Open house ‘23-‘24

We had to hustle home from NY because Monday was open house day. Frankie was first up at 10:00, but I volunteered for 7th grade pta table at 9:00, so we spent 2 hours at the middle school in the morning. Frankie met up with lots of friends to compare schedules. 

We met up with Lily at the high school at 12:30 and they walked to their classes together. They’re taking a lot of the same classes, but don’t have any together. 

Adi was super excited to be at the tech center this year. She’s taking a 2 year course in hospitality and tourism and it looks like it will be a good year. 

Last up and the only little Ray at a new school was Delaney at 7:00. 

We grabbed her schedule and met all her teachers. She got her locker open after 2 tries. 

Delaney is our 5th baby to attend LMS which is pretty crazy. 

After we went to Bruesters for celebratory ice cream and invited Ellie and parents to join us. Can’t believe these lifelong friends are starting middle school together!

Summer went by way too fast, but here goes nothing!

Poke fest

I forgot to share this delicious Icelandic sodey we had on our Iceland Air flight. It’s called Appelsin, but it’s orange flavored. 🤷‍♀️

The girls love making videos and make them all.the.time. The iPad is linked to my phone so I get every picture and video, which is annoying, but I also like to see what they’re doing. 

We got home late Wednesday night and Alecia invited us over for Lily’s birthday brekkie Thursday morning, which was especially nice because a) we were all up early and b) we didn’t have any food. 

We unpacked and did laundry, dropped off the rental car, and picked up a few groceries. No naps were had and we all got to bed super early. Then we were all up by 5 on Friday and since we were all up, we went ahead and got going. We packed lunch and it all made for an easy and enjoyable drive. And the best part is that  we made it there in the early afternoon. 

We played Skull King that night and then it was early to bed again because Saturday was pokefest!

These poke nerds were so excited!

Matt found 3 of these hats and picked them up and when everyone said they’d like one he was able to order another one so they could be matchy matchy. 

Frey and Taylor invited the kids, paid for them, got them tshirts, charging blocks, and hot spots so they could use our old phones. It was so kind and generous of them!

And they were so nervous because they aren’t usually around kids. They were like “can Delaney go to the bathroom by herself?” - which is actually fair because life is crazy. 

We dropped them at the train station and they rode into NYC. 

They walked a million miles and everyone had a good time. 

Max and Delaney don’t have phones, so they were v excited to have their own device to use for whatever they wanted. They played on them and shared pics and videos and ran through their batteries before they finally figured out the shouldn’t do that or they won’t have enough juice to poke hunt. 

Apparently that’s an ultra super rare behind them. Or something. 🤷‍♀️

We dropped the girls off to do some back to school shopping and get lunch, and the grownups went for a lovely hike by the dam. 

Frey took this picture…

And then somehow his phone got all creative and angsty and took this one. 

They said the decorations weren’t as good as they’ve been in years past, maybe because NYC is so cool on its own, but it was kind of disappointing. 

And then there was an hour and a half where none of the poke stuff worked. Idk if it was WiFi or the main Pokémon app, but it was frustrating. Other than those 2 things, it was a great time. 

They left at 7:30am and we picked them back up at 9:30pm. 

Those babies came home dirty and tired!



The look they were going for was being crushed by the giant jiggly puff, or whatever, but it kind of looks like they are being born. 🤷‍♀️😂



The hike was our big activity for the day. That night we lit a smokeless fire with their Hungarian fire ring and it actually worked really well, and then we had s’mores. 

They also brought out their outdoor movie screen and the girls watched a movie on the deck. Their backyard is magical! Comfortable zones and activities everywhere, it’s so nice. Ugly outside of house, amazing inside and yard. 

We were in bed early that night too. We were so tired and we kept this an easygoing weekend trip. Except Delaney, obvi. 

The next morning we got Taylor and Frey to the train by 8:30 and packed up the jolly green after that so we were on the road by 9:30. It was an easy trip back home and it was nice again to arrive in the early afternoon. Quick and good!

Our last day

We woke up early and stopped at a Tesco for breakfast pastries and to take out some pounds to thank Amy’s Uber driver friend. We thought this sign by the rental car return was funny. 

Matt actually did a really good job driving on the left. Navigating was busy with all the round abouts and mini round abouts. I had to remind him a few times to stay left, but he was really pretty good. 

We got the phone! What a blessing that guy was willing to meet up with us. 

Then off to the airport! Adi and Delaney were checking their life lines on their hands. 😂

Baby bug was not feeling great. Traveling and staying up late reading had caught up to her big time. 

We had an almost 3 hour flight to Reykjavik and we saw a lighthouse as we got close to the airport. ❤️

We had a weird situation with our tickets there. I’ve been using Hopper for our flights and for some reason they got our tickets - both with Iceland Air - to Reykjavik and then to Baltimore using different confirmation numbers, so we were supposed to leave the secure area, pick up our luggage, pay for it again, and go through customs and security again. Thankfully we were able to talk to someone at the Iceland Air customer service desk and he went above and beyond to help us. He made sure they forwarded our bag onto our next flight and didn’t charge us. He saved us a ton of time and headache and I made sure to mention him when I rated and reviewed it Iceland Air. 

