Cramming more life in life

Our family has been doing a lot of traveling lately- and in order to get to any of it I will have to break it up into edible bites, chunks and moments of life lately..... but before that, I must explain.

I have never been one of those parents that says "Where did the time go?" when looking at my kids.  I journal, I photo take, I blog, basically I feel I do soak it in as we go along.  In spite of that, however, I have felt a sudden urge to do more lately.

At Christmas I realized "wow, we only have a couple of Christmases with all the boys here" and I look at my oldest son and think, "okay, he's almost 18- I gotta sneak in more time with him whenever possible" (which is the last thing he wants to do).

So, for my oldest son's Spring Break we loaded him up and flew to England, where my sister lives for the time being.  My son had told us when he was quite young that he wanted to see Stonehenge someday.  I always hoped we could make that happen, and with a sister within 45 minutes of the site we knew we had to go.

One funny thing about going to Stonehenge, is everyone tried to tell us it wasn't cool to see.  Well, guess what. They were wrong. It was awesome- and actually one of our favorite things to visit.

Just to walk around these stones (are you a Tess fan, perhaps? I am) and ponder how long they have been here (reported guesses are about 5,000 years) sort of fills you with wonder.  The path around it is great, giving you lots of space and many clear shots for pictures.

The audio guide here is well done, with good historical tidbits and speculations about what the purpose of this site is, and there are a lot of benches and areas to sit, look, even stop and eat if you want to. 

For some strange reason for us it became all about the pictures.

Honestly...I am not even sure what the point of this all was.  I just know when your teenager wants to take crazy pictures while fulfilling his bucket list you sort of just comply and enjoy the ride. 

This next one was for me, however, after much coaxing to my sweetheart (my sister helped put on the pressure, I was glad she had caught my vision!)

Oh yeah, totally worth it.

We also saw the stones of Avebury, which also form some sort of circle, only over a mile radius or so.  You can't really tell what you are seeing while you are up against it, but you can touch all the stones and walk right along them.  The country side here is gorgeous.

Here you can see some of the stones behind us.  Like I said, the lands and country sides were so pretty, so green, and just so peaceful. 

A photo for the gaming fan...................

You can see that some of these stones were huge.

The day we saw Stonehenge and Avebury, we also went to Salisburg, because it was within our driving range for the day.  Photos and highlights another time from there, though.  The day was amazing- and that was just one day of our 8 day stay. Every day was packed, and everywhere we went there was plenty to see and plenty to do. 

I literally fell down at the end of each day so tired I hardly wanted to take another step.  Good thing my lovely sister had plenty of BBC shows (Selfridge's and Paradise, no less!) and cozy drinks, chocolates, and other tasty treats to relax with.  It was always a perfect end to a great day.

If you get a chance to go abroad, just go.

 Cram some more  life in while you can.

from chiccritqueforum.com via pinterest