Homeward bound

Thought I'd get my blip done as my brain is decomposing the day, before I go to sleep. It's an iPhone blip as it turns out that juggling a camera as well as three other small bags plus a hyperactive toddler is impossible so the big camera stayed in the car today.

Ten and a half hours it took us to get home today. That even beats the blizzards, I think that was an eight hour journey. Will have to look it up. Think that was December or November last year.

After saying 'bye to my mum this morning we collected the mug we did on Tuesday and took it round for Gran and to say our goodbyes there too. Just before midday we finally got going. Stopped at Knutsford for lunch - that was stressful as I was hungry by then thanks to crawling traffic, and Ben was bored. He didn't eat much, then announced he was finished and got down to watch some Tinkerbell movie that was playing in the kiddie corner. So, I finished my lunch and said we were going.

Back to the car, five minutes later and Ben was screaming for his chips. That we'd left in the cafe, because he said he'd finished. 20 minutes I endured the screaming, explaining as best I could, until he calmed down enough to accept we'd stop for more chips at the next stop.

Which we did, at Sandbach, after enduring very slow traffic.

He had one chip - ONE CHIP - and announced he'd finished. We had a little chat at that point. If he got down (he'd seen another kiddie corner), his chips would be gone when he got back. Or to put it another way, it was chips at the table as he had requested, or no chips in the car.

He chose the chips and ate quite a few. We shared a cake, we went back to the car. We set off again, happier. He'd said he was tired so I tipped his chair back so he could go to sleep if he wanted. It was 3pm by this point. 4pm almost on the dot he fell asleep, just in time for serious traffic jams and very heavy rain.

He slept almost an hour an a half which got us down to Cherwell Valley on the M40, but for some reason I thought we could get a bit further before stopping again. Of course we hit traffic then and came to a standstill.

Oxford by 6pm. There's a playpark-ish there now! After our comfort break I let Ben burn off some energy before deciding we should have dinner really, so we had a Burger Kind tea in the playpark as Ben ran round and climbed and skidded and splashed in puddles. Finally back on the road gone 7pm and we managed to not stop - apart from heavy traffic and crazy rain on the M25 - until Pease Pottage on the M23 when Ben wanted a cuddle. 9pm.

The "cuddle" lasted about 15 seconds long before he decided running on the sofas in Costa was more fun! At least it was pretty chilled out at that time of night so I drank my tea and kept an eye on him and caught him and tickled him when it looked like he was getting a bit too giddy.

Tipped his chair back in the car to set off on the final stretch and he spent 20 minutes telling me he didn't want to close his eyes and that he wanted to see Ede (I'd just broken the news to him that we wouldn't be seeing Ede until the morning now - he was distraught) then it went blissfully quiet.

Home by 10.30pm I think it was.

House is very dusty.

But the new bits look good.

Am exhausted and now I'm going to go to sleep!