Saturday 24 December 2011

Seasonal Festivities – Part 2

I also went to the charity Carol Service with my dad that I have mentioned before. This was laced with awful memories for me, from last year. Kevin had really wanted to go, even though he had been in a hospice to manage his pain right up until that day. Our friend Sandra drove us there, and we made it to the service, but the seats for so uncomfortable for Kevin that we left in the middle and he slept in the hotel.

I was pleased that my dad invited Sandra and her partner this year. It was his way of saying thank you to them, as they were such a support to Kevin and I and also put him up when he stayed for the funeral. We set off very late and arrived after the start, this was a good distraction, worrying about the time stopped my thinking too much. Although when we got in, we were sitting in the same place as last year, and I have to say I had a bit of a wallow in bad memories. Kevin had wanted to go because this is a special event, the Carol Service is in Hanover Square and all the lessons are read by famous people. One year Kevin was very pleased that he stole the RESERVED sign from under June Whitfield and kept it as a souvenir! Sandra was enjoying herself so I didn’t feel the need to break down, in fact that wouldn’t be my style anyway. We then went to the champagne reception at Christies and enjoyed circulating with people who seem so much greater than ourselves. Actually the evening was lovely, and not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

We have also hosted a few events ourselves, something we couldn’t do last year. I had the class meet-up at our house. This was hugely exciting to the Menace who could not go to sleep, knowing that all his friend’s mums were downstairs in our house, and he spent a large part of the evening wandering around in his pyjamas complaining how noisy we were and consequently lost his voice!

I had also promised the Menace a Christmas party, as he had wanted a Halloween one and it ended up not being at our house. We sat down to plan it and I said to him “9 friends, no more”. By the time we had both finished the invite list was 18 children if you included my own son. 18 children being over excited in my house wasn’t a very appealing prospect. A friend of mine has set up a company selling parties in a box called Happy Frogs Parties, so I turned to her for help. We bought a spy party. I was still terrified that the kids would race through it and then get bored. They really enjoyed trying to guess who was the spy, deciphering codes and finding the bugs. I had planned a few games of my own if needed, as I was convinced these kids were going to trash my home. In the end only 15 came, and they were as good as gold. They worked really well on the team games and were engrossed in the activities. In fact, the opposite of my fears happened. We ran out of time and did not complete all the games. We were so engrossed in making perescopes that I forgot the time and realized that the parents were picking them up in 5 minutes and I still hadn’t fed them!

I may very well use these parties again, they are reasonably priced, and kept me and the children sane! Not once were their tears (something that has happened at all previous parties).

The weblink is http://www.happyfrogparties.co.uk/

I think that the sleepover party looks very good and may go for one of those in the summer holidays to keep a group of kids happy. I don’t see why it has to be gender specific ( I suspect designed for girls in mind).

We are keeping busy and this helps.

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