Christmassy Stuff

Today we went to the Christmas party at the German school. This involved recitals of songs and poems (in German, naturally), and a visit from Santa. It was all a little dull, made only slightly more exciting by the control freakery of the woman in charge - any time anything didn't go the tiniest bit to plan, she fretted dreadfully. She forgot to put the microphone down before shouting at the group of youngest children for touching something that they shouldn't have done, and causing eardrums in the audience to burst. When Santa came, parents had to provide presents, and S was told off for not writing the boys names "so that we can read them". I said that they were the ones without names, so it was easy.

After the recitals, there was a selection of snacks and other stuff - much of it German themed confections. I'd been shopping just before and bought some sushi, which made S cross, because she said it was inappropriate for a Christmas party. When we got there to put our stuff on the table, there was a much larger tray of sushi, so I felt redeemed. S said it didn't make a difference, and was still inappropriate.

A lost his present, almost immediately, and was sad (it was a toy car from the film Cars). He said he wanted one like D had - which was a Lightning McQueen, but there were no LMs left in the shop (originally he had a Mater). We took an unusual route home, to go to another branch (it was Longs Drugs, there are lots of them around, and I really must write an entry on pharmacies here). There were no LMs here either, but we got him a Luigi, and he was happy.

On the way home, we saw a sign that said Local Airport Children's Fair, so we went to have a look at what it was. It seems it was an attempt by the local airport (which is pretty large) to give something back to the community. Or, a cynic might say, to try to persuade local residents that they weren't so evil, and so when they finish moving the runway and making it bigger (so that it can handle Airbus A380s) then they really shouldn't mind, and it's only 50 feet closer to their houses (it's on the other side of the airport from us - if it was our side, I probably wouldn't make jokes). Which they might just buy from them and demolish anyway, so they can build another runway. And if they could wake you just a little earlier in the morning, you shouldn't complain too much. Because they've been nice to the kids.

Anyway, we queued at the start - I wondered if this was to pay, but we were given (age appropriate) raffle tickets for the boys, and wristbands, which allowed them to see Santa (again). There were three bouncy castles, which were so covered in children they looked like a throbbing mass of bodies - the castle itself was almost invisible. D was determined to go on one, so we allowed him. Within about 15 seconds he had to be taken off, having been injured. (The bouncy castles were free, and unsupervised).

We queued up to see Santa, and got a quite impressive bag of stuff - considering it was free - although a lot of stuff seemed to have airline logos on it. There was a pencil and a ruler with the airport on, and an inflatable aeroplane that said "Southwest Airlines" on it. (The food and drink was free as well - the glasses also said "Southwest Airlines" on it.)

The ethnic mix of the place was interesting - the vast majority of people there, probably 3/4 were African-American, then most of the rest were hispanic, a few asian, and I guess somewhere between 1% and 2 % were white non-hispanic - (as we have to say: hispanic is an ethnic, not a racial classification). Occasionally I liked around to see if I could see another white person, and usually I couldn't. It was the first time I've seen a black Santa. With dreadlocks.

There were kiddies fairground rides, including the world's slowest dodgems. The boys thought they were very exciting, even though when they moved it was at a very slow walking pace, and there wasn't much space, so most of the time all 5 cars were jammed in one corner of the ring, with parents pushing on the outside to try to separate them.

Then there was the raffle. And the raffle was (a) the most impressive raffle I've possibly ever seen and (b) free. There were lots of prizes, and none of them real duffers. The prizes were in age order, so they did 0-3 first, and then 4-8. There were quite a few bikes, an MP3 player, several remote control cars, and a bunch of other stuff. I was trying to work out the ticket to prize ratio, but we had 113 and 114. The winners included 114, 124, 106 and some others that were nearby. And then 113!!! We won a remote control car, from RadioShack. We had to run home and charge 6 AA batteries, so that I could play with it for 10 minutes, before they went flat. D and A did play first, but I think it was too complicated. They liked rescuing it when it got stuck.