Fabulous Friday

Me and Mr Messy went straight to our LAs sw Offices after dropping Little Prince at school. The roads were icy and slippery so we were slightly late. The sw Team Leader we were meeting was in a bit of a flap as she hadn't booked a private room for our meeting, and had been unexpectedly inundated with visitors who HAD booked the rooms!! After trying a couple of full rooms, we eventually ended up in the large conference room that is used for Adoption Panels - scary!! We started off by discussing the lengthening wait times, and how we felt about that, and showed her the facts and figures gleaned from the CCAA referral announcements (2006 they referred 4 1/2 months worth of people who were logged in - 2007 they referred 2 1/2 months worth of people who were logged in!). We talked about how our family had changed since we did our homestudy - Little Prince lots more settled and now in full time school etc. We showed her the list of SNs one of my American friends had sent me, and discussed the implications of the SNs we had chosen to apply for. Team Leader seemed pleased that we were being quite picky about what we could and could not accept, and not just saying we could cope with anything and everything to get a quicker referral. Team Leader apologetically told us that the dept would have to charge us for the homestudy addendum, as they have to pay our sessional sw directly. They will also have to charge us for Panel time, unfortunately we will have to go back to Panel!! She didn't have any idea of how much this could amount to, but will send us an official agreement (that we will pay if we are approved or not) to sign. Bit like signing a blank cheque - but its the only way forward! She ended the meeting by saying she could see we had done our research thoroughly and weren't just jumping into this blindly, and that she couldn't forsee any problems with us changing over from the dept's point of view :-)

After the meeting Mr Messy dropped me back at home and then set off to pick Little Miss Sensible, The Boyfriend and mountains of stuff up from university. I was fidgety all day knowing my baby was on her way home :-) Although I did manage to get a lot more wrapping up done - mostly LMS's stuff, so that I can ask her to help me with the rest lol.

Little Prince bounded out of school, and immediately asked where LMS was! He then ran to the car to see if she was there, then demanded we drive home really quickly (we didn't!!) to make sure we got there first!! He was VERY disappointed to learn he had to wait till after tea to see her. And predictably, as soon as tea was finished he was asking why she wasn't home yet. Drama Teen was also excited, but managed to make it a little less obvious - although she did text LMS to find out when she would arrive home. On being told in about 15mins, she went to stand at the open front door with Little Prince exactly 15mins later :-) When LMS finally arrived she was smothered in bear hugs from Little Prince and Drama Teen :-) Little Prince insisted she took him to bed, and read him his bedtime story :-) More about that later!!

We then spent the rest of the evening catching up with all the gossip and just generally enjoying having all our family together :-) When it was finally time for The Boyfriend to go home, Mr Messy had already gone to bed (it WAS almost midnight!) they finally got around to emptying the Stuff Mountain out of the car (and into the lounge urgh!!). After quite a bit of persuasion, LMS agreed to drive The Boyfriend home (much whinging about not having driven for ages, about not liking driving in the dark etc). I was just about to go off to bed, when they came back in, the car had no petrol and she isn't insured to drive my car!! Aaaaargh!! So I had to take him - and it was COLD!!!!