Music and bouncing, and a Big Switch

Saturday was music school (and a sling morning) then it was party time 🙂 Big hall, bouncy castle and lots of children – what could be better? Actually, J decided, as soon as the birthday girl let slip that the bouncy castle was officially for children 8 and under, that he shouldn’t go on it and so hid away in a back room doing NaNoWriMo (I need to get him to dictate some to me or he’s never going to reach his target – there just isn’t enough time, even when he snatches opportunities like that) while the others bounced and played. K was happy with the other K, A made friends with the other toddler S, L was happy to be with a small gaggle of small girls, including E and M just bounced. Lots 🙂
We came home and made Christmas cake (“Square or round?” I asked them. “Dome!” they said, “so we can make an igloo!” We’ll see how it turns out…), had tea and got everyone to bed.

On Sunday Bob had a list of jobs to do at home, but we also had free tickets to go and see storytellers at the city library, so we all went to our local Methodist church, came home for lunch and then those who wanted to go into the city (M, K, L, A) came with me while J stayed with Bob to do jobs. The storytellers were fab, as ever 🙂 and we then spent a few minutes reading in the children’s library before heading out to catch the parade and see the Christmas lights being turned on. It was slightly less frenzied and nowhere near as crowded as I remember it from a couple of years ago when we last went, thank goodness (1 adult and 4 children in a big crowd is not fun!) although we may have just been lucky in where we ended up (a cordoned off area near the stage) and the children all enjoyed the big build-up and countdown then the sudden brightness of the lights 🙂 As we were walking back to the car we saw a couple of men with a ladder quickly turning on the few lights which had somehow failed to come on with the magical Big Switch…

Today began with music and then a quick trip into town, livened up by a nosebleed from L (her first). By the time we made it back we had just time to put together a quick picnic before Z arrived for the afternoon. We took him (and lunch) to a HE park meet nearby, in the park we went to when M first arrived, which was fun, but cold and muddy. Temperature and wind chill notwithstanding we managed to stay there for a good couple of hours while the children ran around, flew a kite, played on exercise equipment and got progressively muddier and then took Z and L to gymnastics – L having washed in the sink at gym and wearing a pair of A’s leggings as hers were irredeemably muddy! Noodles for tea, then K went to Beavers, L to bed and M to the bath to try to get rid of some mud! Oh and somewhere in there we watched the Classic Buskers via Michelle’s blog – thank you 🙂