Early Morning Royal Wedding Celebration

Hannah and I were invited to an early morning breakfast celebration as we watched the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.  We were up bright and early and as I started to get ready I popped on the TV to see how things were coming along in England.  You can imagine my surprise when a friend’s daughter was shown in the crowd on CNN!  She is teaching in London right now so after classes finished on Friday she took a couple of buses and walked close to the chapel, hoping to see portions of the wedding.  You’ll see that she sure did!!

Katie is the blonde gal with glasses and her hair pulled back in the centre of the pic.  So fun!

Our car was in the shop this morning so my friend Carol (Katie from above’s Mom), picked us up around 6am and drove us to the wedding viewing.  We were dressed in our best pj’s and wore hats to the wedding of course.   (Thanks for Hannah’s sweet hat Auntie Deb!)

The wedding viewing party dressed in our finest!

We enjoyed watching the wedding together, Face Timing Katie at various times.

I’m not sure Hannah and Payton were quite as interested in the wedding as the adults were but they had a great time crafting together.

Breakfast was a delicious combination of English sweets and treats!

It was a wonderful morning of celebrations shared with friends!

Oh yah, and Katie?  Were all her travels worth it?  Um, yup!  Can you believe how close she was??  Great pic Katie!  So happy it all worked out for you to share in this amazing day and thank you for sharing your excitement with us!

Hannah and the Chocolate Factory!

On our final day of fun in PA we hopped in the car and drove about 30 mins.  to visit the Hershey Chocolate Factory. We really had no idea what to expect but wow…..we were all impressed!  We purchased the package that we felt would be fun for all 4 of us.  It included the Great Chocolate Mystery in 4D, Hershey’s Great American Chocolate Tour and , Create Your Own Candy Bar.

Our first event was the 4D movie.  It was very well done and reminded us of movies and their special effects at Disney.

When the movie was done it was our group’s turn to create our own candy bars.  What fun!!

After watching in introduction movie we went to video screens and designed our candy bars online.  We were able to choose the base chocolate, 3 fillings and weather or not we wanted sprinkles on our bar.

Next it was time to scan our cards again and then follow our candy bars as they travelled along the conveyer belt, dropping in our chosen ingredients.   Hannah chose a white chocolate base and Mommy, milk chocolate.

Time for a chocolate bath.

While the bars were cooling we each had an opportunity to design the cover for our candy bar.  After that we headed back to the end of the line to watch our bars come out and have them packaged.

Making our own candy bars was such a neat activity and we had such fun!!

Our final activity was the chocolate tour.  The design of the ride reminded us of the Figment ride at Epcot.  It was neat to see all the steps that go into creating chocolate bars.

If you’re ever in the Hershey or Lancaster, PA area be sure to take time to visit the Chocolate Factory!!

Almost 20 years ago I began babysitting for friends Deb and Scott.  I’m not really sure how the tradition began but somehow the tradition of Scott and I taking chocolate home for the other each time we travel began.  We’ve both teased that the family many not receive souvenirs from all of our trips but neither of us would ever think of arriving home without chocolate for the other.  Heh!  Here is Hannah sharing the giant bar we bought for Uncle Scott.

Hannah giving Uncle Scott his chocolate bar the following week at church.  And yes, more chocolate than we care to admit has been consumed in church while waiting for the service to start!!

It’s worth the drive to Hershey!