Music Party!

The child-care worker from Happy Feet (the baby house-kids aged 18 months to 6/7 years) has been pestering me to run a junior choir with all the little ones for a while. I tried it a few weeks ago, but I didn't have enough songs in my head and they didn't have the concentration to sit still long enough to learn new ones so it didn't work as well as it could have. But on Friday I was working in Stepping Stones and we decided to combine my house with Happy Feet and have a music party! I took my speaker and laptop to the house and because it was raining, we had the kids shower as soon as they came in from school and they had no homework so we mooched along until Happy Feet joined us. When they did, I whipped out my 'Oomba Baroomba' playlist of songs I used to listen to when I was a kid and we had a massive dance party!

I had all the kids jumping around and doing a wobbly walk, then the child care worker had a box of sleigh bells and tambourines and triangles so we dished them out and had the kids shaking along to the music. Then we finished on one of the lullabies and I had all the kids lay down and rest for a few minutes (because I needed to!), which resulted in a pile of very happy but slightly tired children!

It was so good, I'm going to break my own 'no pictures of children' rule and give you these few gems!

Jump, Jump, Jump if you feel you want to, oooooooo

Everybody sleeping! You can only see my legs!

Horse rides :)

Annual Ball

Every year the children's home holds a variety of functions to raise money. One of these is the Annual Winter Ball, which I got to see last year but only briefly as I was drumming with the kids as the guests arrived. However this time I got to help with the whole event! It was kind of stressful leading up to it as there was a lot we had to organise: we had to roll 130something blankets, put 130something hot-water bottles into cases and then tie the 2 together with a ribbon and a thank you card as a present for the guests and folding menus etc. But then when it got to the evening itself it was actually really nice. We had to stand with a child each and give each of the women a small bag with a jar of honey and a small box of chocolates. The girls had to wear a pair of wings which had a tendency to get in the way.

"Auntie, I want to take my wings off. People keep knocking them!"

The guests were all given these semi-frozen blue (alcoholic) cocktails as they came in so the same child that came up with the gem about the wings turned to me and said:

"Auntie, can I have one of the slush puppies as well?"

 Then during the the evening we did get to eat the INCREDIBLE food, but only once everything else was sorted. So inbetween the starter and the main course we had to hand all of the women a blanket/hot-water bottle package. Each kid had to go round 6 tables so they had to give out maybe 30-40 packages each! And the volunteers had to run to everybody that bid in the auction and collect all their details. But it was a really nice evening.

Have some pictures!

The hall

Menu and honey bags we had to hand out

Me (left), Katie (centre) and Sinja (right).

The hot-water bottles and blankets we had to roll, wrap and give!

It's very disconcerting to have 2 lions behind you...even if there are fences in the way!

A Rooikat or Red cat. Check out it's fluffy ears! This thing was hissing and spitting at us.