We headed out to a local Christmas market, but decided to walk the dogs first. The very start of the outing was not very promising, with a half hour trek back up the motorway when we realised that the dogs leads had been left hanging on their peg in the house. This was undertaken with a very large chorus of moaning from the kids. However things then got a little more annoying when we arrived and found that due to no parking they were struggling to find spaces for all the cars, and we would have to take a shuttle bus up to the market after we walked the dogs. This may seem like a mild inconvenience, but with three kids, a baby, all the associated accessories and a buggy I never hugely enjoy trying to get all of us onto any form of bus.
Once we were parked and in the woodland things started to pick up. The kids did'nt have their crabbing lines, but they headed out onto the pontoon and had a good look ( and I suspect that Aidan may have tried fishing with his hands, based on how wet his gloves seemed to be).
Then they practiced their favourite hobby of tree climbing, most of the poor trees suffered the indignity of having the three monsters attempting to climb up them.
All was going well, and I even managed to get a nice photo, when I say all was going well that was until........
The oldest two decided to ignore my instructions to stay off the mud in the river bed. You know those times when you look away for two seconds, and then kick yourself when they do something either amazingly stupid or down right dangerous.
Well I looked back and saw Alex slowly sinking above boot level into some very stinky and very deep river bed mud with Aidan besides her also slightly stuck. Poor Elliot was in the sling at the time and was almost thrown at his dad while I ran down to assist them.
They were well and truly stuck and I had to jump in to drag them out. The only option with Alex was to lift her out of her boots and to hold her aloft while I fished for her wellies with the other hand, she is a skinny thing, but sure weighs a ton when held up by one arm. I managed to get both of them towards the bank, but now was severely stuck myself, so had to drag myself out, covering my jeans and hands in the process.
Nearly on the bank Aidan lost his welly and fell forward absolutely caking his trousers and coat in the foul smelling stench. Lets just say that my anger was very apparent once we were back on the bank. Both of them were very sorry and immediately promised to never do it again. You can tell when Aidan feels very bad and ashamed about something, as he usually very politely asks not to talk about it anymore.
Typically we got back to the car to find the toilets closed for the winter, so I had to do my best with two packets of wipes and strict instructions not to put their hands in their mouths. Needless to say we had to give up on the market plans and the kids had to be undressed before getting in the car. I use big blue ikea bags as a welly carrier, so luckily the bag was able to hold all the foul outcomes of their little adventure.
At home the only option was to dump it all in the bath, and to keep hosing it down. The wellies then went into the airing cupboard, while the clothes then had to be washed three times to get rid of the majority of the fetid mouldy mud smell
