Warwick Castle

Since I'm working backward anyway here's what we did on Tuesday.... I drove the boys & Tristan 2 hours north to Warwickshire to Warwick Castle - we have these Merlin passes so I've been taking them to all their locations this summer getting my monies worth! All of the other places are theme parks - Chessington World of Adventures, Legoland Windsor & Thorpe Park - but they also own this castle, The London Eye and Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum - yep, we hit 'em all this summer - the closer ones more than once!

It was fun - they had jousting and a trebuchet and you could climb to the top of the ramparts and walk in the castle. It's beautiful land and a nice place to take the kids. They had birds of prey on display - and did a little show with them - I actually got hit by a bald eagle!! I have it on video - I never seem to have luck uploading videos onto to my blog but will try once again - but I was further away from the center of the demonstration than the kids on lower ground even - had my camera up videoing and the Eagle flew by me - or so I thought until it knocked down my camera and I had bird feathers on it!

The boys got to practice archery and it really was just a lovely day - this truly is a very nice country to be living in.
















Hooray success!

New Jersey

I have so much to catch up on - but I will have to just work backward. Chandler and I went to New Jersey to visit our old UK neighbors - they sadly moved away from us last summer so we had to go visit them! It was so much fun - I was really excited to go there as I've never gone before - but I have gone to NYC. New Jersey is beautiful where they live and they have such fun things - they belong to the Noe Pond Club which was fun - it's basically a private swim club, but it's a pond instead of a pool.

They also have a really nice Golf Club - seems like the kids have such fun places to go for the summer! I only got to stay for 5 days and I left Chandler there for 5 more - he flew home alone and he did fantastic! I got to go to NYC to see my BIL Ryan for dinner but it was so hot! We got to go to the Jersey Shore and went to Point Pleasant (like Santa Cruz), poor Chandler got a little sick so he didn't get to go to NYC for dinner, just as well it was SO hot there! Cathy took me shopping - I dropped a pretty penny in just 3 days - but got Chandler lots of clothes which he so needed.

He went to Boy Scout camp this summer and I was trying to get him to pack his clothes and I couldn't get him to get any clothes together - so I finally looked and it was because he didn't HAVE any clothes!! Poor kid!


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It was a terrific vacation and I needed it - even though it was short. My super babysitter Pauline watched the other 3 kiddies (Tyler is still in CA/UT) and they had a fantastic time. Chandler got to go to Six Flags Great Adventure - said he went on the tallest roller coaster - he was so excited about it. He also got to go into NYC and ate at hmm, forgot the name of the diner, but the waiters all sing, went to the top of the Marriott Marquis in the elevator to see the city. Went to Broadway because Donnie's friend is in Billy Elliott so they dropped him off for rehearsal, went to the Empire State Building & Macy's - all full days and so much fun with great friends!!!

The Wheels on the Bus go Round 'n Round

Finally an update to my blog - you'd think it was summer and we were busy or something... ha ha

There's so much to tell in just the last 2 months so I need to hurry up and finish my Spain story - I said it was emotionally draining - it seems to take me weeks to recover when I think about it!

Well we settled on the bus - but not before I tell the story leading up to the bus.....

At the hotel we caught wind that the hotel was trying to put people together with a bus company. They had an information meeting regarding the idea. The bus would cost 12,000 Euros and could fit up to 50 people - so of course the idea was - fill up with as many people and the cost would go down. The bus would only go from Malaga to Calais where you'd have to buy & find your own ferry and get home from the English side. The bus company was definitely preying on the desperate.

Fair enough - people had to sign up and put down how many people they wanted to sit on the bus - keep in mind there were over 100 people at the 'meeting' - only about 40 people put their names down on the list - we were 7 of them - it was pretty expensive by that point. Slowly as time ticked away - they needed cash because it wasn't being run by the hotel - that was problem #1 for us since we had 7 people. And they would have wanted it within the hour - you can't go to an ATM and get 2,000 in any domination. Then people started to drop out slowly - raising the cost of the trip exponentially. At one point I think the figure reached 350/pp - and for us times 7!

