Busy Weekend

And I still obsessed about our dossier and the DCSF the whole time!! On Saturday me and LMS went out to buy some more craft stuff for a present she's making for her American, I think it was supposed to be for Valentine's Day, but I think its going to be late!! We got the supplies sorted pretty quickly, and went back to the car to come home to be confronted by a completely flat front tyre!! Which is very strange as it was a brand new tyre from its MOT the day before!! I called the AA and we went back into the shop to wait, sat in the cafe chatting and munching for ages and then had yet another mooch round the shop. We were just getting bored and running out of things to look at when the AA man paged us from the front desk. He diagnosed a leaky valve and was going to put the spare tyre on, when he noticed that was flat too!! So he pumped up the original tyre and said if we took it easy going home we should be ok, but to get it checked out as soon as we could.

When we got home, me and Mr Messy packed our stuff as we were travelling over to a family birthday meal, and staying out overnight!! This is the first time BOTH of us have left Little Prince since he was placed with us over 4 1/2 years ago!! LMS and Drama Teen were our babysitters and we hoped they would be able to manage him!

Before the meal we had to visit Mr Messy's mum and stepdad (the birthday boy) to try to fix their video, which had a tape jammed in it. Mr Messy hadn't got the right sort of screwdriver to open the video up, so he swapped it over with their spare one and brought the original one home to fix. That was the easy bit, the hard bit was trying to tune everything back in again. After spending ages trying with his mum, stepdad and brother all giving "helpful" advice he gave up and got it so they could watch TV and said his brother could fix it later! We drove over to our hotel checked in, which took over 20 minutes as they couldn't find the printout of whether our booking was paid for when I booked it online or if it just took an imprint of our card!! Our room was small and pokey, but at least it was clean and tidy. Mr Messy had a shower while I watched TV and read a magazine, then we both got ready and set off for the restaurant. As requested we left our room key at reception!!

The meal was in an Italian Restaurant we have been visiting for many many years, through various different owners and styles and we have always really enjoyed our meals there. This time with 22 of us in the party it was a bit different! Most people had ordered their food weeks in advance, and couldn't remember what they had asked for! The ones of us that ordered on the night did have it a bit easier lol. Two people sent their meals back, including Mr Messy's younger, grumpier (yes really!!!) brother! Mr Messy was not impressed with the "nouvelle cuisine" size of the portions and was still hungry after three courses! Stepdad's adult daughter managed to annoy most (well all!!) of Mr Messy's side of the family! She had bought her dad a digital camera (they don't even own a computer!!) and hogged it all night taking pictures at strange times and demanding people don't go to the the loo, or stopped eating justs so she could get the shot she wanted right there and then! Luckily she was sat at the other end of the table to us, and we could mostly ignore her. We sat with two of Mr Messy's brothers, his eldest nephew and his wife and his aunt and uncle, all of whom are great company and a good laugh. The grumpy brother was made even more grumpy when it took him ages to get drinks served on a number of occasions!

Once the meal was finished and we'd all sat around chatting (and the others were drinking) for ages, we set off back to our hotel. When we arrived there was no one in reception. The place was a rabbit warren and despite being told that the staff were in the bar, we couldn't find the bar! We tried ringing, and stood in reception listening to stereo ringing, and still no staff appeared! In the end we just hunted round and round till we found the bar and the ONE member of staff working and got him to give us our room key!! Mr Messy said he slept great, but I was kept awake most of the night by other guests comings and goings which I could hear through the paper thin room walls! The hotel didn't redeem itself at breakfast time either, there were hardly any guests around and it wasn't late but there were still hardly anything left on the breakfast buffet! We had been sat down eating for over 20 minutes before we sighted the ONE member of staff working!! He brought us our toast, but we had to wait for him to appear again to ask for butter! It was shambolic!!! You get better service and bigger, quieter rooms staying in a bog standard Travel Lodge type hotel!!

We left there and went over to Baby Sis's house. Her fiance was in bed with a hangover, so we didn't see him lol. She took us over to their friend's house, where Mr Messy was booked to photograph their little girl. The little girl was a lovely tiny little thing and although she didn't really co-operate (as little kids do!) Mr Messy managed to get some great photos of her. Her mum and dad were stressing quite a bit that she wouldn't do what was asked of her and it was confusing having me and Baby Sis in the room too, so Mr Messy and the mum took her upstairs where they got quite a few more good shots. When it was obvious that she was getting too tired (and mum was too stressed) we stopped and went back to Baby Sis's house. Fiance managed to rouse himself and didn't look too worse for wear lol. We chatted for a while, before dropping them off at their car that they'd left at the local pub, which was incredibly lucky as all cars parked on their street had been "keyed" that night!

When we got home I was greeted by a limpet Little Prince who clung to me for ages. Mr Messy took LMS out to the local car garages to get an idea of what kind of thing she is looking for when her current car bites the dust (June when its MOT runs out!!). She is in Florida all Summer so we will look for something for her, so that it is ready for when she comes home again. This made Little Prince dissolve into hysterical sobbing and it took quite a while to calm him down again. He and Drama Teen then watched some Pokemon on TV while I caught up with some emails and then we were just about to watch a DVD, when Mr Messy rang up and asked if we wanted to come out to a local restaurant and meet them for tea. Little Prince was extremely excited about this and grabbed his coat and shoes almost instantly.

We were half way there when we got another phone call asking us to go to a different restaurant, which caused a meltdown with Little Prince. He wanted to go to the first restaurant, and started to threaten to misbehave and/or sleep in the second restaurant if he had to go there! Only the thought of a Ferrari that they had spotted in the carpark calmed him down any, luckily it was still there when we arrived and he had a good look round it (with me hovering closely by making sure he didn't touch!!). He was fairly wild in the restaurant, but luckily we were in a booth over in a corner so we didn't disturb too many people! For once it was me getting stressed by Little Prince's behaviour rather than Mr Messy, so we swapped over so that Little Prince sat with his dad and that solved that problem. Thank you Mr Messy I needed that :-)

When we'd finished our meals Mr Messy took LMS and Little Prince home, and LMS sat with him and did his homework. Me and Drama Teen went off to find a garage with a working air-line to pump up my fixed tyre. We only had to visit two garages to find a working one, and its a good job we did as the pressure had gone right down again. Hopefully now the valve is fixed it will be alright again! I have quite a bit of running around to do tomorrow and need my car!