Rye and Harry Potter

We've had a lot of fun these past couple of days.  We discovered this town called Rye (apparently Brad Pitt was just filming there.  Missed him by this much!).  It is so fun to watch the kids eyes light up as we walk down an old street made of bumpy stones or see the historical clock that the nursery rhyme Hickory Dickory Dock was possibly written about.  Even though we've talked about cannons or the boys have shot them at each other in a video game it is so exciting to see them actually touch one or see the wall it was defending.  I like to think that all this history is soaking in to them and igniting an insatiable thirst for more but really all they saw from the wall of cannons was this really cool park that they wanted to play in!  Or the candy store.  Every cute town seems to have a candy store!  After all the history and incredible buildings we saw all they could talk about was the candy store.  But I don't mind.  The candy store was really great.  In fact, one of our funniest stories involved the candy store.  The kids wanted to try these candies called MegaSour.  So we patiently waited in line, got to the front and ordered the candy from the 70 year old British storekeep.  He looked at us and said in his British sternness , Oh no, those are much to sour!  We laughed.  Ha ha!  Oh no wait.  He's serious.  He wasn't going to sell them to us!  Everett insisted that he wanted to try them.  The only way he was willing to sell them to us is if he could watch the kids try one! Of course, Everett and Ella ate them like champs.  (for the record:  Luke and I tried them.  I could handle them for all of 8 seconds and ended up with mouth blisters and Luke started crying (well his eyes teared up but it looked like crying to me)).

Street made of stones

900 year old St. Mary's church

The castle with the cannons.  Both boys were peeved to know they didn't work.

More stocks. 

Loving the craft store!  (note the size of the door.  Luke did not join us!)

The MegaChamp eating the MegaSour

Ev is collecting chocolate bars along our way.  His first pick!

The Hickory Dickory Dock clock (side note:  the Lion Street Store is my favourite store so far!)

Stopped for fish and chips

And lemons.

Ready to go for a jog in her track suit.

We went for a bike ride down this road that looked to me like a great bike path
but is in fact a 2 lane road.  Needless to say we did lots of stopping on the side of the road to
let the cars pass.

Then, we finally achieved one of Ella's life long goals.  We saw the Harry Potter Studio.  She was in heaven.  It was so great.  She brought her camera along and just absorbed all she could.  The boys could've wrapped it up much sooner but Ella could've spent another day or two there!  It was so special to sit down with her at the end of the day and go through all her pictures.  A highlight for sure!

Ev with the huge chess pieces

We had a real wand duel!

Finally found a hot dog.  

Just to push us all a little further, we ended the night at the London Eye.  We wanted to soak as much as we could out of London so just decided to go for it.  It was a lot of fun but ended with some very tired kids.  A few photos to prove it:

But then this happened.  Ella started telling Everett something funny.  Then he'd whisper back.  Then they'd giggle.  This is also what I wanted this trip to help create.  Moments of family.  Of bonding.  Of memories.  They giggled for the whole subway ride home (none of these photos are posed either.  these are real live cheesy faces they are making at each other!)  My heart swoons!