A weird week at work, North Conway and Santa's Village

We're just back from a wonderful weekend away first at Santa's Village (Jefferson NH) then in North Conway NH. I think Santa's Village would be more fun in snow than in cold not-quite-rain but it was still fabulous fun for the children.

There were lots of rides that were aimed exactly at their age group, including a rollercoaster that went round 4-5 times to Hannah's delight. A ride where the kids controlled how high they flew, which Mark and Ellie loved. A teacups ride which I'll post the photo of - all three loved it. A 'drive the car yourself' ride which was Mark's favourite. Endless other Christmassy things, plus a 3D Christmas movie. In the carpark afterwards we found an enormous nutracker soldier with slides for arms, and a head that the children could climb into.

Having had a full day of enjoying Santa's Village, we drove through Crawford Notch in the dark - I'd love to do that drive in daylight. The mountains are pretty enormous and very atmospheric in the mist.

We had dinnner at the Muddy Moose - great beer and buffalo burgers - then stayed the night at the Hampton Inn, which meant of course the waterpark this morning. Mark and Hannah were in there 10 minutes after it opened; Ellie and I had a little lie-in.

Then we explored North Conway centre. We had lunch at the Chef's Kitchen deli which was absolutely delicious. Hannah had the mini beef steaks, I had stuffed portobello mushrooms and Mike had the steak pastry thingies. It was such a change to go somewhere with salads and really nice food rather than burgers and ribs.

We explored the Toy Chest shop thoroughly. We did a modern twist on Santa's list - instead Mike took photos on his iPhone of everything the children wanted.

Then it was back to Portland, stopping off at The Good Life Market, another great deli in Raymond, where we stocked up on Boar's Head meats, and delicious looking cheese and bread and stuff. Mike was disappointed by the lack of English beer there, usually they have something interesting in stock.

Now we're home, it's dark and we're about to eat all our goodies.

It was good to have a relaxing weekend after a weird week at work. Unum laid off quite a few people - I'm not sure I'll ever find out how many but there were two in our department of 41. We had a week of knowing our jobs were safe for now, but not knowing how the department was going to be restructured. Eventually Kathy was able to tell us at 3.30pm on Friday.

All of that was a bit unsettling, but worse - a colleague was shot and killed by her husband on Monday night. It was all over the news on Tuesday and Wednesday. It sounds like it was totally unexpected. I've been trying not to think about it...