vacation!

We took a little last-minute vacation last week to this AMAZING resort in northern NH, thanks to our wonderful friends who suddenly had an extra room available in the time-share they rented, and generously offered to put us up for a few days on their own vacation. Since we've never (NEVER!) been away together as a family (and the Map Man and I haven't had a vacation together in 11 years....), we jumped at the chance for a bit of fun family time in a beautiful autumn locale!

We did a bit of sight-seeing in the Franconia Notch region. This is the boys at The Basin. The weather really wasn't the greatest, on-and-off drizzly and windy and cold, but we made the best of it! My "condition" (that pesky baby growing in my interior) didn't allow for much real hiking, since almost all of my joints are screaming "sit down!" on a regular basis at this point, but it all worked out pretty well since we didn't have a whole lot of time for that sort of thing anyway.

The kids had a bunch of fun with what we did manage to do. Honestly, they would have been happy to just hang out at the resort all day playing with their friends, so they were pretty easy to please. Made for an easy, relaxing trip.

We went to a trained bear show (famous in the area) at Clark's Trading Post. These bears really love their "jobs" -- they are paid in ice-cream and raisins, which they think is pretty wonderful. They played basketball, swung on swings, jumped across barrels, rode on scooters, weighed themselves on the scale, checked the mail, recycled their "bear" bottles, and had a generally wonderful time while we all applauded for them and learned facts about bears and the history of the show at Clark's.

Then everyone in our party except me took a scenic train ride. (I didn't think a half hour of puking on a train sounded like a fun vacation idea.) I did a little window shopping while they took their trip, and The Map Man snapped a couple photos for me so I didn't feel like I completely missed out.

At the end of the day(s), the kids swam in the indoor pool, and then hunkered down to watch a movie, while we adults played cards.

It really was a nice little vacation, next time I want to do it when I'm not pregnant!