One person that dropped out shared they found a bus company that would take you from Malaga Airport all the way to Gatwick Airport - in 27 hours - including the ferry and everything - for 250 GBP - you had to register, and if they had a seat available they would call you and book it. Sounded like a great deal. We were standing with another group - they had 6, we had 7 - they called and got the last seats on this bus. With them out of the hotel bus as well - there was no way we could spend any more money - so the bus thing went away.

So we stuck with Plan B - or so we thought. We were going to pick up a rental van and drive ourselves through Spain, through France and into Caen for a ferry the next day and night.

But that night at dinner - the flights started landing in Heathrow. I think the CEO of BA started to send flights and forced the airport to open - since the first flights in were from the US or Asia - obviously he just sent them - because they had 'suddenly' had flights landing.

Another scramble - I thought we should just wait to take our new flights on Saturday and try to salvage our vacation. I was vetoed - Mike & Tyler wanted to get back - Mike just wanted to get moving.

In the AM we packed up - left the kids at the hotel (hey Tyler is 14) actually sent the two younger boys to the kids club - and got in the cab to go to the airport to pick up our van. Of course - they said no, no, no you can't take our van to France we will have to charge you an additional 3,000 EUR for leaving it!!! But I will let you take 2 small cars - very very nice manager at the airport - he was very kind to let us do that. Ok fine, we will have 2 cars - we have phones (no car charges for our phones) no GPS/Sat Nav, but I did have it on my iPhone if we got desperate.

I got really nervous though - because Mike didn't bring his CA driver's license - he only had his learner's permit from the UK - but I had mine - luckily the maanger didn't mind and let us have the 2 cars but technically I don't think Mike was allowed to rent the car without a valid driver's license!

I bought the last map at the hotel and we Googled everything on map quest the hotel was so nice to let us print things off and not charge us. Drove back, packed up the cars, said a prayer, had my French dictionary up front. Drove to the front desk to check out - and then I got a phone call......

"We have room on our bus (Malaga to Gatwick) for 7 people - it will leave at 4pm from the airport (where we got our rental cars) would you like the seats? It will only cost 190 GBP"

You can't imagine how relieved we were. Of course we said yes! So we drove the cars back to the man at the airport - he was again so so so nice - he thought it was a great deal for us too. Basically he barely charged us as well - almost equivalent to us paying for 2 taxis to take us there anyway.

Keep in mind we would have had to go through Spain (we don't speak Spanish) and France (I'm learning but not that great yet!)

So we go back to the airport - drop off the cars go to the pick up area because by then it was close to 3 and the bus was at 4 - we get there - chaos....

They tell us no - you're on Bus 4 at 5pm - okay fine - an hour no problem.... but wait, buses 1, 2, 3 hadn't arrived yet - and they were to leave at 2pm, 3pm & 4pm before us - hmmmm - did we just send our money, turn in our cars, cancel our ferry for nothing?

Then buses kept arriving - a whole slew of buses - but there were SO many people we weren't sure what was going on - These buses were from the British Embassy - so they were taking people by bus for FREE to Calais but then you had to stand in a queue for your ferry and find your own way back once on English soil.

So people were starting to jump onto these buses - we asked - but you had to be a British Passport holder - we said, well we have Resident Visas and our daughter was born in the UK - the answer was 'sorry charlie' - those buses went out half full and they had at least 5 buses - literally they would have left us standing on the side of the road. That's the English.

But luckily our buses were not a scam - but were delayed because of driving time/rest restrictions and were just waiting for the Embassy buses to leave - whew!

So the buses turn up one at a time - they had given us tickets in order when we had checked in - so they filled up Bus 1 and kept filling them - so if you held bus 2 tickets and there was space - they threw you on - same for the other 2 buses - so by the time we got on the last bus - there were only 24 of us for a bus that holds 50-60 people. Every person could have at least 2 seats - it was the best and the families we were with were wonderful.

It worked out really well - you can tell we entertained ourselves - our drivers were fabulous - but we seemed to take a long route - instead of going straight north through Madrid (through the country) we went all the way East to Barcelona then back over - like a giant Z-back - there was horrible construction they said through Madrid that they encountered on the way down - which was why they were delayed getting down to us. (These were buses that originated from the UK) By the time we were out of Spain and just into France, Mike and I knowing (since we had the map and knew our geography now) that we still had a lot of ground to cover asked our driver how long it would take us and told him that the organizers said it would take 27 hours - he laughed and said - "there's no way! it will be 32-35!" - ugh!

