Devon

The girls had two weeks off of school for Easter. The first week they took some specialized swimming courses to improve certain strokes and some trampolining classes. The second week, we went to Devon. We stayed at a resort with indoor and outdoor pools, restaurants, nightly entertainment, a bowling alley, a soft-padded climbing gym, a large arcade and beautiful scenery.  It was sooo relaxing.

Abby and Sammy loved their tiny little room that was only big enough for their two beds. They thought it was very cozy!

We were only a 10-15 minute walk from the beach. It was certainly not beach weather but we at least had sun and fairly good temperatures.

It had rained the night before so the muddy puddles were especially fun to jump in on our way to the beach.

The beach! Alex still talks about the beach and asks if we can go tomorrow.

Climbing on the rocks at the beach

Abby, Sammy and Alexandra shadows

The cliffs were especially beautiful with red rock and I loved the colorful beach huts.

After two days of hanging out at the resort and swimming, we ventured out to a town called Totnes. I loved all the boutiques and narrow streets. I could have used several hours to myself and done some serious shopping but unfortunately that did not happen.

There was a castle at the top of the hill in the town. It was the first castle we have seen since we moved back to England. I was so excited for the girls to see it now that they can actually appreciate castles more than when we were here before. They loved it.

They were amazed by all the steps leading up to the castle.

Abby and Sammy fantasized about shooting arrows from the wall-walk.

We took some nice long drives through the countryside which was absolutely gorgeous. A patch work of green and yellow rape seed fields. The colors were brilliant. We found this place where we all got out and climbed up some large boulders. It was a lot of fun. We found that our Sammy is quite the brave, little climber going wherever Daddy did without fear.

Standing at the top with the surrounding countryside

Charles and Sammy climbed up to an especially high point and took a picture of Alex and I way down at the bottom.

The girls climbing down

We also discovered the remains of a medieval village. Abby and Sammy ran around imagining what it must have been like. Overall, this vacation was absolutely fabulous. I could not have been more relaxed and happy. The most memorable part for me was the ride home though. We decided to take the back roads home for a more scenic ride. However, there were no restaurants in the tiny villages (plenty of pubs which would have been fine but Charles was suffering from a stomach ache and didn't feel like pub food). Village after village we found nothing. It was finally around 2pm and we hadn't eaten since 9am. So we stopped at an ASDA (Walmart) grocery store. We told the girls to get whatever they wanted. Everyone went their way, Charles came back with a box of a dozen donuts for his lunch, Abby brought back a bag of six, large chocolate chip cookies and Sammy got frosting covered lemon muffins. Being the sensible one, I got a bunch of crusty rolls and some ham as well as some pepperoni sticks and Doritoes. We bought all the food and got in the car to drive while we ate. I started fretting about the crumbs that my rolls were making when I was tearing them in half for the girls. Charles pointed out that it was silly to fret about a few crumbs when our car was full of all kinds of rubbish from our 5 days of vacation. He grabbed one of the rolls and proceeded to shake it all over the dashboard. It was shocking yet hilarious! I started laughing and could not stop. He told the girls to just throw all their trash on the floor. (I am laughing right  now while I write this.) We only ate six of the donuts (because they were kind of nasty) so Charles just threw the rest on the floor. Unwanted cookies, throw them on the floor. Empty Doritoes bag chuck it on the floor. Then Charles and the girls began several hours of telling stupid knock knock jokes and singing (or should I say screaming) a ridiculous dog food commercial over and over again to see if they could annoy me. I was driving mind you and laughing with tears running down my face almost the whole way back. Needless to say, we got back and I took the car straight in to be cleaned - inside and out!