Todays' story is not really about our visit to Cliveden Palace:).
On August 8th, Robert was leaving on a trip to Texas (for two weeks). As his flight was leaving from Heathrow, I volunteered to drive him together with our kids and Mika so that we could stop by Cliveden property on the way back as it was very close to Heathrow.
That morning we had to leave around 8:30 am which equates to 5:30 am of regular time when we are talking about summer holidays. We threw the kids in the car with their jackets and snacks and were on our way. Everything went smoothly at the airport, dropped off Robert, drove quickly to Cliveden and were among the first ten cars to park on property's closest parking lot (the parking situation gets VERY busy at this place on summer weekends).
As we were getting ready to come out of the car, Alex inquired about his shoes. Apparently, this kid forgot to bring his shoes! He was wearing his pjs when we left and we reminded him at the door to grab his Sketchers, but he forgot. All he had was socks.
I had a few choices before me at that moment:
1. Get upset and leave.
2. Get upset (or laugh), drive 20 minutes to Sainsbury's we saw on the way here and buy new shoes.
3. Stay calm and leave.
4. Laugh ...and leave?
5. Ask around about extra shoes (ok, that wasn't really an option).
6. Laugh and be creative.
This last one is exactly what I did. Some might call me a mean mom BUT I was not about to drive 40 minutes roundtrip to the store to buy shoes that we wouldn't really need later. I found plastic grocery bags in the car and tied them around Alex's feet. I couldn't stop laughing. Katya and Mika couldn't stop laughing, but Alex was not very happy.
Katya snapped a picture of him here...I think he is in between being mad/laughing/crying and, of course, embarrassed a bit.
The plan was to walk over to the gift shop next to the parking lot and see if they have ANYTHING, even wellies. I could barely stifle my laugh while explaining to the shop lady why we needed wellies, or any shoes really, on such a nice sunny day. But no, nothing was available.
We decided to make our outing short, but we were not giving up just yet. We walked over to the maze that this place was famous for, with Alex getting quite a few stares, but whatever.
This is the picture of the maze from above borrowed from the National Trust website (no, I didn't climb up a tall tree to take this picture).
It was actually a hard maze. It took me a while to figure it out (that fact alone, though, is not a good indicator of the difficulty of the maze).
After half an hour of "mazing", we sat down and had a picnic in a beautiful part of this vast green park. It was gorgeous! Quiet and so peaceful.
Then we strolled over to the water garden, looked at the koi fish and walked around the fountains (Alex still wearing his grocery bags).
We did find a playground that was quite fun, but I had to let Katya, Mika and Mark go play on it alone as Alex's "shoes" were wearing out and he was not about to go play on hard equipment like that. So I sat down with him on a grassy lawn watching people go by and chatting with him for a while.
It was shortly after twelve and we headed back to our car. Alex was relieved. Was it really a mean thing to do to him? I don't believe so. But I do think he'll never forget to bring his shoes again on an outing again.
Lyana.
I laughed reading this. Reminds me of the time I made John get his hair cut at a salon without shoes because he forgot them. He never had a problem forgetting after that.
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