The School Fete

lol don’t I have imaginative titles today. In the last post I recapped up to Saturday, which was the day of the school fete. We take Lukas every year and he always really looks forward to it. I will give the school credit every year they try new things, and every year whatever the weather the school fete is a lot of fun (at least for the kids lol, not so sure about the poor teachers lol). This year the three highlights were Archery, Mr Alexander’s Travelling Show and the school’s first ever horticultural show. Basically they sent a letter home a few days before informing parents they were holding the show at the fete. There were multiple categories you could enter under let me see if I can remember them since I seem to have misplaced the list. Photography – The Natural World (plants, trees, flowers, stones, sand, dirt etc), Miniature Gardens (constructed out of anything of your choosing), Vegetable sculpture, Cake decorating, 6 Miniature Cakes, Home-grown plants (flowers, herbs etc), Home-grown Vegetables and Handpicked Flower Arranging. It was 20p an entry and you could enter as many under each category as you wanted. There were points awarded for 1st, 2nd and 3rd places and trophies for the most points overall and the judges pick for best in show. Since I was sick and we had 2 days notice Lukas decided just to enter the photography contest. He was absolutely thrilled that even though it had been raining I was willing to take him into the garden on Friday night to take some photos, although not quite as thrilled as he was to be allowed to play with my brand new camera. Anyway since I was ill and couldn’t sleep I sat up on Friday night and started trying to print his photos. I went to a speed scrap at DSDI and got some of the other ladies to help me pick which ones he could submit. The printer decided to be an absolute pain and it pretty much took me the whole night fighting with it to get it to print out his pictures. We ended up entering 6 different photos and had to rush a little because of the deadline for submitting entries. Do you want to see the ones that he submitted?

 

After we had submitted his photos we started wondering around and having a look at everything, for some reason they decided to have everything down at the bottom of the field this year instead of in the playground and classrooms like they usually do. Our first stop was the Strawberries and Cream stall. The strawberries were all grown in the schools allotment, which Lukas couldn’t wait to tell me all about. So we each bought a bowl of strawberries and cream (except Lukas who just had strawberries, for some reason he decided he didn’t want the strawberry and marshmallow kebabs even though he likes marshmallows and strawberries separately). Unfortunately that was the wrong decision as his strawberries were super sharp and now he’s decided he hates them again, oh well it was nice having him like a different fruit while it lasted. Our next stop was the cake stall lol what can I say none of us had breakfast and Lukas had been going on about the cake stall for days before hand. He wanted a fairy cake, with pink icing and sprinkles and nothing else would do. I didn’t get a chance to photograph it before he devoured it. I decided as the last second that I wanted a chocolate brownie as well. I also forgot to photograph that but it was very yummy. Logan wouldn’t have eaten it if we had bought one him so we didn’t bother and there was nothing that Mark liked the look off. Then Lukas started whining that he wanted a drink so we headed over to that stall. He got a blackcurrant fruit shoot and we bought an orange one for Logan (since that’s what Nan has and he always swipes). This was the first time we had ever given him a plastic bottle to drink from outside, and he didn’t do bad at all hardly sprinkled any over himself, also didn’t spit any out which made a nice change. Since the BBQ was up and running we decided to buy some burgers before the rush started. Cheeseburgers for everyone except Logan who was starting to get sleepy. We found a bench to sit on so we could eat them unfortunately they were not great. Mine was still slightly pink inside and I can’t eat anything that doesn’t look fully cooked and Lukas couldn’t finish his. They had been cooking them inside in the oven and then finishing them off on the BBQ so not sure why they were not cooked through. I think Lukas not finishing his had a lot less to do with the actual food than it did with his desire to go and have a go at the Archery. It was £2 for 6 arrows, and the guys running it were nice enough to let me stand right beside him and take photos. I haven’t really used the sports setting on my camera before but some of the pictures turned out great. I only wish Lukas would have slowed down a little bit so I could have had a nice one of him holding the bow with the arrow in it. That seemed to be the theme for the day though, he raced through every activity and we didn’t manage to catch hardly any of them on film. School fete’s always seem to be a bit of a bust for me when it comes to photos, he has absolutely no patience at all and just can’t wait to get one thing over with and move on to the next. Anyway here’s a couple of the photos of him that I really liked.

