The "Years in the Making" Trip Pre-travel Day

[Caroian]

Our pre-travel day was a Sunday. Having both finished work on the Friday, we'd had the whole weekend to sort last minute bits and get packed, which was nice as we felt very organised. The final thing to do on Sunday morning was pick up my new prescription sunglasses. All a bit last minute as a big change in my prescription, and a problem which means I can no longer wear contact lenses made it a bit of a rush.

(Three cases, cabin case, Trunki, backpack and car seat. Phew!)

We loaded up the car just after lunch time, along with our house plants and headed off to my grandfather's house. He was looking after the plants for us! He's fit as a fiddle but in his nineties, so it was lovely to spend some time with him before we went. We left the car at his house as it has a private drive and he could keep an eye on it (And, it turns out, wash it for us. Yes, he's really in his nineties!)

Our taxi picked us up right on time. I installed the car seat and we sent off for Gatwick! Unfortunately we hit a bit of a traffic jam on the M25. (A lorry had crashed through the barrier that morning and they were carrying out emergency repairs) But whilst in the traffic jam who should we see but my parents in their own taxi! Their driver is a sort of family friend and knowing which company we'd used, when they spotted a taxi of that company ahead they had him pull up alongside! It amused Thomas no end as we kept going past and pulling up alongside in the slow moving traffic! He thought it was a great race (and knowing their grandson so well, my parents suggested to their driver to let us "win" by pulling up at the Sofitel first!

We'd booked the Sofitel at a good rate about 10 months ago. I've been to several conferences there and it's a nice hotel, right in the terminal. In addition we could get two interconnecting rooms, which meant we could put Thomas to bed and then sit next door, rather than doing the hide-in-the-bathroom thing all parents of small children who have stayed in hotels have doubtless done at some point! (I should add, Thomas is a terrible sleeper at the best of times!)

We checked in and headed up to our rooms. We had a runway view which was great, so watched planes taking off and landing for a while, with Thomas identifying all of the Easyjet and British Airways planes.

We then jumped on the monorail - to much excitement from Thomas, who is absolutely train obsessed (Really obsessed. He thinks he is a train at times, and not a day goes by without "but I want to see trains", "I didn't see enough trains today" etc etc. If you'd asked him at this stage what he was most looking forward to about the trip, he'd probably have said "the monorail". Yeah. We watched A. lot. of YouTube videos of the WDW Monorail in the weeks leading up!)

We headed to the Dibbers favourite, Giraffe, for dinner, and suitably fed headed back for bed.

Now, if my son is train obsessed, then my husband is equally tech obsessed. He is a software engineer by profession, but it's his hobby too. He runs servers from home and does all kinds of things I can't even pretend to understand. To cut a very long story short, there was an issue with the main server at home and he couldn't fix it remotely. He was obviously getting stressed so in the end I suggested it would be far better to go home and sort it now than spend three weeks irritated by the server being down or worrying about it. So he set off to get the train home. We'd had a local power cut that morning that hand't actually affected us, but it turned out there had been another just after we left that was the cause of the issue. It also gave him the chance to remove the quarter pint of milk we remembered that we'd left in the fridge, though! The round trip took about two hours, but by the time he was back Thomas was finally asleep and we get in to bed ourselves.

Now, we'd also put lights on timers at home and, as a last minute silly thing my husband had rigged up an old webcam in the front room. Not to run continuously, but so that he could log in and take a quick look. So now everything was working, he decided to have a quick look. And the lights were on at the wrong times! Of course the power cut had put the timers out. No worries, they soon went out. But then...everything still looked a bit too light. At that moment I decreed we weren't looking anymore. The neighbours were keeping an eye on the house and thinking too much about what was going on was just going to stress me out! (Spoiler, it turns out in his haste that my husband had left the light inside the understairs cupboard on, which was throwing an odd light across the room.)

Is anyone still reading after all of that?!

We finally got in to bed and were asleep by around 11.30pm