Hang your heads in shame

We had another few inches of snow last night - the whole drive was again covered (arrrrggghhh). It was an early start for us all today, getting up by 8am and out of the house by 8:30am in order to start our pancake breakfast at the Hamlet Church. The breakfast continues the Winter Festival (It began with the Movie night last night) where they serve pancakes, sausage and maple syrup. We met up with a few people we knew and The Royals graced us with their presence and sat and chatted with us.

Our next stop was off to the local town in order for us to sign the boys up for outdoor football in the Spring through to mid/late Summer. When we arrived at the football place we were greeted with lots of tables, many milling about people and signs saying STEP 1. STEP 2. STEP 3. STEP 4. Step 1 was a lady who explained how the system worked. Basically the place runs as a 'partnership' which means your children can play and train as long as one of their parents volunteers for something, ie making the sandwiches on a game night or being a helper on registration day. She mentioned about coaching and sent Huffle off to Step 2 to talk to Scouser Steve (who just happens to be Small's coach at the indoor football). He talked Huffle into signing up to take part as a coach (which I think is a really good idea), then we carried on to Step 3 where we signed the kids up. Step 4 was payment station and the job was done. Smallest is going to be playing on a Thursday evening 7pm - 8pm at one playing field and Small will be playing on a Thursday evening at another playing field somewhere else and training on a Tuesday evening. I think Huffle will be coaching Smallest's age but we will see.

We drove back to the Hamlet and were too early to drop the kids off at the Carnival float so we squeezed through the barricade of police cars and came home briefly. We dropped them off and Huffle and I came home for a very quick cup of tea. We were in fact then late for the Parade starting and had to walk fast/run all the way down our road 1.5km until we finally caught up with the Scouts/Beavers float which was a tank. I don't think the boys even noticed we had run all the way. We were shattered, it's hard enough running that far but in heavy boots in the snow, it's even tougher. Still it worked off our pancakes.

The parade was entertaining and we followed it to the end. There was then much standing around while people wondered what to do next, picked up their kids from the floats and waited for the BBQ line to dwindle. The boys signed themselves up for the 'Amazing Race' which was a scavenger type race in teams. They desperately needed people to help with this and somehow Huffle and I got roped in to stand on two stations. One was the bean bag toss (where Huffle and I lost two bean bags in the snow from messing around before it started) and an obstacle course. We had to sign each team that came through our station, make sure they did it right and give them the next clue. The kids loved it. Smallest's team won.

There was a huge table ice hockey game which the boys played on for ages (apparently the Guitar man had made the table himself).

I think we ended up leaving around 3pm and wearily walked home. It has snowed all day. Huffle and I also entered the photo contest.

Left: mine. Right: Huffle's (he added the car one just because it amused him!)

Back home we got warm and dry and had something to eat and chilled for the rest of the afternoon and played a couple of games of S'quarrels.

The snow is forecast as 40%+ chance of snow until 5pm Monday. We should be getting between 12 and 20 cm.

Famfa edit - and it's still Bloomin' snowing!!!!

Huffle edit - the blog title is what I instructed one of the teams to do after failing miserable in the bean bag toss, no bloody Molly-coddling from me

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