While in England, we started each day with a yummy breakfast we bought at the local supermarket. Rock had scones and jam and I had sugar waffles with nutella and rasberries. It was delicious!

On our 4th day we rode the train into London. It was very similar to the trains in New Jersey to New York. It was pouring rain when we arrived in London and somehow there was room on the sidewalks for all those people AND their umbrellas as we walked to St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was good we’d picked something indoors to do! St. Paul’s was amazing. I’m not sure I can pick a favorite cathedral from all that we saw but going up into the dome was my favorite thing about St. Paul’s. My pictures couldn’t do it justice so I will use the internet’s again.

This is looking up into the dome.
You can climb 257 steps up this stairway…

to the Whispering Gallery to walk around inside the dome.

If you climb another 119 steps you get to the Stone Gallery which is outside.

If you climb another 152 steps up this staircase…

You get to the Golden Gallery

The view from up here was amazing. You could see all around the city. It reminded me of being on top of the Eiffel Tower.

After St. Paul’s we went to the Globe Theater to see some Shakespeare! We saw Twelfth Night.

After Shakespeare we ate dinner at a restaurant called Flat Iron. Check out my knife! After dinner we wandered over to Westminster and Big Ben.

From there we wandered through St. James Park and over to Buckingham Palace.

After seeing St. Paul’s and London this time, Rock and I had a good laugh about that the fact that we were both thinking about movies filmed in England, but we were thinking about very different movies. For him, it was Mission Impossibles and for me it was shows like Downton Abbey and Pride and Prejudice. So that night when we got home we watched the Mission Impossible where Tom Cruise runs all the way around the whispering gallery and through a funeral.

Each night we were in England we ended the day with a yummy treat we discovered. Meringue nests filled with nutella, whip cream and rasberries. So something like this:

It’s a very good thing that you can’t get those meringues very easily here in the US. But-I will probably order them from Amazon from time to time. It’s a new favorite!

Back in 2015 Rock and I took a trip to London and Paris. Ever since then, Rock has secretly been plotting a return trip to England; something he never does. I can’t get him to go back to the same place twice. I would LOVE to go back to Hawaii but he always says, “but we’ve been there already”, to which I always say, “but there are FOUR other islands!”. Well, when he suggested a trip back to England this year, I happily agreed, not just because I would love to see more of England, but because it means I get to use it next time he doesn’t want to back to the same place twice!

We mostly failed to sleep on the red eye flight to London, but I suppose I never would have gotten this picture of our airplane in the air over the ocean if I’d been asleep. Silver linings, folks!

We got through customs lickety split because everything is automated there. Then it was on to the car rental place. Rock had totally forgotten that we drove on the left side of the road in the Turks and Caicos 14 years ago, but he picked it up again pretty quickly. It was terrifying to drive on roads that have two lanes crammed into the space of one of our lanes. And every road is very curvy and lined with hedges so visibility is terrible. Not to mention the people coming the other direction are usually going 60 miles an hour. Roundabouts were everywhere and I never would have been able to manage driving those. Even after a week I would try to figure out the way through one and I was always wrong. Good thing Rock was driving. All that being said, the roads were beautiful. It’s like driving through a tunnel of green everywhere you go.

We stayed in a little town about an hour from London called Henley on Thames. It is right on the river and is famous for it’s Rowing Regatta’s. Part of Boys in the Boat was actually filmed along this stretch of the river. It was beautiful. We spent our first day walking around the town.

This was our home while in England. Most of the houses, even these little ones were named. Mead Cottage, Wesley House, Happy Cottage. Rock and I decided we should name our house after visiting England.

First night dinner-what else???

On our second day we hit a couple nearby National Trust sites. They are state owned properties, often big houses that were donated when the owners could no longer care for the big properties. This was Grays Court which is used in a Downton Abbey episode. We had rain and sun off and on every day. Sometimes sprinkling, sometimes pouring, and then it would clear up and the sun would come out. We took our umbrellas with us wherever we went. And every day it was windy.

The grounds and gardens of the houses we saw were so beautiful, just as amazing as the houses themselves if not mores so. And the views of the rolling English countryside were amazing. I didn’t get many pictures that did them justice but I did get many blisters from walking around so many estates!

3rd Day was the Downton Abbey Day! The house is actually called Highclere Castle and it is owned by the Earl of Carnarvon. It was so fun to walk around the the estate and see the inside of the house/castle where they filmed one of my favorite shows! They wouldn’t let us take pictures inside, so I used some from online.

Last stop that day was Watership Down. One of Rock’s favorite books is actually based on a real place!! I had no idea before we planned this trip. He really wanted to hike to the top of the down, and since it’s near Highclere castle we ended our day there. It was a beautiful hike and we managed to do the whole thing before it started to rain.

