Forgive me whilst I indulge myself in a little grumpiness whilst I recount the thrilling 48 hours that was my weekend. It’s all Tara’s fault.
Whilst pretty much every English Blogger on my G Reader was at Cybermummy, my weekend went a little something like this:
Saturday 6.30am local time: get up, shower, pack last bits into suitcases. Make coffee. Consider taking a second shower as Mallorca is ridiculously hot at 7am. Get children up, empty fridge whilst shoving leftover food into them. Look down at clean travel outfit to find it not so clean. Wish I’d held off on the shower. Drink lukewarm coffee. Do wally check, find 10 more things that need packing into suitcases. Work up a sweat squashing them into handluggage. Wish I could have a shower. Wrestle children into clothes, then into cab. Snatch back food they are still eating whilst grumpy drivers gesticulates at sign saying “No food.”
9am: spend good chunk of life queueing for check-in, queueing for luggage check and passport control, queueing to throw away unopened drinks we were not allowed to consume en route. Go through metal detector. Go into first shop available to restock on drinks…
11am: board flight. Wrestle children into seats and strap them in. Wait for an hour and 30 minutes whilst children, along with another half-plane-load of others try to wrestle free from their seats/scream/beg for food etc until we finally get into the air 45 minutes after our departure time.
1.30pm local time. Land at Gatwick (wet bottom from where lemonade was spilled on my lap by PD, sticky leg from Dimples’ rejected sweets). Wait to get off plane. Walk 48 miles. Wait in line at passport control. Walk to baggage carousel. Wait. Walk to bus stop. Wait. Ride bus to collect car. Wait for car. Stuff hungry children with food from vending machine, having used my packed rations feeding them during all the delays.
5pm get home, order Chinese food. Cry.
6.30pm Put cranky kids to bed, unpack whilst DH decides now is the best time to re-arrange cupboard in hallway outside sleeping children’s bedrooms. Put children back to bed repeatedly.
9.30pm give up on waiting to watch DVD with DH before the official end of our holiday and go to bed.
Sunday 6.30am: get up with children. Doze on sofa. Feed them, drink coffee, realise have no internet. Deal with unpacking and opening two weeks’ worth of mail instead.
9am: cajole DH into abandoning his plans to rearrange another cupboard.
10.30am: ply children with Fruit Shoots, sunscreen and hats, shove them in the car and head to Sevenoaks.
11.30am: stuff face with breakfast (at this point I realise I never fed myself at home) at Cafe Rouge garden and pretend am in France.
12.30am: wedge children in pushchair and head to Knole house to ‘hunt Reindeer’.
1pm: realise children are asleep. Hunt Reindeer anyway.
2.30pm: sit with still sleeping children in Tesco’s carpark whilst DH ‘pops in for a few bits’
3.15pm: try to pacify two hot sweaty cranky children whilst not letting them out of their car seats. Wonder if DH is lost then see him coming towards us with a trolley rammed full of stuff.
4pm: Unpack car, children, paddling pool and new sprinkler for garden. Strip children, slather on more sunscreen and sit eating ice-cream whilst they run happily around in water.
It all worked out in the end, see? The hardest bit of any holiday is getting home.
For other weekends, check out this week’s Gallery.
It sounds like a pretty good weekend to me, I like the idea of Knole House and hunting Reindeer – even if the kids were asleep 🙂 x
Wow i’m exhausted just reading it!! Glad to see a good time can be had away from cybermummy 🙂
Lots of bloggers were not at Cybermummy and so nice to see what they got up to instead in the Gallery this week.
Your post here is wonderful as really reflects some of the bigger challenges of having children in our lives but even worse the fellas.
Well done you on building memories with the children anyway