Well our drivers had a couple movies - and Tristan was great entertainment for the back of the bus - she walked up and down the aisle which was terrific and since we had a seat for her we could pop her in her car seat and we had the seat in front of the toilet which worked for her because there was no one in front of us.

But we survived - the ferry was really really nice - too bad they couldn't get more people to work and have more ferries - did I mention that before? All the reservation places for ANYTHING shut down at 5 pm no matter what each day and weren't open on the weekends - so booking things was so difficult! Amazing that there is this emergency crisis - 100K people stranded and in each country they couldn't put in any overtime?!

One last note - Mike's admin Preet was fabulous - checking on us calling us, making canceling reservations - we arrived at Gatwick Airport at 3AM - our Taxi Van was the only one sitting there waiting for us when we arrived out of all the families - oh how blessed we felt!!!

But that is the last report of our Great Spanish Adventure - although it was beautiful - we won't be returning to Spain any time soon - xoxo :)

Our bus-mates & drivers and our white bus in the back!

The Amazing Race Part I

Readers Warning: Very long due to documentation and emotional drain process - read at your own will.

I need to write down the rest of our Spain Adventure, it has taken me a while to do it for various reasons - the fact that since we got back it was a crazy time to just get back into life, in the last 4 weeks I've had 4 sets of visitors staying at our house - 3 within in 10 days (including babysitting 2 more toddlers), lots of laundry, and the emotional scarring the journey home really left upon us!

So here we go....

While we were in the van on our private tour to Rhonda on Thursday we got a message from Mike's assistant telling us about the volcano. We thought - wow - but surely it will clear up and things would be fine for our flight home Sunday - boy are we lucky we aren't scheduled to go home tomorrow! (Friday)

Every TV station had grim reports of the volcano - we were transfixed. People were coming in and out of the lobby - no one knew what to do, what was going to happen, when or how they would get home. Surely by Sunday we would be okay.

Friday - we took a taxi - well 2 taxis into Downtown Marbella - it was wonderful - the center was called the Orange Square - little shops, a courtyard that was curved around so you would lose your place, all the buildings were white and there was a giant Catholic church at the center. They paint the buildings white and close together to keep them cool. We had a nice lunch in the center of town and headed back to the resort. It was hard to enjoy the rest of our vacation because of the uncertainty we faced. I don't think people realized how stressful it had all was. Mike & I went for a Tapas dinner and left the kids in charge with frozen pizzas & a movie! They loved it.

Saturday we played ping pong and went swimming in the indoor pool with the kids - saw more people unsure of their situation. People weren't leaving - nor were new people coming in. The hotel could accommodate us longer if we needed at 200 euros/night - which was nice for a 3 bedroom condo! Our flights were officially canceled at that point - and we spend hours and hours on the internet.

The problem was we couldn't get out of Spain.

Train tickets to London were outrageous - Malaga to Madrid, Madrid to Paris, Eurostar or Ferry to London - It would cost over 500 Euros PER PERSON for the Madrid to Paris leg alone. That didn't even include the cost of what the Eurostar might have been.

Renting cars was excessive, but you were not allowed to drive them out of Spain or they'd charge a 5,000 Euro one way fee.... (for a van) which didn't even include the cost to rent or fuel it.

For those Euro-geographically challenged, Malaga is pretty much the most south you could get in Spain - they only had 2 ferries a week that left from the North of Spain (Santander) to Portsmouth (1 hour from my house) or Plymouth (3 hours). All the rest were out of France. You just couldn't get easily out of Spain. At least out of places like Germany, Italy, France you could try to get a train more readily - out of the Nordic countries you could take other ferries - or be like John Cleese - he paid a taxi driver 3,000 EU to drive him from Brussels to Calais, France to take a ferry!!

We looked at all the routes - everyone was doing the exact same thing - people looked defeated,
the resort was quiet - no one was 'enjoying' themselves - everyone was in a silent panic. Everyone spent their waking moments on the Internet. There was no information coming from anywhere - not the news, not governments, not the hotel, not the airlines - nothing. People were renting all the cars, booking all the trains, new flights for later in the week - things that normally cost 30-40 EU were costing 300-400 EU. The increase of the cost was shocking. The greed and preying on people stranded was at an extremely heightened level.

