New Hampshire March 2018

On March 3, we trekked up to the Mount Washington Valley of New Hampshire for a great skiing vacation! See all pictures and videos.  

Saturday & Sunday: 

• Drove to Lebanon, NH, and stayed at the Element, a super-eco-friendly hotel. Zach fell asleep well in the car, but he did not transition well to the hotel room. He wanted to wander the halls. He wanted to sleep in our bed. He woke up before 6am, and since he and I were both wide awake, we started our day!
• At 6am, Zach and I checked out the breakfast spread and then visited the pool. It was a salt water pool, and Zach had fun jumping in. He kept insisting that he could swim and wanted to do everything himself. Luckily, the pool at Seasons had a float so that he could swim by himself!
• We hit the road headed further north. We made a quick stop for lunch pastries and got settled in to our condo for much needed afternoon naps. After nap time, Zach tried out his skis. He didn't understand that he had to use them on snow and really wanted to use them like his scooter!
  
• In the evening, we got groceries. (The grocery store is a new favorite place for Zach.) For dinner, we stopped at Moat Mountain Brewing Company for dinner. Zach met Zane, and we enjoyed chatting with his family. 

Monday: 

• We made our way to Attitash, and Zach met Janet, who took care of him Monday - Tuesday. He also met three-year-old Sadie from New Brunswick, and she made quite an impression. He talked about her for the rest of the week! Janet was very complimentary of Zach. She said she he seemed verbally advanced as she had no trouble understanding him. Some highlights with her: 
• He told her he had a brother and sister, and he told her, "I go pool." 
• On Thursday - Friday, Zach bonded with Mariah, Camilla, and Fernanda. No other kids stood out to him like Sadie, however!
• The trip to the Seasons pool was a big hit! There were more families from Canada, and Zach enjoyed watching the other four kids. After Monday, though, we basically had the pool to ourselves. Just a few folks again on Friday night. Zach also enjoyed the Arcade at Seasons and spent two nights playing air hockey before we lost the puck. :/
  
• And, of course Frank and I had a great time cross country skiing. There were lots of chatty folks on all of our trails, and we learned some good stuff. Our Tuesday chat made us aware of Great Glen and their well-groomed trails. (We went there on Friday.)

Cross Country Skiing

Monday: Jackson Cross Country's Prospect Farm Area. Quite the uphill made for some really exciting and pure fun downhills. Beautiful views even if the clouds did not allow us a stunning view of Mt. Washington. 

Tuesday: Bear Notch Cross Country Ski Area. Nicely groomed with good up and downhill and excellent river views and sunshine!

Thursday: Jackson Cross Country's Ellis River Trail. After 18" of new snow, the grooming had not kept up. Frank had super-icy skis even after applying wax. Finally, right at the end he and both re-applied wax and got some great glide. 

Friday: Great Glen. As recommended by our ski friend on Tuesday, we tried out Great Glen. Terrific grooming and beautiful snowy mountain vistas. 

Family Days
Wednesday: 

• We took Zach out to the Mount Washington Valley Children's Museum. It was more like an indoor playground than a museum, and Zach had fun. 
• I stopped over at the Local Grocer and picked up some muffins and local beer and cider. 
• We went to the American Flatbread Company and had Moat Mountain’s Smoke House Porter, and Slick Nick Long Winter Ale from Sebago Brewing Company and pretty bad pizza and a truly terrible salad. Zach learned to tear off pieces of his pizza slices and was eventually persuaded to have pineapple off the pizza.

Saturday: Bretton Woods & Snow Tubing! We all had a great time! Check out a couple videos. 

Trip Highlights & Superlatives

• Connecting with Megan! Since we were only 2.5 hours away from her and family in Maine, Frank texted her, and we learned her latest. We'd hoped that she could come over and meet us, but she works for a CPA and could not take time off during tax season. :(
• Frank and I watched the original Bourne trilogy. A ski trip tradition!
• Best meal: Bear Notch’s broccoli cheddar soup and fresh bread hot out of the oven at 12:30pm
• Best muffins: Madeline’s coffee cake muffins (bought those 2 days in a row!)
• Best Cider/Beer: Citizen Cider's The Dirty Mayor

Rainy Days & Snow (Finally)

Zach - Of Note

Zach's move

• Follow up from last month. This is pretty much Zach's "move." If you ask him to show you his "move," he'll gladly comply!
• Zach enjoyed Gamma's spaghetti and helped her by stirring the sauce. 
• Zach rode a choo choo train (went on the Metro with Emmy) and had a fun time playing at the Tyson's Corner indoor playground. He didn't want to leave!
  
• Zach is getting good at colors. One day he told me my shirt was pink, and then said, “high five.”
• He tried out Monkey Joe's for the first time this month, and he loved it and became obsessed with playing basketball. Briefly at least. 
  
