Sat 13th December 2014 was the day the Umborne Valley children gathered for their annual Christmas party at the hall. Sickness seemed to strike down quite a few children this year but in the end we had 14 children and dare I say, this proved to be a little quieter!
The hall was lavishly decorated again by many helpers and set the scene for the Christmas celebration. Finley and Charles mastered the musical chairs this year in 2 different games. Then onto finding an item in the hall. I thought I’d learnt from last year about asking to find a sock, so specified a ‘white sock’ hoping it would be from a girl. I didn’t bargain for Finley to hand me his sweaty ones! I’ll have to remember no socks next year! Pictionary was next showing an interesting concoction of amazing drawings. Daisy just carried on with her wonderful scribbles which I’m not sure if anyone deciphered but she enjoyed it!
We played flap the Christmas tree where the player has to flap their 2D Christmas tree from one side of the hall to the other with newspapers. Think it was Toby, Tia & Sam or Charles who reigned as champion flappers on this. The Animal families game was a whole lot of fun again. We roped in a few adults and lots of animal noises filled the air for the children to find their families.
Then it was time for tea – a magnificent spread as always and demolished in no time at all. While the children ate, Di made us all a lovely cuppa! Debbie arrived with a beautiful chocolate Christmas cake for the children to take home – yum! After tea a quick game of sleeping lions won by Ella T. and Maeve before the arrival of Santa bearing sacks full of gifts for all the excited children. The jingle of bells brought him in and up to the sparkling grotto. After a few words his elves Amalia & Beverley helped to distribute the presents. Then we sang Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer to Santa although some of us had forgotten most of the words! It was over all too quickly and Santa went off on his merry way. This year it looked like Santa had been eating lots of the mince pies and whisky as he was looking much rounder! Thank you Santa for popping in on your busy schedule.
Thank you to everyone who helped set up and clear up and to Rob for constructing the grotto and lending his music & lights system. Thanks to Di for helping with the games and providing the music and Ted S. for DJing. Thanks to Elouisa who knows what she did and Amalia & Beverley for helping with anything thrown at them and Niamh and the parents who helped out on the night – another fantastic team effort! Also, thank you to Tesco’s Seaton for providing the crackers.
Merry Christmas to you all