  

After that was over we moved onto the games, we started with the one organised by Lukas’s class, some form of tennis. You had a choice of three balls from the selection available and use a plastic tennis racket to smack the balls over the tennis net and into the hula hoops on the other side. There were different prizes depending on what colour hoop your ball landed in. Lukas had 2 turns at this and managed to win a kazoo and a plastic horn thing. Then we moved onto the game organised by the other year 3 class – Feed The Chicken. They built a chicken out of paper and crepe paper, and the goal was the throw the bean bags into it’s mouth and feed the chicken. Lukas missed with all three bean bags and the poor chicken went hungry. But he won a prize anyway a little plastic clapper toy which Logan claimed as his. Here’s a photo from the tennis and a photo of the chicken I never bothered to take any of his prizes.

Next game was a bouncy horse race, this one seems to be there every year and Lukas loves it. They have space hoppers with little horse covers on them. This year you had to have someone to race with and since nobody else was around at the time and we were trying to avoid a Lukas meltdown, he got to race against Logan. I sat Logan on the horse and I bounced him and it down the course. I still don’t know how any of us managed to get down the course because we were all laughing so much including the teacher running it (Lukas’s teacher from last year). It was a tie between them but Lukas got a gold winner sticker which he was incredibly proud of. I was not exactly thrilled that Mark hadn’t bothered to take any photographs of the race. Logan thought the whole thing was so funny, but he was not very impressed that he had to go back into the buggy afterwards. Luckily for us he was getting tired so we were able to bribe him with his bottle. Our next game was a Sand Sieving challenge. Next we headed back over to the cake stall, we were going to buy another cake for Lukas so I could photograph it, but they were all out of pink icing with sprinkles, so he decided that he didn’t want one at all. The last game he ended up playing with a Treasure Hunt. There were cups full of sand and sieves, you had to sieve the cup of sand and retrieve the prize from the bottom of the cup. Lukas won a packet of sweets, which he was quite pleased about. Here’s the photo we managed to get of Logan sitting on the bouncy horse after the race and one of Lukas doing the treasure hunt.

