Sunday, December 18, 2016

Baby Gym Christmas Party 2016

The baby gym was having a Christmas party for the kids.

When we arrived, the trainers had set up a Christmas tree, and different kind of gym equipment for kids to jump, crawl, climb, run, and have fun.

The party has gathered three group of kids. After an hour of the usual gym classes, the main trainer gathered everyone together and yelling for "Santa". They screamed 4 times before he finally arrived.

 Kids surrounded him. He asked if everyone was well behaved, and all of them said yes.

Santa called out name and handed each a gift. They girls waited patiently for their turn. Parents prepared the gift at the beginning of the party and gave them discretely to the trainer. I asked the trainer to include a gift for Aelig who was not in the baby gym program.

Soon Santa called out their names. This time, Awena was not afraid at all. She happily kissed Santa as requested.

 Awena got a pair of pajamas, as for Aelig, it was a gift I had long in mind.

This toy was more for Awena's age than for Aelig. But she showed her interested each time she saw it :  in someone's house, when we were in the doctor / dentist waiting room... I know this would please her.

As expected that, she claimed that this was her favorite gift so far. Awena was disappointed though. She was happy to have the pajamas, but when she saw this toy, she checked again, and said "there was no toy for me". She sneaked into her sister room when she was not around so that she could play with it. As a parent, I was sad to see one happy and the other one disappointed. Hopefully I could catch up on the real Christmas gathering.

Sunday, December 11, 2016

Company Christmas Event Dec 2016

This year my company year-end Christmas party was held in the Cité de Nantes. 

First we were invited to watch a show: three people playing music instruments while doing some acrobat, quite well done. The big daughter was glued to it the whole 1 hour, while the little one was following for 15 minutes then started climbing up and down from her seat.

After the show, we were handed two bags of snack for the kids, and the adults had to go through a long queue just to get a pastry and a hot drink. Food wise we can sense a huge budget cut compared to years before.

 We were told that some games areas were set up. The little one was intrigued by this book area, but since she didn't take a nap before coming, she became fussy quickly.

 The kids got their snack, while I was queuing for ours, managed to chit-chat with some coworkers. Later we played a game, quite easy, depending on the dice color we needed to blow down some fake colorful candles.

We were told then that there were more games upstairs. The kids were totally glued to as soon as they set foot in this area. The little one played with enthusiasm some cars and some trains that she had to put on those racks.

 What I loved the most was the Lego area. Tons of pieces of Lego for anyone to play with.

 Kids teamed up with their parents, constructed some crafts using Lego pieces, wrote down their team name, and I believed the organizers would choose a winner later.

 So many kids happy to find Lego pieces at their services.

 The big daughter was hooked to the train set for a while before joining her little sister.

When we left, the Christmas lighting was on, the girls was disappointed as they couldn't enter the area to get closed to Santa. By the way, due to budget cut, my company didn't invite Santa this year. I didn't know about this (I didn't go ask either), so I told my kids what we were going to see Santa. The big daughter accused of lying when we were about to go. Oh well, she will see Santa soon.