Airport Collections

LMS arrived home fairly early from her party last night, as we had to go to the airport to pick up her American friend who is coming to stay for Christmas. We had time to do some more tidying up and to get Little Prince a snack, drink and toys for the journey. I grabbed the new in car DVD system we bought and asked LMS to sort it out. She isn't very good with technology and it took her nearly half an hour to work everything out!! She finally got the DVD in the player, got the screen attached to the head rest and thought she was all set. It wouldn't turn on!! She had put the power lead in the wrong hole!!! Once we had sorted that out it worked fine lol. Although we were on the Motorway by then and Little Prince kept complaining he couldn't hear it using the headphones. In the end, and after all the trouble LMS had gone to, he decided he wanted to play his GameBoy instead!! Brothers lol.

We were about ten minutes from the airport when LMS checked her emails and found she had one from her friend! He had missed his connecting flight and was going to be about three hours late on the next flight in!! By this time it was too late to turn off and go visit our family over there, so we headed to the airport. Arrivals didn't have much to entertain us!! We visited one of the cafes and had some lunch, Little Prince did some drawing and colouring but was then getting a bit too restless to stay in such close proximity to people's food and drinks!! We went and found somewhere to sit where he had room to run around without annoying or hurting anyone and had to keep him and ourselves amused for the next three hours!!! LMS periodically went to check the arrivals announcement boards and came back bouncing, squeaking and quite pink to tell us that his plane had finally landed EARLY!!! We rushed Little Prince to the loo and then went to find the actual arrivals bit. We waited there for ages, until an annoucement that LMS meeting American Friend should come to the Information Kiosk!! We went over and were told to wait by the courtesy phones for a call!! We had no idea what was going on!!! The phone rang and LMS answered it and was asked lots of questions about her friend's background, where he was from, why he was visiting, who she was, where she was studying, who she lived with and were her parents with her!! All very alarming!!! She calmly and honestly answered all the questions and then very politely asked what the problem was - apparently American Friend hadn't put our address on his landing card (we later found he had packed his note of where we lived in his hold baggage!!). We stood around the Info Kiosk for ages, as LMS had been told to wait there in case they needed to speak to her again. When all of a sudden she saw him finally come through the doors, phew!! What a welcome to England for the poor lad - he's never travelled out of the States before!!!

We paid the horrendous bill for the parking ticket, retreived the car and set off home. The weather alternated between drizzling and chucking it down for most of the trip. American Friend tried his best to stay awake, but kept dozing off - he had been travelling for over 24 hours by then poor lad. We stopped at the Chippie when we were almost home and picked up some fish and chips, that way at least he can have something quick to eat and get straight to bed if he needs to. We did say it would be more sensible to try and stay awake till a reasonable bedtime and to try not to fall asleep.

We managed to get home in time to see Mr Messy for a few minutes before he headed back off to photograph the evening reception. He said the wedding had gone alright so far, and the vicar was an amateur photographer so was very co-operative during the service. Drama Teen had been assisting him all day, but decided she would rather stay at home than help him with the evening photography. Little Prince has really taken to American Friend and insisted he read him his bedtime story, although LMS had to get him ready for bed lol. Little Prince is too excited to sleep and two hours later is still getting up out of bed using every excuse he can come up with for yet another foray down the stairs!! Oh well at least we might get a slight lie in tomorrow morning out of it!!

The girls decided to watch a film with American Friend, although I'm not sure a girlie chick flick is quite his thing lol. He is being a very polite American though and sitting through it with no complaints :-) I've lent him my laptop for the duration of his visit and told him to get in touch with his mother and tell her he is here safe and sound!! He seems quite bemused by this as he lives away from home and sometimes goes for a few weeks without contact with his mother, and can't seem to understand why she would worry that he is travelling so far away from home and over Christmas!!!