• Okay, don't judge, but we took our Christmas tree down in February, and Zach came running upstairs to tell me! On Sunday, I pointed out where it lay from the upstairs window. Since then, Zach had been checking on it regularly. On Monday morning, he was upset that birds and chipmunks were playing in it. He said, “My Christmas tree.”
• Zach's a good sharer. On our New Hampshire ski trip he shared his beloved French fries with Mommy and Daddy. 

An example of his
sharing

• In NH, we also enjoyed knocking on the walls to each other from the two bathrooms. 
• Monsieur Independent has started melting down when he can't have a whole muffin. He now doesn’t want things cut, or put on the wrong plate…. 
• Again, in NH, he loved: 
• Little Baby Bums’ million versions of “The Wheels on the Bus” 
• having iPad children's program marathons on the trips to/from NH! One day on the trip Zach said “I don’t like fire.” This comes from watching the program, Fireman Sam, where there is fire or calamity every day. 
• This has been a good month for Zach. Good overnight sleeping and napping. The March 2 wind storm really scared him, though. He ended up sleeping in our bed that night, and over the next few days things were pretty disrupted. He's disturbed by high winds and noises that he can't identify. On our ski trip, he was very distressed that he could hear our neighbors walking in the condo above us. Janet, at his daycare, said the ski boots' clomping noise really scared him as well. He's also begun asking us to rub his back before he'll go to sleep. Hmmm...very cute, but.... 

Zach's Words

• He says “I don't know” and shrugs his shoulders. 
• I was coughing, and so I told him "I'm okay," like he likes to say. He then fake coughed and said, "I'm ok," and waited for me to acknowledge what he'd said. So funny! 
• One day when I picked him up, he told me insistently “not to step in poop!” I guess there was goose poop on the sidewalk, and the teachers had told them to watch out for it, so he was very careful to avoid it!
• At home, he's very insistent that we not step in the mud on the sidewalk. 
• Zach said one morning (about an outlet), “No, no touch, it's dangerous!” 
• Zach is quite the singer and knows most words to most of his songs. I like to hear him sing “baby and me” in the patty cake song.
• Zach also says, “What happened?" and “I want to go playground right here" or “I want to go playground right there.”

Susan & Frank

• Big, big, big! We went skiing at Osceola Tug Hill and Lapland Lake! We drove over to Mom and Dad's, and Zach had a weekend with the grandparents! He had a blast and so did they. Mom had all kinds of activities for him, and they enjoyed watching Winter Olympics figure skating. Mom re-introduced Zach to blueberries and he is now a huge fan!
• Osceola's Kamikaze run was awesome for our first skiing in 2018!
• Skiing planning. Wow. We spent a lot of time trying to figure out where to go. The week of my virtual conference, our destination changed almost daily! Since we'd been telling Zach he would go on a plane, he started saying, "Mommy and Daddy and Zach go on airplane, Woosh!" So cute!

Good Food

• Made the lentil, kale, mushroom pockets. Yum! Yum!
• Emily's yummy cheesecake, which was Jeff's birthday cake
• Two lasagnas in short succession to end out winter
• A Green Grocer box, and we made the fish dish with roasted garlic lemon dressing and roasted potatoes. Tasty!
• In New Hampshire, he loved my turkey vegetable soup and kept referring to it as "Mommy's yummy soup."

Visits with

• It's been fun running into Auntie Em and Uncle Jeff at the gym. 
• Visit to Emily and Andrew’s. Zach enjoyed the kitties and sang a song about Toffee and Bob on the way home.
• We visited Gamma and Bob briefly, and Zach stayed the weekend!
• Grandad came over, and we took a nice walk and all went to dinner at Dogfish. I took Zach to the grocery while we waited for our table, and that was a hit. He got his own little cart and filled it up with our goodies. 

Fun Stuff (Personal & Professional)

• Started reading A Thread of Sky, and it's really good!
• Good networking calls continue!
• Traveled to the Southwest Regional Meeting in Dallas, TX, and it was great to see so may SCORE friends and Sally again! Kudos on my presentation. Avi is a hugger. 
• Made Beth's DEI video for the virtual conference! A funny experience. 
• Listened to S-Town on the way back from Lapland Lake. Addictive and fantastic. Don't tell Frank, I finished it on the way back from New Hampshire!
• SCORE's Second Annual Volunteer Virtual Conference on March 1, 2018. 

• A huge success! Quotes/Notes: 
• I was very impressed! I've never attended a virtual conference and I thought it was extremely well done.
• Great job on the materials to help us navigate.  Good overall live tech support.
• All of the downloadable resources that were made available. Since I was able to attend only 1 presentation these were of great value to me.
• Connections with people at national
• You folks did an amazing job! 
• Sessions were well rated. Themes of empathy, listening, etc. Business model canvas was a popular concept to learn more about, video mentoring resonated, and all the resources were a hit. 
• My thoughts: 
• We had issues on almost every recording leading up to live day. 
• We had two clean sessions of eleven on live day. :(
• The registration numbers were at 1500, but live day attendance was only about 50 more than last year. 
• Lots of promotion to come as 2018 continues!