redecorate

How do you like my new look?

Tuesday was Veteran's Day and Bob had the day off. He got on a shopping kick, and we decided to go to London to see the new mall (the largest indoor shopping center in Europe). So we got the tube stations written down and got together and drove to Epping. Except, we thought it was on the Motorway exit sign and it wasn't. So we missed our exit. The next exit was for the M25 (London ring road) and we took it, thinking it would be a giant roundabout like most highway interchanges, but it wasn't. So we ended up on the M25 heading east. It was a good 5 minutes to the next exit, which DID havce a roundabout, so we turned around, went back to the M11, back to the Epping exit, and went to the tube station there. As we arrived we noticed a sign in the parking lot entrance - "Full. Do not enter." huh. So we drove around the neighborhood, but it was all marked 'no parking' (though cars were parked there, we knew we couldn't get away with it). SO we went back into town to the town parking lot, but it was also full. In the high street there were a couple of spots, but it was marked 1 hour. So we went back to the station, where a gaurd was walking toward the sign. Could it be? He moved it to let in one car, and then put it right back.

Can you feel the frustration building here? Add to this that we started with just under a half tank and were worried about gas, plus the weather was inand out, plus the traffic, etc. Oh, and we'd stopped by Tesco for a chocolate croissant, and they were out.

So we headed back out of town, and I suggested we stop at the McDonald's on the road to the Motorway to "fall back and regroup." It was 11 anyway, so we went on in and got some lunch. Suprise, suprise! They had a playplace. So the children played while Bob and I looked at the map.
We found a "major shopping" symbol at Braintree, so we decided to go that way. No trouble finding it, easy to park (free!). It was cold and windy, but we braved it. Bob and I both need new shoes, so we went into 3 shoe stores (it was an outlet mall thing) and found nothing we liked in our size. sigh. But we did see a Cadbury factory outlet store and went in there. Yumm. They had Fry's Chocolate by the 6 pack.

Felling rather beaten (and cold), we went home from there.
I made supper while Bob and the children cleaned the house.

Yesterday (Wednesday) the children and I went down the street a little bit to a public grassy area and raked leaves. It was community service with a perk - we brought the leaves home and made a pile for them to jump in. :-) We also baked a double recipe of sugar cookies for the homeschool party today.