Saturday's light party

It's a wet and miserable day here, 

not at all like last Saturday evening 

when I volunteered at the Light Party

 in the city's football stadium.

face painters receiving their instructions

The light party is an event put on by 

the Acts of Kindness charitable trust as an alternative 

to the trick or treating of halloween.

It was nice and warm out on the field under the roof.

on the big screen - a *Kapa Haka group on stage 

A gold coin entry and various stalls around about

 selling eats and drinks, at (mostly) reasonable prices.

Non stop entertainment on stage all evening

and lots of bouncy castles, races, games and such like

 for those who are young or young at heart.

Chloe and her mate

Youngest grand daughter Chloe and her friend 

were volunteers as well, on the face painting booth.

the crowd coming in - gate is at the centre right

Their younger brothers and sisters were 

somewhere in the crowd. During the course 

of the evening we went for two 

Guinness Book of world records. 

The first one popping bubble wrap 

and the  second was for holding your hands in a heart shape.

I haven't heard how we got on but it was a lot of fun,

I was roped in as a marshal for that as well :)

tea or coffee and cake $2-00

My main job was working on a tea and coffee booth

and I must admit I had a ball and will 

be volunteering again next year.

The photo above was taken at the end of 

the evening just before we cleaned up.

***********

*Kapa Haka is part of the cultural identity of 

most, if not all, of our primary schools in New Zealand.

I've put an explanation from Wikipedia below.

*Kapa Haka -
Kapa haka is the term for Māori performing arts and literally means to form a line (kapa) and dance (haka). Kapa haka is an avenue for Maori people to express and showcase their heritage and cultural Polynesian identity through song and dance.
Kapa haka - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kapa_haka


Well I hope you all have a wonderful week.
I have a very busy one coming up 
but today's outing has been cancelled so this morning
I took the opportunity to write out some Christmas cards!
I know, I know, but November is a busy, busy, month for me.
Diana

A 'cluster' of scooters

What do you call half a dozen scooters waiting for their boys to come and ride them? A clutch? A group? A pile? A flock? A herd? I don't know but I think a 'cluster' sounds good.

On a recent Sunday afternoon, rather cool and threatening to rain, I went with a couple of other adults and took our Sunday School boys to the 'dinosaur' park for a couple of hours of 'scootering'. Dinosaur refers to the fact that the slide is in the form of a large dinosaur and boy, do the kids love it. Once upon a time there was also a tearooms decked out like Noah's Ark but that is gone now unfortunately, but there are snake swings and a large whale for climbing over as well as other imaginative climbing stuff and of course the skateboard/scooter/bike course.

We started with a bite of lunch, we bought chips to supplement the lunches the boys had brought with them and we were soon joined by the inevitable gulls on the scavenge. I think they probably got as much of the lunch as the boys ate. Then it was off to the scooter track - oh boy. What fun. Round and round, up hill and down hill, jumps and other stuff that only little boys know how to do.  Challenging each other and doing 'sets' and generally showing off. Real male bonding stuff. It was great seeing them all interacting together.

The youngest two got tired before the others and eventually had us pushing  swings and helping them onto climbing equipment. All in all it was a good afternoon though.

Did I say the girls didn't come? They were going to, they arrived at church with their scooters but in the end opted to go to the 'Party in the park' with their parents and do more girly stuff like face painting and balloon animals and other much more genteel activities. No doubt we'll hear all about it next Sunday.                               

 Wishing you all a wonderful week.