Trip to London

Thankfully even after the abysmal start to our day yesterday, we still managed to have a lovely day in London. We met LMS at the London Train Station, as she had been staying with a friend at Friend's Southern University for a few days. We then took LMS and Drama Teen to a Photographic Studio where they were having a "model style" make over and then "model style" photographs done.
Well Mr Messy took them, me and Little Prince waited for them at the British Library where Little Prince was thrilled to find a cuddly Gruffalo that he played with for most of the day. Once Mr Messy had successfully dropped the Big Girls off we went to the restaurant where we had arranged to meet a group of prospective adopters. We had a lovely time chatting about where everyone was up to in the process, and moaning about our respective social workers lol. After the meal we walked back to the Photographic Studio to pick up the Big Girls. Unfortunately they weren't ready, so we wandered back to Starbucks and had a drink and cake and waited for them. When they arrived they told us that the photos wouldn't be ready for another hour and a half!! This didn't go down very well with Mr Messy as we only had a few hours left before our last train home, so he and LMS turned quite snappy and grumpy! We wandered around London yet again trying to find somewhere where all my fussy family would be happy to eat, and finally found a modern Italian place that suited everyone, phew! Little Prince was fascinated to watch his pizza dough being kneaded and thrown to make it into the pizza base - although he did ask if they could make it a triangle not a circle!!
When we had just finished eating we got a call from the Studio to say that the photos were ready, so we trundled back round there to view them. LMS was frantically filling in the list she had been asked to make of friends names and mobile numbers, if she could list 30 she was told she would get money off her photos! Alarm bells were ringing for me by now!! When she finished filling in her list, she was asked to pluck an envelope from a jar - which when opened said she could have £25 off any 'package deal' of photos. We were then taken downstairs to the Viewing Rooms - and shown the photos on a computer screen and asked to make our decision as to which ones to keep and which to discard. The girls whittled their choices down to 19 photos each - and then we were told the price!! I nearly fell off my chair - £900 for an album of 20 off 8" by 8" prints!!! You have GOT to be joking!!! In the end we paid £200 for 5 photos of each girl and one of them together, on CD not even for prints!!! Way over priced as the images are saved at a very low resolution and may not be big enough to have printed!!! However, the girls did have a great time having their hair and make up done and posing for the photographs, so we paid for the experience too!! I wish I could show you the photographs, as they both look stunning (as always) but if you know us personally you can check out the girls social networking pages and see them there :-)

The BEST thing about the whole day though, was coming home and finding an email from a friend with pictures of her referral from China :-) I am so so thrilled for them and friend's hubby is a daddy for Father's Day - what a present!!