candy canes, balloon animals, smurfs and glitter...oh my!

Every year our work puts on a fun holiday party for the kids.  Yes, even though I left a certain large company earlier this year and it is only Jeff who is currently employed, I still refer to it as our workplace.  Besides being lots of fun for the kids, it was fun for me to see some colleagues and their families.  The big question from everyone was "do you miss it?" to which I responded enthusiastically "not even a little bit!".


My favourite part was something we hardly ever do. What you are about to see is so rare, it only happens once every few years. In fact the last time this happened there were only 4 people in our family. Yes, I'm talking about a family photo.  I knew they were taking family photographs so I had instructed Jeff he was to wear something black/grey to match our adorable holiday themed children. I narrowly avoided a potential catastrophe when we first arrived and were handed the children's snack bags at check-in. I looked over and saw a family of children who had opened their snack bags and were sucking on rink pops (something my children are known to do), with lovely blue rings around their mouths. I quickly turned to my lovely children and snapped in a harsh tone said sweetly "absolutely no candy until after the family photo!". We headed to do that first, I sighed a breath of relief at having it done and the kids were happy to crack into those snack bags.

Smurfs are a lot larger in real life than I imagined...

This is a very well organized children's party with fun activites for all ages.  The magic show was fantastic and the kids activites are top notch.  Kyle of course gravitated to the very cool gaming area while the girls and I visited Mr. and Mrs. Claus, met clowns who make balloon animals and made snowflakes. 

Seriously, how cool are these awesome snowflakes!?  I paid very close attention to the instructions and I'm certain I can reproduce them, I'm going to buy some shiny paper this week and try it out.

We asked Mrs. Claus what Santa eats for dinner before delivering all the presents (spaghetti) and his favourite kind of cookie (chocolate chip, preferably homemade). 

Jillian's letter to put into Santa's mailbox..."I hope you slept a lot!  Why do you give the presents at night?"

There was a huge crafting section which was not to be missed by my crafty girls.  And they were very, VERY excited to see glitter.  Containers of it, in every colour.  Let me just say here that I consider myself to be a crafty mom.  I have girls who love to do crafts of every kind and I think I fill their needs.  We have a permanent craft table on our mainfloor which is fully stocked.  I have a craft bag which stays in the van since I do crafts with the preschoolers at church, and it comes in handy on playdates.  And there just may be a few new crafty items under the tree come Christmas morning.  But there is one thing you will never, ever see in my house and it is glitter.  Oh, I may buy the odd tube of glitter glue, since the glitter is fully ensconced in the glue and unable to escape (although even then, glitter glue only makes a rare appearance).  But loose glitter? Ab-so-lute-ly not allowed.

But hey, we were at a party and they have the benefit of professional cleaners so I let the girls have at it with the glitter.  As you can see Leah enjoyed layering on the various colours of glitter with her hands.  Jillian avoided hand contact but still loaded up those foam cutouts with as much glue and glitter as they could handle.  I had to literally pry the girls away from the table (Leah had as much glue and glitter on her hands as her craft).  And as I was walking out holding our lovely crafts I had many comments.  No joke, one family wanted to follow me to the parking lot because it was windy out and the Dad laughed as he said "I want to see what will happen to you in the wind with those things".