Gala Day!

This is the event in Fenland, the place to be! The Manea Gala! This is the third, and most likely, last year we'll attend. The first year, we'd only been in the village for a few weeks, the second year, we were very much involved, we helped to design and decorate a float for the Baby and Toddler group which came second!! This year, as we're not in the village and have had a lot going on, we weren't so involved but pleased to say that the Manea Baby and Toddler float - decorated as 101 Dalmatians, won 1st prize! Very exciting! There were just too many photo opportunities so I've done one of my collages.

After Clara and Adam (Clara's best friend) had 'hooked a duck', they both won a prize each and were pulling goofy faces for the camera, such a picture though, they usually both smile their cheesiest smiles so it was funny to see them behaving as usual. She's going to miss Adam, just as much as I'm going to miss his Mum, my bestest friend. Hmm.

Next, Clara was allowed to have her face painted, she confused the painter by asking to be painted as Marie (from the Aristocats) So I had to explain, a white cat with a pink bow. Clara loved the bow the best. She wanted to have an ice cream but after telling her that ice creams ruin face paint, she was happy to go with a lollipop instead. I think it's going to take her the next year to get through that - it will definitely be thrown away before she finishes it. I'm a mean Mummy!

The boys all got, wait for it - Roped in for a Tug of war game, one of the Baby and Toddler group Mums was frantically trying to put together a group of the strongest looking lads. All looked promising on the first round when they won, but it all went downhill when they swapped sides, poor Mark (my friend, Kims husband) was dragged down to the ground!

Then later on a Spitfire gave us a flypast .. last year, we had a Hurricane fly over and my camera was just far too slow to capture it. This was the best picture I managed of the Spitfire - argument for a zoom lens maybe?!

And lastly, the picture in the bottom right hand corner is the float for the local fire station which has been threatened with closure. Our village is 10 minutes away from the next village, and there are villages beyond ours which are further still. If our fire station closed, response times would increase by quite a few minutes. Ridiculous isn't it. Well, the village are fighting the decision and hoping to recruit some retained firefighters to help keep it open. I hope it stays open.

Little Storm ran off - I followed her - she was running toward the deafening sound of a monster truck performing the 'Piston Symphony', she showed no fear when the truck 'popped', she loved it and got as close as was possible. Clapped and danced. When we got back to our group, Kims daughter was crying hysterically at the loud noise!

And then finally, I got to see my birthday buddies today, oh they are so cute. Kims cat, Clementine had kittens which were born on my birthday, they're 5 weeks old now have started leaping around the place. They are too cute for words. I'm hoping that the landlord in our new house might allow us to have a kitten, if so, I'm definitely keen to keep one of the two kittens.