End year functions, Christmas parties and more

This weekend was one of those crazy ones where you think it was weekend but you are not really sure cause you were just so busy that you didn't spend much time at home.

Friday night we finished up at holiday camp swim school. We have had such special instructors this year and both kids have really made so much progress in the last 3 months. I am very grateful that we decided to stick it out even when its a real pain to take them cause its quite far from school and because it means that we get home late on Tuesdays with very grumpy tired kids. The reward for completing the camp was a chocolate medal and a beautiful embroidered t-shirt. The kids LOVE t-shirts with logos and slogans on so this was such a treat for them.

I promised the kids that we can attempt gingerbread houses this year and although the houses are not made from ginger bread biscuits (I cheated and used Golden Cloud's cookie mix) it was such a fun project. What I really loved that it kept all of us busy for quite a long time. Mr W demanded a break from all this baking after about 1.5 hours of decorating :)

Saturday afternoon was our work year end function. As always there was lots of laughs, lots of pressies and fun to be had. As usual the "unwanted" gift was the hit of the party. The rules state that you have to bring an unwanted but unused and unopened present to the party to swop with someone else's unwanted gift. The gifts are wrapped so you never know what you are getting. There was a a set of wooden cats, the ugliest candle I have ever seen and a really old unopened board game from 2005 that made their rounds. The gifts are REALLY awful but its so funny ending up with someone else's unwanted gifts. Printing is an incredibly stressful industry to work in with tight deadlines and incredibly demanding clients. I love it that at the end of the year we can all sit around a table and just be friends in spite of it all. 

We finished off the weekend with our monthly dinner club's Christmas party. I can't remember when last I spent the entire day in the pool with the kids. I love our dinner club buddies. We are all so different but every month the conversation just picks up where we left off last month and we spend the entire day/evening chatting away.

What an incredibly nice South African Summer day. The entire family was in bed before 8 last night ...tired and happy.