Day Seven of Blog!

Shame today didn't vanish too!
A nice weekend, spoilt by a Monday. The top half of our children were back at school, with the bottom half off for a teacher training day and oh they have been awful!
Now I understand that children have their days - we have 6 of them so I should know, but generally we have managed to produce relatively civilised people.
But not today. They were rabid.

After a morning discussion they decided they wanted to do the following and the itinerary was supposed to go like this, travel half an hour and go to decent department store with nice supermarket cafe next door and art gallery across the way:
1. Shopping for new jeans for 2 boys and a dress for 1 girl: time maybe 20 minutes, they choose quickly usually
2. Buy a pair of jeans for dad: time, the same 20 minutes as above with dad going and grabbing jeans while we made clothing decisions
3. Buy a brown cardigan for me (got some new shoes and nothing matches): time see point 3 below!
3. Look at toys because they would have been SO good when we were clothes shopping: time: as long as it takes mum (that's me) to find a suitable cardigan, maybe 30 minutes
4. Go to a cafe have a lovely lunch: time - maybe an hour
5. Go to the art gallery (actually what the children had ASKED to do this morning): time: the rest of the afternoon

Now follows an itinerary of the actual events:
1. Walked into department store, 2 boys ran to women's hats and glasses and proceeded to dress up in these. Dad shrugged and took little one in pram and got himself jeans while they ran around the carousel like a pair of squirrels on speed. Arranged to meet dad at boys wear in 10 minutes.
2. Walked to boys wear...well attempted to with one boy swinging along every fixture and the other skidding across the floor in random diagonal directions to make his shoes squeak. Mum (that's me folks) sounding like a nagging, squawking toucan.
3. Got all the way to rugs, boys begin running at the rug pile and jumping onto the pile to land on their backs.
4. Mum takes both boys by the hand and takes them outside, stands them against the firing squad wall and reads the riot act.
5. Meet dad at men's wear, he's got his jeans, so alter the plan, he takes them directly to toys while I go and get the boys jeans and the girl a dress.
6. Dad frog marches boys back to me at the girls dress section, less than a minute later, hands one over and takes the other to 'finish urinating' on the toilet. Warns me to avoid the great puddle if we return to toys. Me, other boy and littlest one wander up and down, choose dress, 1 pair of boys jeans and I repeatedly explain why they are not getting the piles of toys they seem to have collected.
7. Dad marches back with a boy who is wearing the cheapest supermarket jeans and an inane grin.
8. Youngest now decides she is starving and begins to grizzle, two boys loose all power in limbs due to lack of food and all start fussing.
9. Dad takes them to supermarket cafe and instructs me to take my time and find a nice cardigan.
10. Find a cardigan, buy it and walk over to cafe, children have almost finished eating, look like they've used horse bags and find lovely husband has my meal and drink all ready.
11. Littlest sees me, starts to fuss, climbs out of the highchair and I eat my lovely lunch with her standing on my knee while she tries to get her toe into my left ear. Boys are now sliding along the booth bench and rolling onto the floor. Dad is looking grizzly.
12. Finish eating, attempt to walk towards exit, one boy is charging left towards the toys while the other is crawling under the clothes fixture.
13. We go straight home, both parents frowning and grizzling, both boys chatting and oblivious and puzzling as to why they didn't go to the gallery...'but we've been good' they argued, before telling the little one off and blaming her because she'd been fussing about her doll!

Entire day out lasted three hours, including travel and food, but seemed to go on eternally. Not the relaxing and enjoyable day planned...