Semper Paratus

August 4 is a big deal in our house, because for the last 3 years, Pete's unit has celebrated Coast Guard Day at the greatest family amusement park in all of Southeastern New Hampshire.

Canobie Lake Park is over 100 years old, has a real wooden rollercoaster, a plethora of kiddie rides, and Harpoon IPA on tap.

This was our 3rd annual pilgrimage to Canobie (which means we've lived in the same place for 3 summers, a cause for celebration in its own right.) Every year the girls get just a LITTLE BIT braver and this year, it only took 2 hours for them to warm to the idea of the kiddie coaster. We had a big, rowdy group this year, Pete's 3 sisters and all but one of their kids, so there were nearly 20 of us, and plenty of older cousins to take the little ones on the pukey round-and-round rides.

The day was sunny & warm, perfect for the Boston Tea Party, which is the ultimate flume ride, if you like to be soaked to the bone. If you prefer to stay dry, there is a strategically placed pub just adjacent to the splash zone where you can watch your kid-at-heart husband ride it 47 times in a row while you enjoy dry panties and a nice cool IPA.

At some point during the Tea Party marathon (which Pete tried to convince Sofia to ride - she got all the way to the front of the line before she realized there were no teddy bears in tutus or ceramic tea kettles involved, and high tailed it out of there - smart girl!) the kids became engaged in some kind of fishing game where they kept winning these lame Garfield flower prizes but they all really wanted to win the dog prize (next one up), then Sofia DID win the dog but Emma just kept accumulating those stupid Garfield flowers.

Meanwhile their 3-year old cousin Joseph won the REALLY BIG prize (freaky stuffed garden gnome) but the girl running the game refused to give it to him because she contended that his mom (my sister in-law) had cheated & told him which fish to catch (you could see the S,M,L for small, medium, large prize in the fish if you were tall enough, which she is. ) So then ensued an all-out melee that required two levels of management before we finally settled on the compromise of giving Joe the medium prize, the dog, which we had easily paid for 15 times over since our kids had dumped about $200 already.

Emma by this time was sobbing, nearly hyperventilating, because she still didn't have a dog. So they gave her one more try, and of course she won a flower. I tried to use the opportunity to enforce the "can't win them all" lesson and the fact that nobody is entitled to win the big prize, no matter how bad you want it, in a game of chance it's all luck. That went over like a lead balloon until we walked by the gift shop where they happened to SELL stuffed dogs that were even cooler than the one Sofia had won, so another $10 later everyone was whole again.

We stayed at the park till 10pm, when it closed. Hit horrible traffic on the way home, and didn't walk into our kitchen till 12 Which provided me with the perfect opportunity to point out to Emma - who has been begging me to let her stay up till midnight - that she had made it, and was it really all that special? Yes, she said. And she was right.