Sunday, September 2, 2012

Storyland...at last!

 Up until last week, Aiden had never been to Santa's Village, Sesame Place, Disney World, Disneyland, Storyland, or any other kind of "land" that involves characters and rides and rampant commercialism.  For the most part that's because given a choice about how to spend the little free time we have with the kids, Andy and I would  much rather head outside and go hiking, fishing, kayaking, bug-hunting, birdwatching, apple picking, etc. than anything else.  Thankfully Aiden has taken a definite shine to all things outdoors too, so there have been no complaints.  Still, this summer I had been watching him grow up, about to turn 6, and began to feel guilty about not letting him indulge in one of these fantasy wonderlands before he's too old for it.  Storyland especially is like a right of passage for NH kids; probably you get hazed in first grade if you haven't been on the Polar Coaster at least 5 times.  So last week during the break between Windy Hill summer program and the start of Aiden's new school, I decided to take him and his friend Molly to Storyland.

It was a lot of fun, actually.  Molly had been there several times already (she has a good Mommy and Daddy!) so she gave us the skinny on which rides were boring, which made you puke, and which were likely to get us entirely soaked.  We did all the exciting, non-vomit inducing rides, which included Aiden's first real roller coaster and some rides that did get us soaked, and we saw an entertaining circus and ate plenty of slurpies, shaved ice, popcorn and cotton candy.  It was a long day (2 hours drive each way) but well worth it for the ear-to-ear grins I caught on Aiden's face throughout the day.  We'll have to come back, no doubt, so I can catch the same on Haley's face one day :)


At the welcome center in Crawford Notch
Hawaiian shaved ice
Big storyland chicken?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

No one could ever say you and Andy were "bad" parents. You do so much with Aiden and Haley that is also fun for them.
Grandma Chris