Life Update from The Dockins

Hey all,

I thought I would dust off this little old blog and start documenting the newest chapter for the Dockins Family. 

After a lot of thought, we have decided for Nick to separate from the Navy. Although we absolutely loved the many adventures the military allowed us, we felt it was time to change gears and try something new. 

So, in true Dockins fashion, we decided to tackle the next adventure in an unusual manner. Nick felt that this would be a perfect time to complete his MBA! We researched schools and decided UC Davis was a great choice for the whole family.

UC Davis has a great MBA program, the town of Davis is as close to a little English village as we could find but is also very near Sacramento and the San Fransisco Bay area, allowing for many opportunities in the next chapter without a necessary relocation and we are near Napa…need I say more?!?

So we moved from England in the middle of May and don’t need to be in Davis until school starts for Nick and Emily at the end of August. This allows us to spend the summer with family! What an amazing treat after being overseas for so long.

Some of you may be wondering about the 41 foot trailer we have been toting around… 

This started as a “Nick idea” a few years ago, but originally involved a large sailboat and a year at sea….Then we had children and he realized we probably wouldn’t make it back with both of them. We have also been slowly upgrading some type of mobile home during this time… 

First was Manny…

Then this little beater caravan in England…

Then we upgraded to a nicer, newer caravan and took that throughout the United Kingdom and France…

I bet you can see where this is going…

Financially it makes sense, due to the nomadic nature of our first few months back in the States and then looking into properties in California it made financial sense to cut costs. 

So here we are, with a 41 foot, two bedroom travel trailer… Our new home for the foreseeable future. 

I’ll let you know how it goes! 

<3 Kaitlin

“The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” -Eleanor Roosevelt

Exploring England: Hiking & Biking

Hello all! It has been a while since I have blogged and I thought it was time! We are still loving our adventures and travels, although we have been staying on "the island" since the Belgium trip. Luckily, the weather has been mostly fantastic, 60s and sunny which is perfect for getting out and taking long walks and bike rides. Here are some pictures from a 4 mile walk we did near the coast, a 14 mile bike ride through the Thetford Forest and an 8 mile bike ride in the surrounding areas of our village. I hope you enjoy!!

We started our walk at an old Pub.

We weaved over this little river a couple of times. Emily loved looking for fish!

Public footpaths straight through fields.

So close to the coast line (3 miles or less) there were seashells in the soil.

Emily is always leading the way.

We found some cows along the path.

We found this old building. I love finding old run down buildings on our adventures!

Almost to the water, although it was marsh land between us so we didn't make it the beach on this walk.

One of my favorite things about England are the public footpaths EVERYWHERE!

Wild poppies in bloom.

An old windmill.

This is actually from our garden, the caterpillars have arrived!

Nick got a new bike for Father's Day so we took the caravan out camping and the bikes on a long ride!

Old railroad crossing bridge.

Dirt paths and wooden signs.

Trumpet flowers... I may or may not have climbed over a barbed wire fence for this picture.

Riding through a small village we found this fantastic old house.

Tower ruins through the field

Our bike ride through the fields... Nick is not allowed to choose our routes anymore!

Abandoned barn in the field.

Up close to the abandoned barn.

Straight through a field of sheep, still a marked public footpath!

 

 

 

And through a working farm.

We are loving our adventures here and are so thrilled to have the chance to take advantage of all of these opportunities! See you on the next adventure...

Brussels & Bourges, France

Hello,
Three blogs in 1 day... I can hardly believe it! Nick, is home to help with Em so I can actually focus on writing while the memories are still fresh! I last left off in Amsterdam, well getting out of Amsterdam was an adventure within itself! As you remember, we had parked the car on the outskirts of town. When checking out of our apartment we decided it would be best to pack everything up but leave it in the apartment, take the tram to the car, drive the car to the apartment to load up the mountain of stuff we had unloaded into the apartment, (travel cot, luggage, food, diaper bag, etc.) and leave the city from the apartment. We had given ourselves plenty of time and were on the tram to the parking garage... except it wasn't the correct tram and we got dropped off about 2 miles from where we needed to be. We managed to find our way, with no gps, and went to get the car.. At this point we were nearing the time we had to be back at the apartment to check out and we still had to drive through the city! We got to the garage, only to find out that the ticket to get out of the garage was in Nick's pant pocket back in the apartment, oops! With a hefty fee, they gave us a replacement ticket and we began the drive. At this point we were about 5 minutes late and hit stand still traffic, 15 minutes later we had moved only about 1 mile and were still a mile away. We decided that Nick would get out and run to the apartment, and I would drive the car and get there as soon as possible. About 2 blocks into our new plan, traffic cleared and I passed Nick running down the side of the road but was unable to stop to pick him up. Em and I arrived at the apartment 10 minutes before Nick but of course Nick had the keys so we were sitting outside the apartment waiting for him to finish the run. Luckily, we weren't charged extra for checking out over 30 minutes late and finally got on the road towards Brussels! A short 2 hour drive, and we arrived at our apartment. Our apartment was rented from AirBNB which is someone renting out their own home, meaning we got to stay in a more "local" area instead of the touristy areas. The first night we went to a French restaurant that was recommended by the apartment owners. It was delicious and such an experience because no English was spoken! The next morning we got up early and headed to the Grand Place and city center!

