New Year

Wednesday didn't dawn very nice and it didn't get any better.  We were entertaining this evening so Tom and I went to Asda to get in some wine (the only thing we were lacking).  I then decided to find the other retail park in Kendal - this has foxed me for quite a while.  I found it - it was drab and dreary!  I was hoping to find somewhere to eat, but all I could find was the cafe in Morrisons.  We went in and had to wait an hour for some disgusting slop, even Tom complained that he didn't like it, can't say I blame him.  We will put that one down to experience and won't go again.

We did, however, get some bargains in the shops, mainly Christmas decorations and cards for next year.  We didn't bother looking around Morrisons, it was such a bad experience.

Rachael, Isabella, Tom and Graham

Not to worry we had the evening to look forward to.  Rachael, Graham and Isabella arrived around 7.30.  Isabella was immediately at home and she and Tom played beautifully together for the whole evening.  In fact we hardly saw them, meaning we had proper adult conversation.  

Old married couple?

Tom and Isabella set up a disco in Tom's room, played hide and seek, played with Tom's toys, pretended to be Father Christmas and delivered toys to all the children of the world and so on.  It was a good evening, much fun was had, especially for Tom and Isabella.  They didn't have any problem at all staying up until midnight.  Then I got involved in a tickle fest with them both meaning they didn't leave until almost 1am.  

It was a good, fun night.

So even though Tom was down on sleep by quite a way last night, he got up at the usual time.  Oh well, we had expected that!  Today, we had decided would be a good day to go to Manchester - the roads and shops should be empty.  It worked, they were!  We first went to Go Outdoors, the huge outdoor store with a camping showroom which Tom loves.  I finally managed to get a new fleece and a gortex jacket which I've been searching out for quite a while, so was happy.

Dim sum in Manchester

Next stop was a visit to Glamorous Restaurant.  This has now become compulsory for a visit to Manchester.  It is the Chinese restaurant above Wing Yip.  It is very very Chinese.  No sweet and sour  pork balls or lemon chicken here.  In fact no menu as such here.  You choose your food from trolleys being pushed up and down the restaurant - they have menus on the trollies but they are written in very dodgy English so it is a bit of a lottery as to what you think you are getting and what you actually get.   This is where the Chinese come to eat, we were very much in the minority - think there was only another all white table in the whole restaurant and Tom was certainly the only non Chinese child there.  The restaurant is huge, but when we arrived it was full - we had to wait, but luckily not too long.  Then we started getting dishes from the trollies. Once again I'm not sure what we had but it was all good and we were all happy.  Tom was on great form, matching what we ate 1 for 1, he must have been ready to explode!

Tom and Ozzie

We reluctantly dragged ourselves away when we couldn't physically eat any more and headed to Wing Yip to get some more Asian groceries in, then we headed back home.  It was a grey day so we were glad to have found something fun to do.