Weekend in the Sun

I've been sitting here awhile now trying to figure out how to start this post. I was supposed to take the kids out for some errands and their beloved Starbucks chocolate muffin this morning, but they informed me they prefer to stay at home and play "Buffaloes and Rhinos"  and have now apparently closed the door to their room...
As it turned out I don't complain nearly enough in this Blog (feedback from the last post) so I am going to do nothing but complain from now on, so that everyone will know how hard it is to be me...
Okay, so not really, life really isn't that bad and after I will finish writing about the last few days you won't believe me anyway, so let me just say this - I have both my kids at home, with me, all the time, for every activity, and every hour of every day, for the last 2 months and I have 2 more weeks to go. Oh, and they are judgemental. And opinionated. I don't know where they get that from, but they keep telling me what to do. It's like having 2 little bosses that follow you to the bathroom and keeps telling you what you are doing wrong...
The good thing about this I think is that when the time comes to start school in a whole new place with new people, new rules and new expectations of them, they will be so happy to get rid of me that they won't care about any of the scary stuff. I, on the other hand, will get to go have my hair cut for the first time in...
One of our main problems with going out with the kids is the fact that there are 2 of them. They are different in age and taste, while Ron wants football related things but is willing to tolerate other places of interest, Yon is still young and is not used to London life and the whole stay close to me, sit quietly on the bus, you can't run here thing. Life in Gibraltar were a lot easier in that regard... He is such a nature loving child, all he wants is to run around, play in the grass and feed his imaginary animals. So it is very hard to find places both of them will enjoy...
On Friday the sun was shining and I was trying to mark the beginning of the weekend in a fun outing, so we tried the Tower Bridge Exhibition tour because a) it's cool, b) it's a closed environment so that Yon can run around relatively free, c) Ron thought it was a great place to visit. We picked up Hidai at work and took a taxi to the bridge since it's quite inconvenient to get there with public transport and also because they close at 6:00 p.m. and the last entrance is at 5:30. You get to walk around inside the bridge, which is really cool and to see lots of pictures of famous bridges and Olympic cities (and connect them to famous football players from the same cities). You can also see a great view of the city, but unfortunately the windows were too high for Yon, who did have fun running around and also they are very good with kids there, the people working there were all so nice and helpful with the kids, they have pages with stickers, questions, throwing hoops, answering questions, and medals (they were out of gold medals, so they gave the kids the silver and the bronzed ones). The last part was the engine room with the big steam engine and the gift shop with all the really cool things we did not buy (okay I did get Ron some pencils with the tube map on them, but they are mostly for me as he already forgot about them). That's were the evening got a bit muddy, we were hungry and thirsty and a bit lost and tired so it took us awhile to find our way back from the fiasco part of the outing, to Pizza Express where the menu was nowhere close to the one in Gib, and we ate half of what we ordered (as usual) and took a taxi home watching all the young professionals enjoy their Friday evening out.
Saturday was the first match of the season for Arsenal, and Hidai & Ron had tickets (of course), so the plan was that Hidai will take the kids to the park in the morning while I stay at home (alone!) resting my knee and after that we will eat lunch (traditional for Saturday - fries and sausages) and all go together to see the ambiance before the match, leave Hidai & Ron at the stadium and go home with Yon. It all went really well actually (surprisingly even), and it's a gorgeous thing to see, the streets of Highbury turns red and white, everyone has on their shirts (there were no van Persie or Song ones), there are lots of food and memorabilia vendors, everyone was so excited and happy, and Yon got plenty of pats on the head because he looked super cute in Ron's old Arsenal shirt (a huge thank you to Uri for buying us one every year since Ron was 3). Ron and Hidai had a great time at the match (well except for the fact that we didn't actually win the match), and Yon and I got to see a policeman on a horse and hear all the noise from the stadium. It is crazy, because the windows were open we could hear the music, the announcements and of course every time the crowd did a collective "AHHHHHHHHHH". I know it should annoy me, but it really didn't. I found it so.... Fun I guess. And I'm sure with the windows closed you hear a lot less. But seeing as to how we are living in the old stadium, I think it's only fitting that we get to hear them play :).
On Sunday, which was very sunny indeed, I reached the sad conclusion that I finished all my unwatched TV from the last couple of months, and that if I will stay in bed for one more day I will become a grumpy troll, so we decided on a change in strategy - just walk the streets of London instead of organized activities we went for organized stops -  Starbucks and Mcdonald's (or Pret because Yon likes their sandwiches) and everything else is left unstructured. So we started in Covent Garden Market and of course discovered that there is also a Food Network Cooking show there, We stopped at some stores and introduced Yon to the "see more stuff" concept in which he gets to touch almost anything in the store and we get to not buy it for him :), then bought a cooking apron for me, since Hidai is fed up with me ruining all my clothes when I bake and also, the aprons were really cool, the salesman was really nice to Yon who insisted on reorganizing his chairs all the time, and Ron saw one that said something about forget the cooking lets go straight for the sex (not a direct quote) so naturally he asked me what sex means. Avery good question. Go ask your dad... He did and got an answer that did not include the make babies part... So from there we went straight to Starbucks and drank the Mocha Cookie Crumble Frappucino. Drink it. Seriously.
After we recirculated enough from the impromptu sex ed. lesson we continued through the market which is one of the only things that both kids loves. Markets. They are definitely NOT related to me.   From there we made our way slowly to Leicester Square and stopped for some imaginary animals time at the garden, until it started raining, so naturally we ran to the M&M shop, another of Yon's favourites, and decided to pop into the Rainforest Cafe instead of McDonald's. The store itself is so lovely! Yon thought he died and gone to heaven, he got so excited he didn't know where to look first, what to do, where to go... So we went downstairs to the restaurant itself, but it was a disaster... First of all the noise level in that place is out of this world, second of all the people dressed as animals scared Yon, and third, the menu is disastrous. I don't understand why everything has to have a weird name, and weirder ingredients...  It's food for kids for god sake. Now I know mine are particular about their food, but still, why is there no simple pizza, or pasta, or nuggets and chips... So eventually we left, crosed the road and... Ate at McDonald's :).
Yon did not forgive us for taking him outside and is still asking for "more stuff" :)
Just to finish our weekend and this post - you know how I love my Domino's Pizza right? So on Sunday evening my knee was killing me, I was feeling blue and also we really wanted to, so we decided on pizza. But we were very adventurous and tried Papa John's. What can I say? The site is terrible, we got the confirmation mail after we finished eating the pizza. But the pizza? OMG Ron even said - better then Domino's... And that is not something to be taken lightly in our house :)