Friends, Fun & A New Belt!

Emily's had a really nice few days "socially speaking" which has been lovely to see. On Thursday morning she and Jon went off to tai chi and one of the ladies there asked Emily to give George his Christmas present (bottle of scotch, lol) and card on behalf of the whole group, so off she went to present them to him in front of everyone and gave a little speech, bless her. Until very recently you'd never have thought of Emily doing that. Her confidence is growing in leaps and bounds.

On Thursday afternoon I took Grandad to the hospital eye clinic and got back much sooner than expected in time to take Emily to ballet. She wore tinsel in her hair and had a ball playing with Kate and her other friends there and handing out/receiving Christmas cards.

On Friday Kate and her mum came round to play and have tea with us. The two girls had a wonderful time and put on a fashion show for us. Huge hugs at going home time, lol, even though they were going to see each other the next morning at ballet anyway. Margaret and I had a good chat too; we've all become quite close rather quickly, which is unusual for us as we normally take a while to "warm" to people (code for not being a very sociable lot, lol).

Yesterday was extremely busy - we were up at just gone 7 to start baking for Emily's karate Christmas party. Emily made chocolate chip Christmas tree and star cookies, all beautifully iced and decorated, and she also made snowman cakes. We just finished the baking in time to scoot out to the last ballet of term. Emily's class put on a little performance for the parents which was very impressive considering they'd only had an hour to learn it from scratch.

Back home and time to grab some lunch before making two lots of sandwiches and sausage rolls for the party. Emily got dressed up in her new red party dress with tinsel and glitter in her hair and off the three of us went. We arrived a bit early to help George and his wife with the food and Emily loved helping to lay the tables with party poppers and crackers. It was a **brilliant** party; I was so impressed! There were just under 50 children there, from all the classes George teaches, ranging from about 5-15. Emily was exhausted by the time it was over - they played loads of games and had dancing competitions too.....and of course, Santa came to visit. Thought Emily was going to burst with excitement when Daddy had to sneak off to get dressed up!! Jon did an amazing job as Santa. He was so nervous beforehand but you'd never know it - he was mobbed by the kids and talked to them non stop (including the teenagers, who seemed to love him, rofl!!). Some of the little ones definitely thought he was the real thing. Bless. The grown ups have booked him next year already ;-))

I was a bit upset though, because something weird happened just as Santa arrived - my camera, which was fully charged and had been working perfectly for hours, blacked out the second he walked through the door. It would turn on and off and would let you review photos, but when I tried to take pictures the screens were just black. Tried lots of different modes, flash on, flash off, everything. It had taken a perfect photo seconds before. It wasn't anything silly like the lends cap being on because of course I checked that, and anyway it warns you when that's the case. And....spoookily....after Santa had left and Daddy had returned, I gave him the camera....he turned it on and it worked perfectly :-(( So we have no pics of Daddy as Santa surrounded by the kids, but Jackie took some and is going to give us copies, thank goodness. Emily was so proud of her Daddy :-)))

Here's our star girl in party mode anyway. Will post pics of Santa when we get them. Musical Chairs to begin with....

Sharing Gossip....

Tea Time...

....and I loved this photo, blurry though it is, it sums up Emily's party mood -she never stopped!


As if all that wasn't enough excitement (!) this morning Emily had her first karate grading. She scored 63 out of 90 and is thefore now officially a yellow belt :-)))) Emily scored well above average considering the pass is 45/90 and George has stated frequently that he never gives 9s and 10s and only gives an 8 for exceptional work. She'll get her new belt when they go back after the Christmas break. They only do grading twice a year since making progress more rapidly than that goes against George's philosophy, so she'll have to wait until the summer to move on. She's as proud as punch and so are we!

And just to add to the spooky happenings around Jon lately: on top of the inexplicable camera failing yesterday and other things too numerous to mention.....last night, a pair of his black trousers went into the wash. Before going to bed my Mum took them out of the washing machine and spread them out on top of it to dry. They were fine and half dry already. This morning, they were covered in sand (????) and soaking wet. Okkkkaaaay. Something's going on here!