Tuesday, August 19, 2008

New Hampshire and my mother

In the midst of all this daycare craziness, my husband and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary. An advertisement drew me to book a room at the Radisson in Nashua, NH at the last minute for Friday night. We got out of work a little early because of a power failure (which kept us home on Monday too), stopped at the house for some essentials, and then picked up Abby at daycare. Stopped at McDonald's in Orange for supper, and then drove up to the castle-like hotel. It was very nice, and a great quick getaway. In the morning the prices scared us away from breakfast, and we headed to the nearby mall for Dunkin Donuts and some shopping. After a couple of hours there, Abby was well worn out. So we headed up to Tilton, NH where I had heard they had a Tangers Outlet. Since Abby was still asleep when we got off the exit, we drove over to Laconia for a quick look at some of the lake area before we finally stopped for lunch and shopping. The rain from the night before was long gone, and it was a beautiful sunny day. I got our AAA coupons from the outlet office, and a $5 gift card for being good outlet shoppers (visiting more than one Tanger Outlet within a year or something) and we headed over to Uno Pizzeria or whatever it was for lunch. We spent the afternoon shopping, not buying a whole lot, but having fun looking in the stores. Abby got a new pair of boots, and a backpack. My husband got some new clothes and a new skillet. We all got overpriced bottled water at Starbucks. Abby even got to play on the playground for a little while.
When we were done we headed up to Burger King for a quick supper before we hit the road to come home, a long drive.
Now let me say this, where it can be easily seen.... Burger King in Tilton, NH has the most disgustingly gross bathrooms I have seen in a long time. The toilet bowls themselves were brown. And since it was a Burger King, it had no diaper deck of course, so I had to deal with a kid who would not use the toilet because it was so gross, and then I had to get down on the dirty bathroom floor to change her diaper. Thanks a lot folks. We had a great time in Tilton, but I'll never go there again, even if the playspace was fun.

The reason why we pushed so hard to get back on Saturday night, even though Saturday was our anniversary was because my mother was in the area, and we were supposed to have brunch with her on Sunday morning. Unfortunately when we got home there was a message from my mother saying she was having trouble with her cell phone. When she called us Sunday morning, it became apparent pretty quickly that we would not be meeting for brunch. She pretty much insisted that we drive all the way to the D.A.R. campground in Goshen to meet her, even though we'd already spent way too many hours in the car the day before.

We decided to do brunch at the Union Station in Northampton without her, and then we went. By the time we got to the campground it was just starting to thunder. After a couple of quick hellos, the rain came. She didn't want to leave the campground. She was barely dressed, and freezing, but wouldn't leave the campsite anyway. We left.

Later that night my mother packed up her gear and headed back to Florida, cutting her visit short by about a week. On the way, she had trouble with her rental car, and gave away her camp wood. A day or two after she got home, her boyfriend had a heart attack and almost died. I guess it's good she went home early, but it still would have been nice to have seen her for more than 5 minutes while she was here. It turned out that work was closed on Monday, so we could have spent that day with her if she'd still been around, and she still would have made it home in time for her boyfriend's heart attack.

Oh, and if you are wondering, we didn't do much for anniversary gifts. The trip was pretty much it. That and I gave him a card, and he gave me 2 cards- 1 serious, 1 fun.

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