Friday morning was the second day of free swimming lessons and this time all four older children were doing them – except that L somehow managed to leave her swimming costume at home *sigh* so missed the first 15 or 20 minutes while Gina dashed home and fetched an E spare for her (thank you Gina!).
M had moved down and J up and groups had been consolidated and reduced so they ended up in the same group but effectively each with a personal teacher as the adult to child ratios were so high 🙂 K and E were very happy sharing a teacher and L shared a teacher with a child we didn’t know. All had a great time, except JH who got poked in the eye somehow and came out early to sit with a cold pack 🙁
Meanwhile Gina, A, S and I sat in the foyer and read stories, chatted etc.
After swimming we had a brief stop at home for lunch and a rest, then were off out again to our second activities roadshow of the week, also free. It was a little further away from home this time, so A and I went shopping rather than coming back here. Our intention had been to go to Lidl and get Christmas goodies, but the road was closed off by police so we ended up going round and round the one way system instead, eventually giving up and going charity shopping and finally making it to Lidl once road reopened with just enough time to grab Lebkuchen and not much else. While we were out plans for the evening had changed to include tea at the Manorborns, and since we were already 1/4 of the way there it seemed silly to come back home first as long as nobody minded being a bit scruffy. Only L and I minded, but I had just managed to find a nice charity shop skirt, L had spare jeans and Michelle was happy for us to use her bath so that was okay 😉
So, lovely tea and chat (thank you!) and then we all went to an excellent Unicorn ceilidh, where Bob and I were looking after little Biffs and we all had lots of fun trying to coach small people in the right steps for some quite tricky dances. The Grand Chain was great when we got it working, stripping the willow was a challenge, but I think we all enjoyed it anyway – except perhaps Bob, who spent a little too long walking the streets with a grumpy S, not realising there would be an interval when he could have watched a Morris group and Gina could have fed S. M was very taken with the large sticks and rather macho style of the morris – I think we may need to try to get to some of the displays in the new year! Bob having come straight from work in his own car we were able to split up and get those who wanted to do Astronomy on Sat home at a moderately reasonable time, but K begged to stay so he and I spent the rest of the evening dancing, with S on my back. K is totally smitten with C again and wants to do lots of dancing, whenever possible, but especially if she’ll be there!
