V.I.P.S

Thank you for your kind messages. It does help to know you are there. Shame you are not a bit closer but there you go.......

I had a bad night's sleep, not really surprising all things considering but at least it made me get up early and have a nice shower ready for the busy day ahead.

The annual Hamlet Winter Carnival. Not a bad temperature of around 2* but not minus and no more snow fell. (Tomorrow we have 10cm forecast falling throughout the day). Our day started with a Pancake Breakfast at the Church which we chose to drive to due to the fact we had lots to get done. $10 got us two pancakes, a sausage and maple syrup plus a tea or coffee or juice. We bumped into a few locals and had a quick chat and then drove back home. Smallest got ready for his football game and the three boys watched the beginning of the Stoke game. As Small is in Grade 8, it was his responsibility to help with the floats for the parade, so I dropped him off at the parade start where he was given a high visibility vest and a list of who should be where and he organised and helped get the parade started.

I took my car to the Community Centre to deposit the Basket of Cheer and Joker Poker Board but couldn't park anywhere. ExerciseNic let me park in her drive and I walked back to where the parade was going to pass by and found Smallest and Huffle settled on the corner ready for parade watching. Smallest has never watched the parade as he is normally in it so it was quite nice for him to see it today.

My entry for the photo contest

We questioned Small later about why he wasn't on the Scout float and he said he had been allocated a job by the Leader. Huffle said "I think Small had a very responsible job in the parade". Silly Huffle didn't realise that his first born was part of the Pooper Scooper gang, shovelling the poo left by the horses. Still a very responsible job, after all, it's important to keep our roads clean, plus we got the bag of poo for our garden later.

Huffle and Smallest went off to the football match where the team won 8-1 but it's not about winning is it. I forgot. They came back later and joined us for the last part of the Carnival to help. When Small and I got to the Community Centre we found that our table, that was allocated to us earlier, had been moved back and to the side, and the very important Group that protests over the airport taking over our Hamlet, had completely overtaken our space. I very politely asked if they could move one of their signs that was blocking our table and they moved it a couple of millimetres and told us to move our table forward, if we wanted to. I am completely FOR their group as I do not want an airport built near us, I can't think of anything worse, BUT come on, our table was for the Grade 8's AND when we asked if any of them would like to buy a raffle ticket or take part in our game, we got a categoric NO! (Apart from one of our close British neighbours who probably felt they had no choice).

I had the help of six Grade 8's, Small included, to help me sell tickets. A couple of the girls lost some money and got confused as to whether they sold a ticket or not and caused me to have to ask a person if they did actually pay or not, embarrassing! The boys did better and did go and sell and we ended up with over $350 for the basket of Cheer (worth $400 but hopefully more tickets being sold tonight at the Ball) and $135 for the Joker Poker as we had to give away half to the winner (which just happened to be one of my little helpers Dad). Smallest was good at bringing people by to buy from us. It must be his winning smile. He made a new friend (possibly in his 70's) who invited him to play golf in his garden. We completely finished by 2pm ish, dropped off one of my helpers back home and waited for Smallest to have his shower before heading out again for a well earned lovely dinner.

At home we sat in front of the TV and finished a Harry Potter film and watched an episode of The Grand Tour with a cup of tea and a cake we picked up on the way home.

Everyone worked hard today and is tired. Being busy and being in the local community having to talk to lots of people has possibly done me the power of good today. I think I needed that. Plus, no-one can say we haven't done our fair share for the Grade 8 Graduation Trip Fundraising.

 

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