Vacation
Monday, August 27th, 2007Back from vacation. Here are the highlights:
The trip up was long and boring, and the kids watched all but three of the videos. We ate at Macdonald’s, breaking the rule my mother had set for the kids not six hours into the trip. Victoria was beyond incredible, even though she was awake almost the whole trip she hardly cried at all despite being confined to her car seat. We had lobster in Portland, Maine and stayed at a motel for the night. The kids went to the pool and I tried to get some work done.
The next day was to the Children’s Museum in Portland, then on to Tom’s summer house. The property was much bigger than I expected from the descriptions. I could only see one other house, and that only from the fourth floor catwalk. The ocean view was amazing, and the kids loved it. It was good seeing Rachel again, and Claire wanted to spend all her time with Rachel and Tenzin. Actually got some work done at the house, and also got to see the Rockefeller gardens (by invitation only) and a little relaxation. Karaoke late into the night, Tom’s a pretty decent singer.
Back down to Portland to see the worlds largest free-standing globe (it’s huge) and then on to the Sauter’s. Despite being a tight spot for nine people, it was a lot of fun. For one thing, there were plenty of adults to keep track of the kids, for another there was plenty to do. The kids spent the morning at the game farm, and the afternoon boating in the lake. The night we arrived we went out to see the loons.
After the Sauter’s it was Storyland, a fairy-tale themed park. Very clever, no royalties. It was surprisingly elaborate, and the highlight was the mad science lab where thousands of foam balls were vacuumed up and shot out of cannons or dropped from baskets in the ceiling. After an hour the kids had to be dragged out with a promise of shaved ice. Despite that, Avery remembers the five seconds spent on the log flume the most. He also liked the flying shoe (Winken, Blinken and Nod).
From Storyland we pressed on and arrived at Mont Tremblant around Midnight. My parents own a condo in Ste. Jovite. Sadly, it pretty much rained continuously while we were there, but Diana and I did get some alone time for shopping, and we traded off babysitting with my parents for a quite dinner at a wonderful place my father always goes to when he’s up there. There is an indoor pool, but the number of non-outside activities up there is pretty small, combined with the spreading coughing plague pushed us into heading home two days early.
The trip home was pretty dull. The only big stop was at the border. I tried to explain to Claire and Avery what a Duty Free shop was, but Claire seemed uninterested and Avery seemed confused. At least I had Victoria’s full attention, Unfortunately, she chose being in the shop for her first and only crying jag during the trip. I kept expecting a customs agent to show up and demand to see her papers. We did have her birth certificate and our marriage license, but that doesn’t make you feel any better when crossing the border.