THE FROG-ACADEMY

All The Best Laid Plans...

…Certainly got laid to waste today! Paul and Joel, P & C headed off to Portsmouth for the weekend Yesterday afternoon, to take C to meet his Great Grandparents (we have not been down since just before he was born), leaving me home with Jake, A and E. Bliss!! People with 3 children don’t know their born (glinting smile)!! Match that with the fact that my Mum comes over on a weekend and today we could actually all FIT in her car - GREAT! Lets make the most of it and go somewhere for the afternoon together that we can’t usually go - Blue Planet should work for all of us :-). So we all took J to tennis this am, which finished at 12pm. Picked E up from her little friend’s (where she had been to play for a couple of hours) and on the way out of the said friend’s road awkwardly bumped over a speed hump (due to parked car on the left). Assumed no damage and continued on to Cheshire Oaks for lunch at the Golden Arch! On the way managed to take a wrong turn and a 8(ish) mile detour!! Starving by the time we were back in Chester, so decided to stop at the V. Little Chef we were passing and have a main meal instead (with a view to a snack tea then at Blue Planet later). Sat down - table in a draft so shuffled across to the window seat. Settled down with our menus - E was sick!! Cleaned her up - decided it was travel sickness, hunger, indigestion of one eaten-on-route banana and catarrh from her cold. Once eventually we were settled I happen to glance out of the window - only to notice that mum had a serious flat on her drivers side)! At this point I was very grateful for changing tables and for the fact that it was Mum’s side that was flat and therefore visible to me because otherwise things would have been a whole lot worse! We then spent the duration of our meal hunting through the Yellow Pages for a mechanic who would come out and change Mum’s wheel on a Saturday afternoon (she has no emergency cover…sigh!). Eventually we found some-one who said he could come in just under an hour (which he kept to thankfully). So, then I rang Blue Planet to find out last entry time which sadly was 4pm. By now it was 3.30 :-( The service in the LC was very slow, which any other time would have been very annoying, but as it was, at least the eating kept the kids occupied for most of their long boring afternoon!! So when all was said and done we headed home again :-(

How do you make up for such a disappointment? Well a silly game of Hullabaloo, another silly game of Cranium Hullabaloo, more silly fun on the Eye Toy (Play 3) and a video tea in front of a long film about pirates and adventures - Swiss Family Robinson!! And...the promise that we’ll go to the early (9.15) service in the morning and try again for Blue Planet straight afterwards. This is a major exception for us - certainly not something we would usually do on a Sunday, but I figure today was exceptional enough to make an exception!!

So on that promise I’m heading off to bed - it’s going to a struggle in the morning for me!