Enjoying the last busy couple of weeks before Christmas

I'm sure I'm not the only one that can't wait until the school Christmas holidays! The last couple of weeks of term are always so busy, and even though I try to cut back on things as much as I can after learning from the mistakes of previous years, we still seem to have a full calendar.

Last week Mia took part in her school production of Bugsy Malone. She played a reporter and a dancer and the show was brilliant. She's never done any kind of dancing before, and they had a dance instructor come to the school to teach them. I was so impressed when the curtain went up and she was there dancing away with her friends all wearing their sparkly outfits! She also had to read several news reports by herself on the stage, some of them in an American accent, and she did so well. I watched three of the four performances and loved every one.

Our village always goes all out for Christmas. We have a group of village yarn bombers that put up decorations for all sorts of celebrations throughout the year and they have excelled themselves this Christmas. As well as the traditional post box topper we have a knitted ice skating rink, sleigh, decorations in all the shop windows, hanging knitted ornaments from the trees in the village centre and knitted ornaments tied along any available stretch of railing or bollard. I love spotting them as I go on my regular runs through the village, and it's really nice that people respect them and leave them in place.

Yesterday we had the school Christmas Fair which was as chaotic as always. They have a new system for payment which is very clever - when you arrive you exchange money for tokens which can be used on all the stalls. This means that they don't need to worry about keeping a float of change for each stall. Also the tokens could be bought using a credit card, which is useful for people like me that don't carry much cash. The most popular stall is always the chocolate tombola, and the children did pretty well!

Next week we have a few dates arranged with friends and family, including an evening Christmas meal out for me, and I'm also looking forward to some chilled out family time, doing some crafting and making our annual gingerbread houses. 

I hope that you are all enjoying this festive time of year!