Didn’t see any rabbits, though I’m sure Hazel’s descendants were there hiding in the brush.

Just before we left on our Washington trip, Levi had to say goodbye to one of his closest friends as he left on a mission. I’m not sure how Levi will manage without his good friend to have crazy deep talks with, but I hope he can still have a fabulous Senior year.

Speaking of Senior status, one of the perks of being a senior at Centennial is that you can get a senior parking spot that is all yours to paint however you like. We told the kids they had to buy their own if they wanted one and Cade didn’t care about it enough to do one but Levi did. I don’t think they did them when Reagan was a senior. Levi designed his based on the amazing mountain goat that wouldn’t leave his territory when the YM were camping in it this summer. Here’s the picture by way of reminder:

It was an awesome design and Libby and a friend of hers helped him paint it. It took several days and was quite the undertaking, but they finished just before we left for WA and it is Awesome!

If you don’t know what on earth “Goated” means, don’t worry, neither did I. It comes from the acronym G.O.A.T-Greatest of All Time.

And speaking of school, here’s the first day of school pictures. They were done a little differently this year because on the first day of school our house was shrouded in plastic because it was being painted. I grabbed a picture of Levi as he left for school out the back that day but Libby had left really early for a student council event and I didn’t even get one of her that day! I finally got one on the front porch of the two kids about a week later.

I spent all of July picking paint colors for the house and when they finally finished I couldn’t even look I was so nervous I would hate it. But I love the finished product! We still have to put the shutters back up, but I’m really happy with it.

Speaking of colors, Libby and I bought identical Wesel pink shirts and wore them to church one day as twins. Which is which?

And one last fun picture from August. Brad Wilcox came to speak in our area and Levi and his friends stuck around afterward to talk to him.

We took Levi and Liberty on a trip in August that was Levi’s 16 year old trip a year late and Liberty’s, a year early. We knew these two would enjoy that more than a one on one trip with Mom and Dad. Since it was “their” trip, they planned it. They locked themselves away one Sunday afternoon and decided where they wanted to go and with the help of chatgpt found all the coolest places to go plus pictures and time lines to go with. They made a whole slide show presentation. Which I will link to here. Then they presented their plan to go visit the Olympic Peninsula (not Forks). Ironically enough almost all our kids think Washington is the greatest place on the planet so they always want to go on vacation there. After a few tweaks, we approved their plan. We flew to Seattle and then drove to Port Angeles where we stayed in a tiny home on a little lake called Lake Sutherland. It was a beautiful deep blue lake surrounded by mountains and forest. Our tiny home was indeed very tiny, but very comfortable.

On our first day we ate breakfast at a little place called Granny’s Cafe that opened in 1956 and was an enchanting little old fashioned cafe with delicious food. We liked it so much we ate there multiple times!

Then we hiked the 6 mile round trip Alava Trail which leads out to the Western most tip of the US, Cape Alava.

On our second day we went to the Hoh Rainforest and walked through the Hall of Mosses. It was very much like many places I grew up near, and I’m glad the kids got to experience it. You can’t get to the Hoh Rainforest without driving through Forks, which the kids stubbornly refused to be excited about. They didn’t want anyone to accuse them of going to the Olympic Peninsula with the purpose of seeing Forks. Rock was the only one willing to pose for me in front of the sign.

Our last stop that day was probably the highlight of our trip. We went to Rialto Beach, where my parents got engaged up on top of a sea stack. Levi was determined to climb the same one, but when they got out to the beach, they turned left and we never had time to go North towards the sea stacks they climbed. I was not too sad about this as I didn’t want Levi getting stuck on top of a sea stack when the tide came in. They had a fabulous time exploring the best tidepools they’d ever seen and climbing around on the rocks the low tide had exposed.

We watched the sunset before heading back to our tiny house.

On our last day on the Peninsula, we planned to canoe/kayak on the beautiful Lake Crescent but unfortunately, the winds were too strong that day and they wouldn’t let us rent boats. They were really sad, but the kids and Rock jumped in for a cold swim instead.

We headed to Seattle instead to play in the city till our flight left. We went to Pike Place Market to show Libby the gum wall. She didn’t love it. lol

We watched the fishmarket guys through around some fish.

Levi found his twin.

We finished off the day with dinner on the wharf at Iver’s.

We got one last view of the almost bare Mt. Rainier while we waited to board our flight. I sure miss this mountain. Liberty wanted me to make sure I pointed out how cool the big flag in the hanger is too. 🙂

And that was our big trip this summer to the Olympic Peninsula (not Forks).