Everyone had a story - we were all in the same boat - we all had places to get back to in England strangely enough. We met far many more people than we had just being on holiday for a simple week's pleasure.

We were lucky - we had outside help - Mike's Assistant Preet back in the UK looked at things online for us, helped us book & cancel so many alternatives - I can't even keep track of how many reservations we had for various routes. We tried:

-Train from Malaga to Madrid, Madrid to Paris, Paris to Calais, Calais to Folkstone
-Renting a van to drive to Santander - take a ferry to Plymouth or Portsmouth
-Take a train to Santander - to take a ferry to P/P
-Rent a van to drive to Bilbao take ferry
-Rent 2 cars - drive to San Sebastian, Spain - return cars - taxi to Bairritz, France to rent 2 more cars - drive to Caen, France for a ferry to Portsmouth
-Rebooked flights on 2 carriers (I couldn't book 7 on one flight) but the following Saturday
And these are the ones I can remember.....

Then we heard of a bus - Malaga to Gatwick......surely no one would take that...

Spain Safari Park & Ronda

Here are a few more pictures of the safari park

This peacock was following the photographers around - it was so funny it was in true peacock fashion - hey look at me!

Chandler's new girlfriend

A real Roadrunner!
They are from Australia and have hair, not feathers and not fur and their feet are huge! But they are fast runners...meep meep

Ronda is the place with the oldest Bull Ring in Spain - there are 2 bridges that bring people in & out of town as the town is basically build on a gorge... it was beautiful.... what I thought was really funny were all of the French Tourists.. every time I turned around there was a guide describing things in French

Down below the old bridge

Spain

Once we finally got home from our extended vacation it has really taken me a week to recover, mentally and the house physically! So I will try to continue to document!! I'm having trouble uploading pictures - so I'm having little patience with blogspot the last few days. Here are actually pictures to go with the last post...


When we first arrived - the beach in front of our hotel/condo looking into the Mediterranean Sea - out beyond - Straight of Gibralter & due south - Africa

The weather wasn't the most cooperative when we were in Spain - from Marbella on a clear day you can see into Africa - we contemplated taking the kids on a Tour to Tanger (Tangier) but the more honest people we met - or not so much 'honest' just not the people who wanted to take our money - suggested it wasn't such a great spot for taking kids. So we planned on doing things around the area instead.
Giant Chess set where the boys spent lots of time

Indiana Jones Bridge

Safari Park

Eyjafjallajoekull

That is the name of the Volcano that is causing so much havoc in our travels home. But I need to document from the beginning. We started the week after Easter nicely - we left for Malaga, Spain on April 11 for a much needed vacation to sunny weather. We had this trip planned for a long time and we heard such great things about Malaga/Marbella and the Marriott Resort here.

Funny how best laid plans can go awry...

Our place was terrific - 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a kitchen, washer dryer, beach, pools, kids club, fitness room - we forgot to ask for some sun! We just assumed being in the South of Spain it would be nice - granted it might be cool since it isn't quite summer but we didn't expect Thunder and Lightening Storms!

Warning - this is more for me to remember and document so sorry if it is really boring! Oh and I forgot my camera cord on vacation so I have to wait until I get back for some photos!!

The first day we just tried to get our barrings and enjoy the resort - we sent the boys into the kids club for some fun and games (I'm sure Chandler was so excited) but hey, they had Playstation, Wii - what else could boys want!

We found the market - found the giant sized chess set can you say lifesaver? - , both indoor pools (one for adults only - funny Mike & I never found time to enjoy it!) outdoor pools, playground, ping pong tables. We had a great time after dinner playing chess on the giant board as a family - it started with Ian & Chandler playing each other, but then Mike tried to help Ian - so of course I couldn't let Chandler not have any help! We won in the end - but I'm sure the game lasted an extra half hour because we were really working on our strategy!

The second day we decided to try to figure out how to get to Selwo Aventura Estepona - it was an animal adventure park. Actually before we left there was an Artesian Fair at the Marriott - we were lucky we didn't have to go off-site for our art market! We got a couple skirts for the girls and a cloth purse for mom, bargain only €5.

