us after dropping off Andrew and Eamon to their cousins house to spend some time with them. We went to Meredith, NH on Thursday and did the sculpture walk around town. Each summer the artists and sculptures change, so it's fun to do every year.
Then we just *had* to go to our favorite candy store at the shopping center with the waterfall!!
Answer: A blessing.
The activity for the day (besides sculpture walking and candy eating) was renting Aqua Cycles and pedaling out onto Lake Winnipesaukee. We had two of them that each held four people for a two-hour rental. The taller one was much easier to operate, and had a ladder in the back that made it easy to jump off and get back on. The kids all did that, but the water was a little too chilly for me, plus the weather was gorgeous and not hot enough to tempt me to jump in.
Afterwards we went to Town Docks, a busy beachy spot on the lake, and treated ourselves to some drinks and ice cream, because we've never met an ice cream shop we could ignore.
On Friday, we walked down to the boardwalk at Weirs Beach and did a little window shopping... oh wait we did buy a fried dough to share. Yum!
Then we went back to the pool and swam for hours until dinner out at Cactus Jack's (the condo rental gave us a free appetizer!)
On Saturday, Andrew and Eamon joined us and we swam some more, played frisbee, tried (in vain) to finish our 50 cent thrift store puzzle, went back to Funspot and Kellerhaus with the cousins and then drove home.
Look at all my boys!
Summer Martins, summer not ;)
The great fake out:
Slo-mo swimmers:
The Martin Family in their usual habitat...
This about sums up our vacation - happy and exhausting!
We stopped by my sister's house on the way home and they served us a delicious dinner and we practiced teaching kids the Heimlich maneuver (my sister and her husband are both doctors and always have cool medical devices around).
And that wrapped up our summer vacation 2022.
I miss it already.
Mostly the not working part :)
My kids were not perfect the whole week - they fought, they were cranky, they got tired and hangry - but you know what, that's NORMAL. I sometimes reminded myself that we were making family memories, and they would remember all of the good moments and not that one time we took dessert away from an ungrateful kiddo. Hey, even on vacation, there are consequences for bad choices. No matter what, we had tons of fun and we do still actually like each other a lot.
Almost as much as ice cream ;)
And you know, even the rough spots now become great stories to tell in the future! It looks like a great vacation for all ages!
ReplyDeleteVery very true and nice perspective :)
DeleteOkay I love this post for so many reasons! The beautiful family! The gorgeous scenery.
ReplyDeleteBut mostly - for you keeping it real about kids on vacation. We just wrapped up a 2-week city roadtrip (+ another week away from home). And some days I was just so discouraged because there are just a lot of highs and lows on vacation and it was rare the EVERYONE was happy at the same time. But one night when we had left a gorgeous sunset at a New England lighthouse because the kids were bickering and I was in tears, I read an article by Laura Vanderkam speaking about her family vacation. She said it was good and then went on to list lots of stuff that went wrong. BUT, she finished, her goal had been to have a few good memories, and had accomplished just that.
It really helped me turn around the narrative I was telling myself about our trip: if our goal was to make a few good/great memories, we did just that. The rest was frustrating and exhausting at times, but it's also NORMAL. It's so easy to see other people on vacation and assume the kids (and adults) are happy all the time, but this isn't the case.
And I agree with the comment above. One of our favourite things to say in our family is: The things that go wrong often make the best memories.
It's like we expect everyone to not act normal while on vacation, and that by paying for extra treats or excursions, this will happen. But nope - still humans! Ha!
Deletehaha that first video with the boys! Love it lol :)
ReplyDeleteEverything becomes a silly competition/game with them They're awesome!
DeleteYou guys really did IT UP! Hangry and cranky...that sounds perfectly normal. I'm glad you had this time to make even more memories with the family. Loved the videos!
ReplyDelete