theDIBB - Beaching It With The Poole's Pre Travel Day August 2016 LIVE

Well, we have made it to the day we travel to the airport for our stay at the Premier Inn Stanstead.

It was an early start I woke up at 4.45 am and managed to stay there until 5.15am when I gave up! Grace was up not long after me, so that was that and let the preparations begin!
Without boring all of you I coloured my hair, random I know and started to clean the bathroom. We started cooking breakfast at 7am, some lovely sausages from Waitrose and then we got ready to go out for coffee as Grace had refused breakfast (she doesn't like to eat early) and she likes to have toast so it was off to Costa Coffee for us!

This is post coffee, Grace didn't have toast in the end she changed her mind and asked for a cookie and I had forgotten she hadn't had any breakfast! Lucky girl! Daddy had a skinny cappuccino and some carrot cake and I had a white americano.

We were home by about 9.40am where I started just flinging the last things in the case. I will have to sort out the hand luggage at the hotel.

We did all the boring last minute things including saying goodbye to our neighbours who were keeping an eye on our house for us. Nanny and Grandad came round to us for 12.30 where we were due to drive to Stanstead for our stay at the Premier Inn. We left at 12.34 with all those bags in the back, forgetting to take the milk out of the fridge...that will be nice when we get back...not!

The journey was very uneventful and we did not get stuck at all and ventured through some lovely villages. We arrived at 1.35 and emptied our suitcases in to the hotel.

We are in the bar now so will finish this later tonight. 😀

We spent a couple of hours in the bar..that's where that previous picture was taken. A few beverages were consumed and Grace did a bit of colouring in and picture drawing with Grandad, as you can see :)

I forgot to say that we parked the cars at Maple Manor Parking which is basically right next to the Premier Inn which was fantastic as Daddy and I dropped off the cars and walked back through the car park. I can thoroughly recommend but obviously I haven't got my car back yet! They certainly seemed very organised and so far I am impressed. It was also fine for us to park with them today and go over in the morning with our luggage and we can have our trip over to the terminal with them tomorrow so happy days.

I had booked a table in the restaurant at 5pm so we're sat at a lovely table for that time.

This is Daddy being a silly billy with an ice cream which is actually one of Grace's writing pads but he thought it was funny, Grace was not amused!

We had a good meal, if a little rushed but to be honest I had a bit of luggage re-organisation to do so I was not that sad. I had a prawn cocktail to start followed by the chicken and bacon BBQ salad...yummy. Daddy also had prawn cocktail, the breadstick that came with it was delicious by the way, followed by the salmon fillet and for pud he had the chocolate brownie. My husband is a serious chocoholic as you will certainly find out over the next couple of weeks if you stay with us.

Nanny had a steak and kidney pie followed by Eton mess, which were both nice. Grandad had the aromatic duck parcels and the hunters chicken..Grace enjoyed his skinny chips :)

Grace had bread sticks with a garlic butter dip and tomato pasta followed but the children's chocolate brownie...she has the chocoholic tendencies I am afraid!

We had the meal deal with the room booking so paid just 9.50 more than we had already paid and all the adults had either a wine or beer included. It is a great deal and includes breakfast for us all in the morning.

We were back in our rooms by 6.15 and have been showering, re-organising the luggage and chilling since then.

So tomorrow we fly with Thomas Cook on the Hi-Fly...eek, I am a little scared I have to say but I will let you know how it goes! Online check in of course has not worked but hey ho!

We then have the 3 ish hour drive down from Orlando to Rotunda West for our stay in a Dibb villa for our beach adventure.

I realistically will not do a live report tomorrow but will catch up on Monday and get back to doing them live.
hope this has not been too much of a disjointed read, I am sure I will get better.
See you on the other side.
Bye for now.