He wasn’t at all interested in getting his face painted this year, but he did say that he wanted to try the miniature golf and the obstacle course, but by then the magic show was starting so we headed over in that direction. This next part is important to remember for later. I parked the buggy next to the benches and sat on the floor next to it. Lukas sat beside me and Mark decided to stay standing so he could get some better photos. We chose to sit there for two reasons. The first is because it was the only place we could park the buggy and give Logan a way to see what was going on (although that didn’t end up mattering because by the time the show started he was fast asleep). The second is that Lukas is a fidget he finds it really difficult to sit still. I often choose to sit on the floor in places with him rather than have him disturb other people. The show was quite good even if the magician was slightly rude and patronising. He got annoyed when the kids sat on the floor at the front started screaming when he started juggling a sword and then later a set of knives. Most of them were nursery school age, stupid idiot why would you not expect them to be scared you are going to cut them if you drop them. But apart from that the show was quite clever, lots of optical illusions, a balancing act involving 2 chairs and a plank of wood, some juggling and lots of loud music and him talking. I am not going to upload photos of the show here, but there is an album on my Flickr account called Lukas’s School Fete 2010 if you want to see them. Then he got out the unicycle. Which the kids were not too sure about at all. The panicked a little bit and his answer to that? Get out a bigger unicycle and tell the kids that they were going to be the road as he rode it down the centre of the benches. If you were paying attention at the beginning, yes exactly where we were sitting. This is where is gets kind of interesting. We go to get up and because we have been sat there for so long, my leg is asleep. I whisper to Mark that I am not sure how I am going to get up because my leg is asleep, it’s funny to both of us and Lukas. I use the buggy to get up and I am standing there trying to get some feeling back into my leg because it’s completely numb. The stupid idiotic entertainer strides over, says get out of my road and shoves me. Already unbalanced because I couldn’t feel one of my legs, I went down, hard. With everyone watching, except the entertainer whose already walked off back to his unicycle. I am trying really hard to get back up again, and the pain in my ankle is unbelievable. Somehow I managed to get up without throwing up despite really wanting to and Mark helps me over to sit on one the benches. I am feeling dizzy and sick, and my ankle has swollen right up. The only thought in my head, how the hell are we going to walk home. We had someone coming at 1:30. I’ll be honest the guy should think himself very lucky that his wheel was rubber and I am allergic to latex, because it was damn tempting to shove him off the unicycle or whack him with it. Lukas’s head teacher was standing right near me when I fell, she was really concerned bless her, I would have been concerned if I was her too she’s a tiny little thing I could have crushed her lol. I was quite proud of the fact that I didn’t swear as I fell, or cry. While I was sitting on the bench they announced the trophy winners for the Horticultural Show. A Little boy in Lukas’s class called Bartosz won best overall for his marrow boat in the vegetable sculpture category and the award for overall points went to another little boy whose name I can’t remember. With a lot of support from the pushchair we wondered over to the tent to see if any of Lukas’s photo entries had placed and were surprised and thrilled to see not one but two separate awards. A second place certificate for his apple photo and a third place for his white flower photo. We were so very proud of him. I had been worried that they wouldn’t believe that he had taken the photographs himself. Lukas takes better photographs than I do, he truly has a talent for getting great shots, maybe it’s luck or maybe he just has some great perspective that I don’t but I have a lot of photographs that no-one believes he took. He’s been allowed to play and take photos with my various digital cameras since he was two years old. He’s never used a crappy kid safe digital camera always whatever one I was using, I trust him that he won’t break them. In all honesty there aren’t many things that Lukas is ever likely to win awards in, he tried really really hard but he’s not great at sports or even learning based things. So we were all so very proud of him for getting those certificates. Even if I do think the first place winner cheated lol. It was a 3D collage of the pyramids, in my opinion a collage is not a photograph and I think it’s kind of unfair that they can win with a photograph out of book that they have altered. But that’s ok because now that we know they aren’t going to be strict about whether the “photograph” has been taken by the child, we can take a great photo and get out the digi supplies. If a collage can win first place why not a digital scrapbook layout. Lukas knows how to use Photoshop so it’s not like I would be doing it for him. I also can’t believe we completely forgot to take any photos of the other entries, the vegetable sculptures were all really clever, cauliflower sheep, a butterfly and the marrow boat were our favourites and the miniature gardens were adorable. Lukas fell in love with the little garden built completely out of Lego and went on the whole way home that he wished he had built one. So that was our school fete for this year, it was definitely memorable. Logan really seemed to enjoy all the sounds and smells. Lukas was upset that there was no cake decorating or pony rides this year but he had a great time. I wish that my ankle hadn’t got hurt so that he could have played a few more games but overall we had a great day. I will admit though that yet again I was grateful for how well behaved the boys were, I was still feeling quite ill before we went to the school fete, and by the time we walked home my ankle was making me feel sick to my stomach. I did it because I had to but within an hour of being home it was too swollen and painful to even put any weight on and Mark had to go to work at 4pm. I had also had no sleep the night before so I was starting to feel pretty crappy. Lukas went downstairs with Nan and Logan had a nap with me. Lukas was really sweet he got bottles for Logan and helped me keep Logan from climbing. They were both really good. Since I originally published this, I have added the photos and decided that the post needed to be split up a little more, because it was far too long. In case you are wondering what’s different about it.