Saturday

Mr Messy and Drama Teen had a photoshoot on Saturday morning, so me and the littlies had to go over to OUR shop to take over there while they were out. OUR shop had degenerated into quite a mess with Mr Messy in sole charge!! And as well as all the clutter and mess, there were loads of completed orders awaiting collection/delivery to clients! This meant that it wasn't as safe for Princess Lollipop to play as it usually was, and she got very frustrated at me having to stop her grabbing things she shouldn't have! Little Prince also found it very difficult, as he gets all worked up about having to behave himself while in OUR shop! Little Prince tried really hard to behave and mostly managed!! Although it was still a pretty stressful few hours until Mr Messy and Drama Teen returned!

When they had returned and I'd laid down the law about keeping OUR shop tidy, and given them both a list of jobs to complete, I took the littlies back to the car. To reward them for trying so hard to behave, I took them out for lunch. Then we visited the next door Garden Centre, which I told them was to look at all the pretty Christmas decorations. Little Prince soon sussed me out when he noticed we were following signs saying "Santa's Grotto" and he got more and more excited. The queue was quite long and I was pretty worried about how Little Prince would cope with all the hanging around, but he managed really well. He did go and look at some of the nearby shop displays, and I had to make him stop messing with the books waiting to be bought! He noticed that at the entrance to the Grotto there was a fake snow machine that "snowed" every ten minutes or so, not expecting him to remember I asked him not to go in the snow until after we'd seen Father Christmas so that he wouldn't be covered in it on the photograph! I was extremely proud of him as he listened and remembered the whole time we were waiting, and didn't go anywhere near it :-)

When it was finally our turn we went in through the door, I was following the litties, and I expected Princess Lollipop to stop dead in the doorway as soon as she saw who was there and start saying "UP Mummy" she totally surprised me and when she walked in and excitedly shouted "DANTA" and then went and climbed on his knee!! She didn't speak except to repeat "Danta" over and over, but she sat there quite happily and we managed to get a gorgeous photograph of both of the littlies (both smiling) with Father Christmas :-) They were both given their gifts and we went back outside, I took Princess Lollipop over to one side while she delicately opened her present and looked after Little Prince's which he'd already ripped open, while he went to "get snowed." There was a hold up with the photo printing so we went for a walk round the Garden Centre while we waited and Little Prince excitedly chatted about his visit with Father Christmas. He also admitted that he was very worried he was only going to get coal for Christmas as he'd been so naughty lately :-( I told him that I'd help him write to Father Christmas and apologise and promise to try not to do things like that again, and that we'd just have to hope that would be enough to get him back on the "nice list." He was pretty cheered up by that idea :-)

We returned to the Grotto to collect our photo and I was thrilled by it, both littlies were smiling and looking gorgeous :-) Which was a minor Christmas Miracle in itself - Little Prince HATES having photos with flash (it hurts his eyes) and Princess Lollipop won't go near strangers (apart from Danta obviously!!) and I was thrilled to bits. I'm going to get Mr Messy to scan the photograph so that I can email copies to aunties, uncles and grandparents :-)

In the evening me and Little Prince dropped Drama Teen off at the bus station to meet her Boyfriend and a group of his friends, so that they could attend a birthday party together. On the way home me and Little Prince tried to order a Chinese Takeaway, but they didn't take card payments and I had no cash on me, so we had to drive to a different Takeaway to get our tea. It was worth it though as it was very yummy :-) Mr Messy picked Drama Teen up later that evening, even though he was suffering with a very bad headache, poor man :-(