Last B-a-R before Christmas and J wanted to take home-made chocolates for all the helpers (especially Dave, his favourite) so the first job today was shaping chocolate ganache balls and rolling them in cocoa and/or icing sugar 🙂
Unfortunately Bob woke up ill and J woke up crabby so not as good a start to the day as we’d hoped, but eventually we had a couple of nice packages of freshly-made chocs to take and three children actually dressed and wearing socks, shoes and coats. Thought we’d be horribly late, but the day started to improve as we reached the end of the road just in time to catch the far more direct bus (which only goes every 40 minutes at fairly random times, as opposed to the other which goes every ten minutes – in theory anyway – so that really was a good feeling!) and so were able to get there at about the time we’d expected to without the strops, the hunt for missing socks (where do they go?) etc etc.
Chocs went down very well (Dave wasn’t there, but J made them promise to save him some 😆 ) and the children all enjoyed doing lots of craft (making glittery angels on straws to turn them into puppets) and then K and L joined in songs and listened to stories while J made even more angel puppets and chatted to friendly grown-ups. We couldn’t stay until the end of tidy up time, which he was a little disappointed about, but the promise of drama (brought forward by an hour, hence the not being able to stay) induced him to leave without too much fuss.
Drama was good (L, who is not officially part of the class, hovered by the door in such a way that when the teacher asked someone else to come in and sit down she was able to convince herself that she was included too, teacher didn’t seem to mind and L was then picked to play the part of Cinderella, lines and all! K was fairy godmother because he had his own wand, well glittery angel on a stick 😆 ) and looks set to continue next year too – good news for the children if not for my purse!
After that we wandered towards the shopping centre to see what Santa’s Grotto looks like this year, going via the bakery where we hoped to get gingerbread men. Bakery was closed, so we consoled ourselves with a trip to a couple of charity shops where J spent his (accumulated because I keep forgetting to give it to him) pocket money on a micromachines lorry (£3 well spent, as it turned out when we got it home 😉 ) and also managed to find a pair of salopettes in his size which should make up for the disappointment of having outgrown his snowsuit last year 🙂 Oh and a video of Le Roi Lion, which we figured must count as educational!
Since the cake shop was closed as well we had no choice but to go to Millie’s Cookies and make a selection there, including a double chocolate cookie for Bob “to make him feel better” 😀
Sadly, Santa’s grotto had been vandalised so there was no animated show to watch 🙁 and we then had to walk home in the cold and dark – not so pleasant, although the cookies helped…
We were supposed to be helping to decorate the tree at church in the evening, but with Bob really not feeling up to going out decided to give it a miss, then suddenly remembered that there was a local preachers meeting at 7:30, which both of us are supposed to attend (I have a three line whip as a local preacher, while Bob has an open invitation as a worship leader) and it was too late to send apologies. Children had eaten, but not us, as we had intended to get a curry or something equally comforting later, so I had to quickly grab something to keep me going and then leg it, leaving Bob with boys in bed but L still wide awake. The meeting was good (got there at 8, but managed to sneak in quietly) and was followed by a study session on overseas aid and theology by Stephen Plant (who helps to run local ministerial training college and whose wife is director of MRDF, so he’s well qualified!) which I had intended to miss in favour of food and sleep, but ended up staying to hear. Was glad I had – lots to ponder on, but not here and not now…
L was still awake when I got back *sigh* so no chance of an early night, which I guess means I shouldn’t be surprised at how tired I was today 🙁
Bob still ill (another day off work) but able to help us get ready for parents and tots, as long as he knew he’d get the chance to sleep later. P & T was very quiet, in a number of people sense at least. We had known that J and E wouldn’t be there, but hardly anybody else came either. One of our regular mums arrived with her little boy, but left shortly afterwards because he was bored 🙁 I think the main problem there was that he likes to roam (forever in the kitchen under my feet 😆 ) and with the hall still blocked off and rather limited space he was wanting to go up and down the stairs instead. Mum didn’t want to keep following him up and down but didn’t want to let him go alone either (fairly vicious stone steps) and there was no one else to distract him (J and K sitting doing maths and L playing quietly by herself) so they gave up. Some time later another regularish mum appeared, with a daughter who was happy to just potter with L, then an HE boy with his mum and that was it until snack time, when Rebecca and R came and then Lucy arrived (for the first time) with her three, which livened things up considerably (especially when they found the box of noisy instruments I had foolishly got down from the cupboard and proceeded to set up a marching band up and down the aforementioned stone stairs 😆 ). The younger older children also spent a fair bit of time playing with K’s micromachines fire engine, while the older ones made snowflakes (and lots of mess on the floor) and we all did lots of stencilling and colouring to calm down at the end – mostly using lovely wooden tree decorations from yellow moon last year which turned out to be ideal as Christmas templates 🙂 Oh and J made a complicated pattern for Bob to trace “to help him forget his pain” – only a bad cold really, but nice idea!
No Gina so no piano 🙁 but we came home “to look after Daddy” instead, which turned into Bob looking after me as I was so exhausted that I just stumbled up to bed leaving him to supervise lunch.
Went to collect B and F with just J (K and L curled up on settee with Bob), which turned out to be just as well as weather was foul and B kept us waiting outside his classroom for 15 minutes – goodness knows what he was doing 🙄 – and then had forgotten his bookbag so had to go back! F was really tired (as usual) so ended up having a carry from about halfway home (good job I’d taken a sling just in case!), which really made me notice the difference between a child who is used to being carried and one who is not. There is not a huge difference in size between F and K, but he is far easier to carry because he uses his body to help. F loves to be carried, but either just sits there or leans back 😯 – it makes her feel much heavier and even slightly unstable.
When we got in we warmed up with frothy hot chocolate and filled up with nachos because everyone was starving, then made F a pouch sling to carry her baby (and had to make one for L too because hers was in the car and Bob had taken that to go into work to get his laptop so he could catch up before going back to work tomorrow) and then I decided to give in and just sit them down in front of a DVD for a bit, since they were getting a bit tired and hyper. Bob came back with pizza (yay!) so we reached a suitable stopping point in Jonny English and ate, then their au pair arrived before we could get back to JE – probably not a bad thing or we’d have been under pressure to let them watch to the end.
At least with everyone being so tired they were all in bed and asleep well before 7:30 (official bedtime), leaving us to collapse and do nothing much, even though we should be trying to catch up on work/housework/sorting 🙄 and I think I may just go to bed now myself…
