Holiday break down

Do you know what really sucks at the start of your holiday? Having the car breakdown on the way to the airport at 3:45am. Waiting on the breakdown truck to arrive and poor #1's husband having to come and collect us. Delivering us to the airport 10 minutes after check in closed. Sprinting with #1 through the airport to make that flight, because we'd checked in online and could make it. Leaving #2 in the airport to change flights and deal with the large suitcase which was the reason we didn't all get to sprint through the airport. Waiting in Malaga airport for #2 to get there. Suffering the car hire guy bitching about us not taking their extra insurance. 

All of that sort of ruins the first day of your holiday. Do you know what makes it better?

Sunshine. Spending time with my sisters in almost complete silence because there was no need to make conversation. Reading our books, eating well and soaking up the sunshine. 

We've all some how managed to attach ourselves to men that can't sit still. Who need to do things while on holiday. So we holiday together and don't have to do anything.

You forgot?!

Our first anniversary fell on a Sunday and so I blamed there being no post delivery for the lack of cards. We opened the couple that had arrived the day before and received text messages from some friends and O's family.

There was no a whiff of a message or card from my family.

We went out for the day and I expected to come home to the answerphone full of messages from my family asking what we were doing to celebrate.........nothing.

I came home from work on Monday expecting cards thinking they'd just missed the Saturday post.........nothing (ok a bank statement).

MY FAMILY FORGOT OUR FIRST WEDDING ANNIVERSARY!

I sent a nudge, nudge email to my Mum and got a grovelling response. My nudge, nudge to #2 got a complete blank in response, she had no idea of the significance of the date. (#1 is in Spain on holiday, I'm letting her off)

What do you mean the date of the party of the decade is not etched into your brain forever? What do you mean you don't come over all emotional when that particular date is mentioned?

(Am I the only one that feels strange when people talk about events/meetings that happen to fall on my birthday? Yes, ok then.)

My Mum has asked how they will ever make it up to us. I floated the idea that they take us with them to the Caribbean later this year. Apparently forgetting your daughters first wedding anniversary does not mean you need to pay for her and her husband to tag along on your holiday. We're very disappointed.

#1's Birthday

(image from here via here)

Hey big sis, I love you. I hope you have a great birthday.

Last Week

So O and I spent last week in London at #1’s house looking after my niece (E) and nephew (B). We had a great time – I just hope the kids did too. What we got up to:


Chessington World of Adventures: This was O’s first visit to a theme-park and his first ever trip on a roller coaster (seriously). He loved it, although he was slightly bemused by the ratio of queuing for 40 mins to a ride that lasted for 30 seconds (hmm welcome to the joy of theme-parks). We were lucky that the weather was bright, clear and warm (having got used to Scotland’s autumn temperatures the warmth was quite a shock to the system). The warmth was especially appreciated after we got soaked on the water flume – had to be done though!


We went to the cinema, trying to please an 11 year old girl and a 12 year old boy turned out to be too much of a diplomatic struggle for me to deal with (I can negotiate a senior management meetings but these two are scary). So we saw two films practically back to back Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus and Up. Both films were really good although different to say the least. Spending the day in the dark eating sweets isn’t the best way to spend time with kids so we didn’t feel like very good baby sitters after this!


Science Museum: It was half term holidays for the schools so the place was packed out! O and I could have spent all day here wandering around the different exhibits, however the kids got bored after a few hours. It was interesting to see the differences in kids today and when we were young (how old does that make us sound). They were fascinated by all the interactive screens and things to play with whereas we found the interactive screens a bit dull and preferred to read the signs and actually look at the stuff in the glass boxes!


I tried on my first wedding dress!!! Argh, went with #1 and E to look in the department store bridal sections, we had assumed that department stores have bridal sections – turns out they don’t. We found a very busy packed shop in Kingston where we tried on three dresses, the first one was ok the other two were hideous on me. (Promise to post my thoughts on dresses later).