Santa's Village

Our original game plan had us going to Story Land on Monday, Santa's Village on Tuesday and driving home on Wednesday morning. Rich and I needed to report to our respective places of work (or torture) bright and early Thursday morning. Because both parks were closed on Monday, we decided to visit Santa's Village on Tuesday since it is approximately a 45 minute drive north. Wednesday would be our Story Land day but we would have to cut it short in order to drive home. {Insert sad face here.}

(Anna being silly and showing off her new socks before we left for Santa's Village.)

After the hurricane blew out, we were left with fantastic, slightly fall-like weather. The air had a refreshing crispness to it while the sun kept us warm. It was perfect weather for being outside.

I am not going to recap everything we did but there is one activity that I want to draw attention to - the Elfabet Game.

There are 26 elves throughout the village. Each child receives a card, which is punched at each elf location. After all the letters are punched, you turn in the card for a small prize. The girls really enjoyed looking for all the elves.

As a family, we had a great day at Santa's Village. We hit the jackpot with our choice of days in that the park was fairly empty. Especially that morning. The longest we had to wait for a ride was simply for the ride in progress to finish.

The girls are afraid of Santa. As with most children, they like the thought of Santa but the actual person frightens them. When we went into Santa's house, Anna made it quite clear that she did not want to see Santa. Emily did.

Emily and Allie walked up to Santa's chair. They wouldn't speak to him or sit next to him. Anna wouldn't touch him with a 10 foot pole.

C is for cookie.

By mid-afternoon, it had warmed up enough for the girls to play at the kiddie spray park. There is a bigger water play area there but that would have required adult supervision. As in more than one adult in a bathing suit in the water.

The funniest moment of the day occurred at the spray park. Allie wanted to change out of her bathing suit and because the indoor changing area was crowded, Rich and I were discussing how to change her. What about holding up a towel over there? Or I could just hold a towel here while you change her. We turned around to find Allie standing at the edge of the spray park with absolutely nothing on. She had taken matters into her own hands by pulling her bathing suit off. We, along with the woman sitting next to us, laughed hysterically.

As we were leaving for the day, Emily asked to return to Santa's home. Again, she wouldn't speak or sit with Santa but walked up to his chair. Allie agreed to go with her.

On the drive back to North Conway, I managed to snap off some photos of the flood damage to Route 16.

There was a good stretch of road with the north bound lane closed because chunks of it were missing.