Lovely Day Out. I won't hear different.

So... had a lovely day out yesterday to celebrate passing my end of year exam! (Faint cheers off...) Here is my story of Our Day Out.

It started badly when I came up with the spontaneous, impulsive idea that we would all go and pick up my results together, and then go to a lovely estate with beautiful gardens (and adventure playground) near to my Uni. Funnily enough, it wasn't aspie #1 or aspie #2 who had a problem with my spontaneous idea, it was DH, who immediately claimed to have half a dozen urgent domestic tasks which WOULD NOT WAIT till the afternoon. Strange, as I have never seen him complete any domestic task with any sense of urgency. Or at all. He rarely gets more than half way through any domestic task.

Having used some canny emotional blackmail on him, managed to get everyone in the car, and off to Uni. Got my result, with Pippi sitting on my lap (A15 if you're interested), and on my return to the car, announced it to the rest of the family, expecting rapturous applause. Which did not occur. DH still being sulky about being forced to have fun for the day. A bit of a row ensued, mainly me shouting at him and threatening divorce (under my breath). I know. I'm a bad wife and a worse mum some days.

In my defence, getting a great result doesn't immediately get rid of the stress involved in picking them up.
Still, we continued on to the gardens. I think Lucas had about 3 meltdowns during the course of the afternoon, and Pippi had one. DH and I had a showdown about the cost of getting in, and then called a truce. Lucas also got lost at one point,while I was taking Pippi for a walk to look at the roses, and was running around screaming DH's name, until I intercepted him quite by accident (not yet knowing he was lost), as he was heading for the exit.

Am I crazy to say that I had a wonderful time, and have the most amazing memories of that day? We all did our best, the kids did have a fantastic time on the adventure playground, we had a race round the maze, (the kids won), we had a lovely lunch with no rows, and everybody ate something. The weather was beautiful. I remember how much fun we had together, and how good we all are at looking after each other when things are going south.

Is ridiculous optimism another facet of autism? I seem to remember reading that somewhere....