For lunch I got a famous traditional Icelandic hotdog and it was fine. It had raw onion and crispy onion, mustard and aioli.  

We got off the plane and walked across the tarmac, so we’re counting that we’ve been to Iceland. ✔️ 

The girls got Sbarro’s pizza and Matt got pasta salad and we all shared pineapple and watermelon. 

The girls sat together on our flight home and Matt and I sat together. 

Our seats were directly behind the first class seats and we had SO much room! My feet were stretched all the way out and still not touching the seat in front of us! It was pretty sweet! It was almost a 6 hour flight and they didn’t feed us so that was lame, but otherwise it was pretty great. 

We made it to BWI by 7:30 and picked up our rental van by 8:30 and made it home by 10:00. We were all happy to be home and so exhausted that we didn’t even brush our teeth. 

It was such a fantastic trip and we feel so blessed we were able to do it safely and happily. We’ve got the travel bug in a big way and can’t wait for our next adventure!

Cadbury World and Ridge Walk Mam Tor

Tuesday was our last full day in England. We enjoyed a buffet breakfast in the medieval lodge that morning. Complete with a giant tray of… you guessed it - baked beans, mushrooms, and stewed tomatoes. 

We left our car where we’d parked the day before when we went to the castle and we thought we’d understood that we were supposed to leave our car there. But then that morning Matt said “it looks like the Americans didn’t understand where to park.” 🤣

We had about a 45 minute drive to Cadbury World where we saw Frances St. 🤗

And also this fun shoe exhibit. 🤷‍♀️

When I bought our tickets it was much cheaper to pick a specific time, so I did and we had some time to kill before our tour time. 

Matt says when you visit Cadbury you should take care to match their decor. 

We were able to catch the 4D Cadbury experience before our tour time and it only slightly made us feel sick. 

We also grabbed a quick pic with Freddo, only because no one else was around. 🤗

They gave us each 3 Cadbury bars and then we walked through the history of chocolate. 

There were some games to play. 

A lot about the history of the Cadbury family. 

And their tea and chocolate shop. 

A good year for Cadbury Milk and the Ray family!

One of our favorite parts of the tour was when we got to play with chocolate. 

They made sure to tell us several times not to eat the chocolate because they reuse it. Enough said on that one! 

They gave us 60 seconds to draw a self portrait. 

Of course Adi’s was amazing.

At first Delaney and I didn’t have enough chocolate in our bottles. Then my bottles lid popped right off, you can see my globs and how it looks like I wrote Mr. Michelle. 😂

And Matt’s weird hieroglyphic guy.

We rode the chocolate ride that was cute and silly. It was a lot like the chocolate experience at Hershey Park. 

We got a small cup of warm milk chocolate and we got to add 2 mix ins and it was weird but tasty. 

A few more games, including a boat delivering chocolate game that we tried so many times to finish but never could. 

The girls had fun jumping around these interactive games. 

We bought a few souvenirs and then we were off again. 

We had a 2 hour drive back up towards Manchester in preparation for our flight home. 

We thought it would be nice to enjoy being outside and hiking since we had a long day of flying coming up. 

So we went to Peak National Park and hiked the Mam Tor Ridge Walk. 

I was already physically super tired. 2 1/2 weeks is a long trip and after the boat we were somewhere new each night. 

We hadn’t eaten lunch and we didn’t bring our water up and I honestly didn’t feel great. We sat and enjoyed the beauty for awhile so I could feel better. 

It was really beautiful and the ridge walk is long, it would be so great to hike the whole thing. 

There were also lots of little trails branching off the ridge walk that would be so fun to check out. 

Cairns were part of the girls camp theme so adi and Frankie were excited to take loads of pictures of all the cairns. 

It was nice and cloudy, so not too bright, but also not cold. 

So beautiful. It was really amazing to be outside and enjoying the beauty of rural England. It is actually about an hour outside of Manchester. So nice to get out of the city and into this beautiful space. 

Pano!

We hiked to the first far peak and then turned around. We spent a few hours out there. 

We grabbed a snack as soon as we got to our car and then had a harrowing drive - small lanes, hilly, and v curvy to the Huntsman Inn which was so cute and homey. 

We ate dinner in the Huntsman pub and it was pie night, but I’m not sure what that meant because they didn’t have any additional pie flavors. I went with the cheese and onion pie and I was not sorry about it. 

We all showered, got checked in for our flight, and repacked our bags to even them out and make sure none of our suitcases would be overweight. 

I’ve been using Hotels.com to find places to stay in Europe and though we’ve had a few fails, or at least places we wouldn’t recommend, for the most part we’ve really enjoyed our lodgings. 

We also were able to coordinate with Amy’s Uber driver who had contacted our air b&b owners to track her down and return her phone. Since we were a ways outside of Manchester we decided to meet him at the rental car return the next morning. Honest people are the best. 

We had a 2 room suite which was nice, but also Delaney ended up staying up way too late listening to her audio book and then didn’t feel well for our travel day. We had a lovely stay at the Huntsman and highly recommend Peak National Park. ❤️