If it's Sunday................

....................It must be another Wedding Fayre!!

Well, it's actually Monday now, but Louise, her friend Charlene and I spent the whole DAY at one yesterday.
I kid you not.
Arrived at 11am, left at 4.30pm and I fell as if I almost walked a Marathon in between!!!!

This one was The Scottish Wedding Fayre. It's held twice a year in the SECC in Glasgow. Best advice given is to wear comfy shoes and take a bottle of water to drink while walking - you need it!!!

Louise had booked the Catwalk Show, because the main aim of yesterday was to get some inspiration for the dress. She has tried on a couple of dresses, but given that she is (hopefully) only ever going to get married once, you are allowed to go a bit crazy on the shopping!!!

So we went to where the show was taking place, grabbing a couple of bits of wedding cake along the way. And very nice cake it was too!! A bit of Victoria sponge and a bit of lemon drizzle - and yes - it was nice.

We settled down in our seats and waited for the models to strut there stuff.
Lovely dresses, veils, headdresses - most of the models were smiling and looked reasonably happy.
Apart from one - who had a face like fizz.
So much fizz we could almost hear it!!!!
C'mon - you are meant to be showing off these lovely dresses, inspiring these girls to buy something and you look as if you'd much rather be ANYWHERE but in that hall.
In the end we decided that she had been dumped by a boyfriend at the altar and had been condemned to model bridal wear for all eternity!!!

Then came the guys in the kilts.
Mmmmm!!
Even better when they did a twirl and you caught a glimpse of bare flesh near their bum!!! The did, however, have skimpy underpants on, thus our eyes were not hurt by a flash of man bits!!!!

The dresses were lovely and they did show a couple "mother on the bride" outfits. Charlene announced that I turned up in a certain one, she'd be phoning a taxi to take me home.
Then another wedding dress was shown, and the comment was that if Louise wore that one, she'd be in the taxi with me!!!! 

We spent the rest of the day touring most of the stands, finding out what was o offer, some things were good  (eh - cake, cake and eh - more cake!!) some were down right weird - like a survival box with various items like spare kilt pins, hankies, condoms and such.
Ok - a good idea, but when you have Charlene, you can bet your boots that she will have these supplies, allocating them to various guests to distribute them as required!!!!
Yes, a very organised wummin - just what you need in your Matron of Honour!!!

In fact, we (half) joked that Charlene is the official bouncer for the wedding.
She is not scared to keep you in check, make sure you know what you are doing and if she thinks you're being rowdy, she will have no problems in asking you to leave!!

We thought it would be a good idea to set up a company called "Charlene's Bouncers"!!! All your wedding security needs sorted!!
Louise really wanted to try on a wedding dress to let Charlene see it on - one that she had already tried. But the queue was long every time we went back to the stand, so eventually we decide to just go and look at other dresses.
We were almost going to head home , but Charlene could see that Lou really wanted to try one on.
So at one stand, she found a dress that might be worth trying.

Off we went with one of the staff to try it on.
While Louise was in the changing room, another girl came out to show her friend the dress she had on. The friend said she looked lovely (and she did). But the girl complained that she looked "fat"!! Well, if she was, I must be enormous!!! I said that she certainly wasn't and commented that after me having 3 kids, well - you didn't bother too much!

He comment was "oh, I've got 4 kids". my thought was "and you don't look much older than Lou and Charlene". Meanwhile, Charlene's comment as this girl went back into the room to change was "D'ya not think you should have done it the other way round - get married first, THEN have kids!!"
And we both thought "Virginal white - after 4 kids!!!!!"

See what I mean - someone who speaketh their mind and is not scared to do so!!!

By this time, we decided home was the best place to be. Charlene hobbled to her car, while Lou and I  crawled to the station to get the train .

A good productive day.

But i'm still wondering how i'm going to get Peter into a kilt!!!

Monday Mornings.................

It's 9.04 am on a Monday morning, so in keeping with my resolution to blog more, here I am!!!
I feel as if I have done half a days work already - internet banking and phoning to sort out cover for one of Peter's days of support.

And those dishes are lurking in the sink. I swear the b*"££y things breed faster than rabbits!!!!

Things are back to something like normal here - Matthew back to work after 2 weeks off. Which was great, but we didn't do anything, but just being able to sleep a bit longer in the morning.

8am is a long lie in this house!
Plans for today - shower, tidy up, then shopping at the Fort. Going to buy Peter a couple of t shirts for the holiday (13 weeks time we will be going!!).

I am at the stage of not really too bothered about the hol - we had the excitement of booking it, the wait to see if we would get the nod about using the respite money. And it all went a bit flat after that.

So now I have to live a "normal" life for a few weeks!!!

Mind you, another Wedding Fayre in a couple of weeks.

Cake to sample.

Candy Carts to raid.

Basically a time when Louise will just shake her head and wonder what to do with me!
Well, the planning needs to have a bit of fun in it!!!

Ah well - I have a need to get washed and dressed - just as well this isn't Skype - you'd all get a fright at the sight of me just now!!!

and the award for brazen cheek goes to...........

.......Well, you know it would have to be me!!!!

So what, you are asking, prompted this cheek?

Well, it' all to do with Peter's respite. Over the past three and a half years, we have done quite a bit and even managed to get a couple of out of the box things.
I have told of our times on Skye, which have been great, Peter has been to kielder 3 times and had great times. And going to the family in Daley. Peter has made new friends, been to places he'd never been before and had a really good time.


Oh and he went on the sleeper to London on the sleeper, something he wanted to do.

But the last few months, things have changed. We didn't get to Skye this time -lots of reasons and now Linda is living back down here. There was also dissention in the ranks about kielder. Paul is going away with his girlfriend and her family. Matthew wants To go elsewhere. And I have no desire to zipwire or canoe.
So I started thinking.
And I reckoned the budget could stretch to a trip to Disney.
So I went on line to check out the prices.

I got one price and then went off to the office to run it past the team.
It was decided that I would need to run it past the social worker because it was so different.


Eventually, I managed to get the sw and explained our plans. He asked me to email the proposal to him, the coatings and what our expenses would be. I told him I would also price up the BA flights, because the flights that were in the package were easyjet and by the time you add on luggage and pre board, the price is not as cheap as they make out.

So I did the e-mail. Explained what we had done before, how things have changes and that the outcomes would be met and there would still be a substantial amount of money for other respite.
Then Lou and I went off to price the holiday with the flights we wanted.
The hotel I had looked at, the room had gone, but the girls checked another hotel on a different day. And the hotel and flights were well within budget. They said they would put a hold on it and I would let them know the next day.

Thursday morning, I phoned the senior again. Gave him the price and dates, went over a few things. Gave him my mobile number because Lou and I were going off to look at wedding things.
So off we went, had a great time looking at stuff. Trying not to check the phone.

Back in the car, thoughts turning to other wedding goodies, the phone rang.
It was the social worker.
We could go ahead and book the holiday!!
I am surprised none of you heard the screams!!!!!

So wedding thoughts abandoned,, we headed off to the travel agents. As soon as we walked in, they knew it was going to be booked - they could tell by the look on our faces.


So Peter and I go off to Disney on the 12th of May. We are staying at the Santa Fe hotel.
Are we looking forward to it???
What do you think!?!?

Part of me is stunned that we actually got to do this. Just shows that if you state your case well and plan it out, you might just get what you want!!

So all I need to do now is save some money to spend while we are away.

And brush up on all the Disney songs!