Seriously, the places this little girl has explored!

Grand Place

The buildings to the other side of Grand Place were equally beautiful! Can you spot Em?

We found the peeing boy statue, who was dressed up for the Easter holiday.

Em wasn't sure about the peeing boy!

After the city center we went to explore a highly recommended attraction on tripadvisor.com,
Musee David et Alice Van Buuren. It's located a bit out of the city center but really worth it. The museum is an Art Deco styled house that once belonged to art lovers David and Alice Van Buuren, and the way they built this house is totally unusual. They had the architect build everything as a function of the art pieces they already had: stairs made in function of a sculpture, colors of the walls chosen to match a painting...it is really like a hidden jewel in the city. The house was very interesting, but the gardens were outstanding! There was a maze and many open areas with amazing flowers. Emily loved exploring the gardens!

Always take time to smell the flowers!

Maze

Luckily Em knew the way!

Amazing gardens!

We had so many delicous beers in Belgium that we knew we needed to stock up before we left the country, so we did just that! We had to borrow a shopping cart to take the cases to the car parked a few blocks away, I can only imagine the looks from passerbys that witnessed this view!

Keeping it classy!

Nick's favorite beer is Hoegaarden, which is made in the town of Hoegaarden just 30 minutes outside of Brussels, so it was a must for us to go there, even though they don't do brewery tours anymore. We were able to tour the museum and most importantly just drink a Hoegaarden in Hoegaarden!

Handsome, happy husband!

Our last stop was Bourges, France which put us near the ferry port for the following morning. This was a beautiful French village that I am sad we couldn't explore more. It has been added to the list! 

Bourges, France

One of three gateways to enter the city.

French wine at less than $4 a bottle, had to stock up!

From Bourges, we boarded our ferry and drove home. We had such an amazing trip, and feel so thankful to be so close to all of these opportunities! Thanks for reading about our little holiday!

Bruges Part 2 & Amsterdam

Hello again!
Continuing on our journey, day two in Bruges we decided to rent bikes and go to the windmills. There was a nearby village called Damme, a little over 4 miles away that we decided would be an easy bike ride and not too far for Emily. From Bruges, a lot of people bike to The Netherlands border which is about 10 miles away, we had hoped to do that but it wasn't in the cards for us that day. We loaded up on carbs, in the form of waffles and crepes, and went to find bikes. It was surprisingly difficult to find bikes with a child seat for Em but once we did we were on our way!

Emily loved the crepes!

Delicious Belgium waffles for breakfast!

Poor Emily fell asleep on the ride and slept like this.

So beautiful!

Out of the city, we saw lots of animals including cows, lambs and horses!

Family Selfie

Nick riding up to the windmill.

We left Bruges to spend two days in Amsterdam. It was about a 3 hour drive and then we had to navigate driving in a very bike friendly city, which meant not very car friendly! We found our apartment, unloaded our luggage, which is exponentially more when traveling with a toddler, and promptly parked our car outside of the main city area. Some towns and cities are very child friendly and some are less so, and I felt that Amsterdam was more of the latter. Also, because our trip was so last minute we were unable to book tickets to the museums ahead of time, which is a must! The Anne Frank house is located in Amsterdam but tickets are booked out nearly a month and there is also a fantastic Van Gogh museum that is necessary to buy tickets online, or stand in a line 3 city blocks long to enter, which would be impossible with Em. We rented bikes in Amsterdam as well, mostly to get around town. The bike riding in Amsterdam was quite different than that in Bruges because we were dealing with loads of other people and riding with cars and trams, beware of the trams tracks in the road!

The Dutch language was a challenge and I ended up with non-alcoholic 

beer and buttermilk. Oops!

Walking our bikes through the flower markets because it was far too crowded to ride.

Every type of tulip you could imagine!

 The second day we took the bikes to a very large park and rode around there. It was a great park that felt very removed from the hustle and bustle of the city!

Emily made a friend!

Tulips in the park

Amazing!

The famous I AMSTERDAM sign

 

 

Although my review of Amsterdam sounds a bit negative, I am so glad we went and we had the best dinner of the entire trip in Amsterdam at a restaurant called Moeders....amazing authentic home-cooking style Dutch food! Yum! Next up, Brussels and Bourges, France