Major catch up, oh how remiss I have become with blogging :lol:. I’ve even been hibernated from a blogring over on Monster & Teeny – who’d have dreamt such a day would dawn eh?!
Thursday was my day of training. It all seems rather distant now, I’m sure I had humourous anecdotes aplenty to blog about it but I can’t recall and can’t be arsed so I won’t bother dredging any up.
Friday I worked in the morning, the children went to Lucy’s instead of her coming here which seemed to work fine – I think they liked the change of scenery but they were more than happy to be left there. 🙂 I collected them at lunchtime and we came home and packed up ready to head off to Sheffield as soon as Ady got in. We were away by 3pm and had a really smooth run up there with a small amount of traffic right at the very last bit of the M1. I’d grabbed 3 dvds from work to keep them occupied in the car so they watched Stripes, Valiant and a fab Silly Symphonies Disney one which made the journey very smooth. We had minor panics as I rang ahead to double check the booking and was told it was booked for that night but not for Saturday. As we’d got really cheap pre booked rooms (£26 a night – even our budget can manage two nights on that, although we will be eating crusts and crumbs for the whole of February now :lol:) I went prepared to yell and stamp to get a £26 room again for Saturday if the booking hadn’t gone through – of course all details and confirmation emails were on the deceased laptop so I had no proof. As it happened not only was it not a problem but I just had to go and pay again on Saturday for Saturday’s booking both times they were insistent that I’d already paid on my card 😯 which in a different life would have been great and I’d have simply agreed but the danger of them realising their error later and indeed trying to take payment off that card would have had far reaching financial implications with all sorts of bank charges and slapped wrists so it was far easier to hand over cash. We arrived just after 8pm and Ady went off to find some food while I checked in with the children. It meant we were in the room for nearly an hour with only 2 (unsuitable) channels on the TV and none of our belongings. I read them a load of Genesis from the Gideons Bible in the room though and they joined in Gruffalo style with the ‘and it was good’ bits 😆 Ady eventually came back having done a fair old tour of Sheffield with some Kentucky Fried Grease which we scoffed and then Alison and Chris arrived so we had a chat with them before retiring for the evening.
Yesterday Woken by Sarah’s text message we had our breakfast of Morrisons finest reduced to clear pastries and muffins purchased the night before, bathed, brushed Tarly’s hair and slowly got ready in wedding finery before heading over to Hellaby Hall for Kirsty and James’ wedding. 🙂 That was tear jerkingly lovely despite Ady trying to video it, me giving a reading and between us trying to keep the children quiet. I did try the age old tactic of threatening parenting from someone else in the way of telling D & S that Tim does a good line in tsking and as he was sitting behind us they’d better beware and be good (I think I might even have borrowed some of the lyrics from Santa Claus is coming to town and substituted Tim’s name for Santa’s. Tim even tsked to demonstrate but it was not enough of a threat :lol:) Lots of wedding photos, confetti chucking and sinking into the grass in my unsuitable shoes before we dashed back to the hotel to ‘freshen up’, stopping via Morrisons for more food (beef butty!). Layla, Si, Claudie and Jasper joined us in our Whiskey scented, mildew ridden room where the 3 walking children played a crazy game of hide and seek (in a Travelodge room!!! :lol:) and we started on the wine. Then we convoyed with Ros & Tony, Chris & Alison and headed to the reception.
Gorgeous venue for it and we caught up with all the other guests and heard all the Melrose chat, drank plenty of fizz and danced! The combination of fizz, unsuitable shoes, very uneven floor surfaces and my own innate clumsiness meant I of course fell and twisted my ankle. Two doctors advised me to keep drinking for it’s anaesthetic properties so I did, and continued to exercise it by dancing loads more. Tarly adored the ceilidh and only gave up dancing to sob that she was too tired to dance but she wanted to. Davies had a whale of a time playing with all the children and it was just a lovely, lovely day. 🙂 Loads of photos on Flickr, of course.
This morning I woke before 7am in agony with my ankle which had swollen right up and was forced to concede continuing to prance about on it had probably not been quite so wise 😳 I crawled to the bathroom to run a bath, made a cup of tea in the semi darkness and took my tea and book into the bath for a soak to try and ease it a bit. Everyone else woke about an hour later and there was brief panic at my AWOL status before I was discovered :lol:. We packed up, had breakfast and said our goodbyes to our fellow guests at Travelodge before driving home. I had slept through a rousing chorus of merry makers singing in the corridors at about 4am but Ady had heard it all and consequently we have all been singing ‘we built this city on rock and roll’ all day which was what the rowdy folk were singing. I hope I have now similarly infected you all too. 😆 We had a brilliant run back, leaving the fine weather in the North hitting fog at Heathrow and arriving in plenty of time to have roast dinner with the children. Lots of plugged in machinery was used with Davies playing X box, Tarly Barbie dot comming and My Little Pony-ing while I downloaded all the photos.
They had a bath and I read them George’s Marvellous Medicine in the bath and finished it snuggled up on the sofa. Probably the first proper longish story they have sat and listened to and certainly the first book without real illustrations that has captured their interest. I have a load of Roald Dahl books stashed away so will bring out the next one tomorrow now they are interested. My ankle has gone down and is now stiff rather than agony so I hope it will be sufficiently recovered for me to drive tomorrow as we’re planning on going to MM and then tomorrow evening Davies gets invested at Beavers. My parents are coming over for dinner (they got back on Thursday but us being away from Friday lunchtime meant we have not seen them yet!) and that kicks off another busy week for us. I’ll try and find time to blog! 😉
wedding was lovely – Kirsty looked fab 🙂 All the photos of me at the wedding have me in Alison pose lol
How’s your ankle? Did Ady get the fall on camera 😉 I have a bruise on my foot that looks like I’ve been run over by something wheeled – no idea how I got that ???
C got photos if Ady didn’t 😉
We had such a lovely time. We should gather in Travelodges more often 🙂 I liked the feeding us all for £22 in Little Chef!
Ankle is better today, my knee is stiff though, it’s clearly moving up my body in a gravity defying manner and I’ll wake with a stiff shoulder tomorrow 😆
A got me exiting the dance floor calling for an ice pack but not the actual fall – glad C has it, I’ll be keen to know how little grace and how much flashing of underwear I managed in one movement 😉
LC is indeed fabulously cheap, let’s plan a series of weekends at the crappiest motorway services around the UK and bring cheer and goodwill to all of them, carrying on the ‘Built this city on Rock n Roll’ baton relay around the country at 4am!