Christmas parties

Yesterday evening we held the Christmas parties for the children at the gymnastics club. The younger children attended between 6 and 7 and then the older ones from 7.15 to 8.45pm. Having them in two batches was supposed to be a means of spreading the work out, and not having too many there at once but the best laid plans and all that - we had 20 kids at the first party and 60 at the second - whoops! All in all, it went well and the children enjoyed themselves. The little ones played pass the parcel, had a lot of dancing and then ate a little, then we judged their fancy dress and they danced some more - their hour flew past. The winner of the fancy dress was Mrs Christmas....she was just so cute. At the second gathering, the children were more boisterous but in good spirits, and had a great time doing all the dances. The winner of their fancy dress was a girl dressed up as Zebedee from the Magic Roundabout, complete with an enormous papier-mache head, and a spring for bouncing, of course. We took some lovely photos, and the kids all went home exhausted...

Today has been a day when I have been trying to get things done before Friday when the children break up from school. Traditionally, I have had to barricade myself in to a room late on Christmas Eve so that I could wrap the gifts, but I have done it ALREADY and I am SO pleased. It took me all afternoon, but it is such a relief to have finished. I also wrapped a couple of gifts that had to be posted, and duly sent them off to Scotland, slightly worried about this proposed postal strike on Friday as I don't know exactly which sorting offices are going to be affected and whether my parcels might need to go via any of them.

I am desperately trying to get the laundry baskets emptied but I am hampered (no pun intended there, sorry!) by the weather, so it is draped around on the airers again, and only two loads done so far - more tomorrow. Had a lovely hour sorting a storage cupboard out and cleaning the shelves, including making an inventory of what I have got in there - and boy, did I need to!?! Five big boxes of icing sugar, five jars of raspberry jam - I think I need to keep better tabs on what I have got in stock!

I hope that I don't offend anyone, but I am going to say what I think about Christmas lights now. They have a place - in town centres, lighting up the communal space for everyone to enjoy. I can live with that, and I sort of see why the powers that be do that. I am not so happy about the untidy slew of lights that adorn various houses in the vicinity.....some of them look OK, but some look awful, and there seems to be some kind of competition between people to have the most which degenerates into who has the tackiest show. There are some tasteful displays but they are few and far between. Light pollution, excess use of electricity, I sound like a terrible old fogey (well, I am practising for when I AM one!) but hey, the only light Jesus had was a star over that stable, and He managed OK.......

Got to go as the YFG has been practising the Nativity story with some cardboard cut outs and wants me to watch her acting it out.