Our weekend to Koln

After Frankie's death, our whole family was rather down in the dumps as can be imagined.
Robert's last event with his "Ferienspiele" was a trip to Fort Fun which is a fun park with lots of rides etc. He had so been looking forward to this that we couldn't stop him from going.
We were also due to visit our friends, Venetia and Patrick in Koln for the weekend.
We made arrangements to fetch Robert from the fun park which was on the way to Koln, or so we thought.
Gerard set off for Fort Fun but as usual, decided to go against Doris's instructions. Doris being our navigation system. Why we bother having one, I quite often wonder. Gerard always feels that he knows the shorter and quicker way of getting to a place.
So instead of taking the Bundestrasse which Doris had suggested, Gerard set off on the Autobahn. This was a costly mistake as far as time and distance was concerned.
We had the cell phone number of one of the adults in charge and when we called him, we were still many kilometres away, they had already started to gather the children together for their return journey on the bus.
Gerard then said that if they needed to leave, they could leave Robert with the cashier and we would be there shortly.
By the time we got to Fort Fun, my neck was so stiff and I had such a headache.
I was so relieved to see Robert surrounded by a number of the kids he had been with and the guy in charge of them all. They were in a minibus while the majority of the children had been on another bus. Their bus had only left about 7 minutes before we had actually arrived and the guy in charge had insisted on staying until we arrived. I was just so thankful.
Not far, after leaving Fort Fun, travelling on small winding district roads, did Steven pipe up from the back seat, saying that he was not feeling very well. Not even 2 minutes later, with Gerard looking for a place to pull over, Steven got violently car sick. He somehow managed to get half of it inside the car, the other half running down the outside of the car. With the few tissues I had, we tried our best to clean the mess up.
Steven managed to perk up from there on and was in quite good spirits for the rest of the journey. He was quite proud to learn that this was the first time ever, that he had been car sick. He now joined his brother and sister with their claims to fame!!!
Robert seemed to have had a good day but as soon as we all quietened down in the car, his eyes welled up with tears and he was very tearful about Frankie. He cried just about the whole way to Koln.
With this huge time delay, our friends had gone ahead and started dinner without us.
They were also quite taken aback by our arrival with a child who had been sick and needed changing and Robert who was in tears. I had not had a chance to tell them about Frankie, so they had no idea.
Venetia had really spoilt us with dinner that evening. Pancakes filled with mushrooms and ham in a creamy sauce. Very delicious.
After putting the kids to bed and us adults all chatting away, we landed up going to bed quite late that evening.
On Saturday morning, we went off to the English shop where we did some shopping. We also managed to do clothes shopping for Rob and Lara who seem to have gone through a growth spurt recently. Always find shopping at C + A an absolute pleasure. The kids had a wonderful time, as our friends live right next door to a wonderfully set out, children's play park and football field. While they played, we sat out in the garden and relaxed. We really had fantastic weather all weekend. On Sunday, we got up late and had a late breakfast. Our friends wanted to treat the kids to McDonald's for lunch - no complaints from the kids on that one! After our lunch, we took a drive out to the soccer club of Koln. The kids loved seeing this venue. We then drove past the huge soccer stadium, but a game was due to start and there were thousands of supporters swarming to get in, so we did not even try to stop.
After getting back to their house, we packed the car and headed for home.
We had a good weekend.