Travelling Highs, Lows and Woes

The best laid plans have a way of coming majorly unstuck at times. Especially when you've been going at it for days on end trying to make the most of each and every day here.

I'd been ever so careful all winter in NZ keeping up the lemon, honey and coconut oil drinks as well as lots of vitamin C for all the family. We'd had a very good run of health and we were hoping it would continue for the whole trip - but that was a bridge too far it would seem. The day after we got back from London I started feeling a bit coldy, which would have been OK if it had just stayed like that. I put it down to picking up some random bug - who knows what bugs are floating around the Underground. But two days later on the morning we woke up at Legoland I felt horrific with a capital H. Body aching, nauseous, head pounding, the works. It was made worse by the fact we'd all been sharing a room in a hotel near Legoland so at 4.45am when I found myself sitting on the edge of the bed willing myself not to throw up I thought the day probably couldn't get any worse.

Over the weekend we'd also had our fair share of highs and lows. We'd been able to spend a good part of the weekend catching up with some of our most special and oldest friends in the world, Mark and Mary-Ann. These lovely people were our bridesmaid and groomsman at our wedding nearly 10 years ago and they will always have a special place in our heart. It was the first time we'd met their beautiful children, Isobelle (now 5) and George (1.5) and Mylo and Isobelle had a great old time hanging out for the afternoon whilst Noah went off to watch Yeovil Town play football with Daddy and Mark.

Mark and Mary-Ann had already had an eventful trip down to Somerset with their little guy projectile vomiting in the car and then again all over the dinner table on Friday night. Thankfully all seemed calm on that front on Saturday and George slept happily for some of the afternoon and then tried to take on the world at the park ending up swinging like a monkey six feet up off a rope bridge giving Mary-Ann, me and her mum-in-law total heart failure - thankfully Mary-Ann managed to catch him in time before he fell.

We were back at Mark and Mary-Ann's parents place waiting for the boys to get back from the football when chaos broke loose as after poo number 3 of the afternoon for Mylo I accidentally pushed down on the hand soap too hard while trying to get some for him and it flew out and a massive splodge caught Mylo clean in the left eye. You should have heard the screams and cries and he wouldn't calm down no matter what we tried. In the end we just had to go home and put him in a warm shower and give his eye a bath and he continued to squint out of one eye for the rest of the night. Oh boy - how bad did I feel! It was OK in the morning again though...phew.

Going out to dinner was a lovely distraction - us four adults went out and enjoyed a lovely, relaxing Thai-come-Indian meal out together without any dramas to accompany but there was more to come the next day.

We'd asked Mark and Mary-Ann to come for brunch and see Grandma and Grandad and unfortunately little George had another projectile vomit which managed to go all over his dad, Noah and Mylo as well as the stairs. It was pandemonium for a while as we tried to get it cleared up and everyone sanitised before we could actually sit down to brunch together.

Then the trip up to our hotel near Legoland was very eventful with torrential rain and surface flooding like we'd never seen. Mark and Mary-Ann had left for their home half an hour before us and said that their car aquaplaned right into the next lane at one stage, and we also had a few scary moments ourselves along the way.

Once we finally got there, we did however have a wonderful evening catching up with the lovely Claire, Paul and Molly - Claire was one of Mark's university friends originally - she was actually in NZ visiting Mark when Mark and I first started dating and she also helped Mark pick out my engagement ring a few years later. It was so great to finally meet her hubby and the precious bundle of joy that is lil miss 8 month-old Molly.

Come Monday morning and you can imagine that feeling like I did the walk through Legoland park was NO walk in the park for me (more on Legoland in another post though) but I somehow made it to 4pm and we then drove the 2 hours straight home to Somerset. We had originally planned to go and see Mark and Mary-Ann for dinner but I really just needed to be home and back in bed. It was lucky we did make that decision as within an hour of dinner Mark suddenly felt unwell and was on the toilet at both ends and Granddad and Mylo succumbed to feeling icky the next morning too. It was almost comedic the number of buckets we had at the ready and how many times we heard the sound of feet thumping through the upstairs hallway as a mad dash to the bathroom ensued. Thank goodness all our major travelling was out of the way and we could actually have a few quiet days here at home with nothing planned to recover before heading up to Wales this weekend.

Note the bowl at the ready just in case

So this travelling business...it's not all sweetness and light and amazing memory-making experiences. It can be darn hard work at times, but I guess you just gotta roll with the punches and realise that you can't expect to have the highs without the lows!