The adventure park was really fun you had to ride all of these giant jeeps to get around the park. One of the highlights was the Inidana Jones Bridge - it was just as wobbly! They had all kinds of animals and it wasn't all that crowded as the kids in Spain were back to school.

Wednesday we took a couple taxis and went into Old Town Marbella - sometimes on vacation it is hard for the Cranes to get going before 11 - so here we have to hurry to see anything because of Siesta Time which is about 2-5 so everything closes. We went to the Plaza de los Naranjos - Orange Tree Square - lots of shops, lots of churches and lots of restaurants. Pretty pricey but worth going to see. We had a nice lunch there - yummy seafood but the kids got Spaghetti - didn't seem very Spanish to me! When we came home Tyler and I went to a Paella cooking demonstration back here at the hotel. Yummmy!

Thursday we arranged for a private tourguide to drive us to Ronda - if you ever come here and stay at the Marriott - Francisco is your man! Of course when we started that was the day it started to rain pretty hard - the other days so far had just been overcast and not that warm. We had to go through the mountains and the rain and fog were so thick! Normally you could see into Africa from up there but we weren't that lucky. At least for that portion of the trip - once we got to the other side - blue skies!! It was beautiful in the valley.

Ronda is a little town of about 10K I think Francisco said - it really is only open during the day for the few hours the tourists come in by the bus loads - it is because it has the oldest bull ring in Spain. This town is built on a rock basically that was split by water hundreds if not thousands of years ago - the 2 bridges in the town are unbelievable. We were lucky because the weather held for us while we were there - it was so pretty and really what you think of when you think of a Spanish town.

For lunch Francisco took us to one of the 'White Villages' on the hill - it reminded me of The Magnificent Seven (except in Spain) where the whole town is painted white and only about 200 people live in each town. Lunch was great and what you would expect in a little spanish town - choices were 1st - salad with tuna, seafood soup, chicken bouillon, 2nd - beef in sauce, pork, swordfish - dessert - flan or a big juicy orange. I was impressed - my boys picked the seafood soup or swordfish! And they loved it....

More tomorrow.....

Happy Birthday Lucas! Amos Girls Visit

I can't believe my little Lucas is 6 year old! He still has the coolest birthday around - 4/4/04. His birthday this year was on Easter so we had his party a few weeks ago with his friends. He didn't quite understand that his party was in March. Even on Easter morning he asked if his friends were coming over.

I told him they were all on vacation and that the Easter Bunny came instead! We've had a busy week with school ending for the holiday and our friends Jessica, Julia & Christy coming to visit us. Here a the fun things we did this week.Celebrated Lucas' Birthday
He got lots of new Toy Story Legos

Our friends the Davis' came over for Easter Dinner to also help us celebrate Lucas' birthday!

We took the girls to Stonehenge & Salisbury

We went to see the Queen Musical - We Will Rock You after spending the afternoon of the Bank Holiday at the giant Westfield Mall in London - it was really big!

We went into London another day and spent the day around Borough Market, St. Paul's Cathedral, Tate Modern Museum & up to Camden Markets and ate Fish & Chips!

Christy & I even made it to the London Temple for a session. We packed in a ton of things in one week! Now it is off to pack for Spain!

Arrow of Light

I don't think I posted these before.... in March Chandler received his Arrow of Light - they have a really cool Chief that comes and shoots arrows!

Move over Von Trapps

The Von Cranes are in town!

Last Thursday night was the school Spring Concert - it was a huge extravaganza of music! Our Winter concert was canceled due to the snowy weather we had this winter so they packed in a ton of performances in this one show....

The quality of music by all the kids was fantastic! They worked really hard and you could really see the difference even from last year.

I have some of it on video but I never seem to have luck posting videos on my blog. Both Tyler (vocal) and Chandler (Clarinet) had solos this year so it was extra special for the Von Cranes....it's nice being in a small school the kids have a few more opportunities they might not have in the big schools back home. It's all good for now :)

nIan playing the trumpet (you know brass is always in the back!)

Chandler's trio (violin, flute & clarinet spotlight solo)

The spectators