On Friday morning we packed ourselves in the car and drove north two hours to North Conway, New Hampshire to visit Storyland, a theme park geared towards children – something I hadn’t even heard of until a year ago.

We arrived at our hotel midday Friday, which was connected to an indoor water park called Kahuna Laguna. Maddox absolutely loved this place (no surprise, as he’s still as huge fan of anything water related). They had little spouts of water spouts coming out of the ground that he liked the most. We tried to get him on a few of the small water slides, but he’s not a huge fan of “thrill” rides like those yet (he must get that from his dad).

After spending a few hours there, we went to dinner at a great Irish restaurant, but by that point Maddox was so tired that he was almost falling asleep in his ketchup. Yes, we skipped his nap. Which we paid for that night, spending an hour trying to get him to go to sleep. In the end it took him eating half a bucket of ice before he was satisfied. And who said toddlers are complicated!

He also fell out of bed at some point during the night, but we had ice handy, and right now no matter how hurt he is Maddox asks for ice, puts it on his wound for a few seconds, and is miraculously healed.

We woke up early and had a delicious breakfast at the buffet overlooking the White Mountains, but Maddox was more interested in the never-ending plates of blueberries, strawberries, and pineapples. We got to Storyland about an hour after it opened, at 10:00. It’s a very well done park, very clean, open, and a great diversity of attractions and rides.

Maddox found one of his favorite things early on, which was a talking tree that he found fascinating. I suppose at his age he probably assumed it was an actual talking tree, so I’d be impressed too! We tried waiting in a short line for a spinning teacups line, but he wouldn’t have any of that. We even tried both walking away from him towards the line, telling him we were going on it. He said “Ok” and walked the other way.

The next favorite thing we discovered was the train that looped around the park. We were walking along the path when it went by behind us. He immediately turned around and started yelling “Wait foh me! Wait foh me!”, running as fast as his little baby legs could take him. We went around the park once in the train which he loved, except for when it stopped at which point he would yell “GO TRAIN! MOVE!”. Thankfully, we were sitting in the far back.

The last attraction, which was probably his favorite, was a huge room with thousands of soft rubber balls and a dozen different types of machines which interacted with them. Maddox found one that was a tube that sucked the balls up and then shot them out into the air. He spent literally 45 minutes collecting balls and putting them into the tube. It was a nice break for us to sit down, even if we were constantly having balls pelted at our heads.

We headed out in the early afternoon, and Maddox passed out about two minutes into the drive and stayed asleep until we were maybe twenty minutes from home.

As a parent, my favorite thing about the park was how empty it was. We purposely waited until after labor day, and most everywhere in North Conway was empty. Sadly we’ll only be able to do that for one more year before Maddox himself will be in school.

It was really a fantastic trip, our first one as a family, and I think Storyland might become an annual excursion.