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Saturday 20 October 2012

Olympic Fever

Olympic Fever...

THE OLYMPIC TORCH RELAY CAME THROUGH OUR VILLAGE!!!!!!!!!!!

 Woweeeeee, the torch came within about 100m of our house!

 
I actually cried i was so excited - I know, sad!
 
 
So in honour of this once in a lifetime event - we had a wee party...I promise, this one was wee.
 
 
Luckily it was my day off and Ian managed to get the afternoon off too. So we had my Mum and our friends The McGaugies and the Caleys (minus Adam who couldn't get out of work) over to watch the relay pass and have a mini-olympics and garden picnic. . Unbelievably, the weather was good to us - T-shirts, sunscreen and hats!
 
So about an hour before the relay was due in our street we took our spaces.  Out on the street there were thousands of people - the entire High School + about 4 primary schools + residents + everyone else who lived in the area and didn't go to work that day!!!
 
 
Mum, Ian and Heather
 
 
 
 
We tried to explain to Heather, Rory and Ben (all age 2) that the Olympic Torch was coming by and that it would be really exciting. Heather seemed so bored and confused and kept asking to see the torch - I found out later that she thought it was a flashlight type torch we were waiting for! How disappointing that would have been.
 
Well, we were there an hour early but we picked the right seats as it turned out the torch handover was about to happen right beside us. Woweee - we had no idea! (It happened months ago and I'm still getting excited writing about it).
 
 

I have to admit the kids were getting bored and poor Claire (who was heavily pregnant) could really have done with a seat whilst we waited.
 
Then it arrived...
        .....The Metropolitan Police convoy, people selling merchandise, BMX trickster guy, the bus convey of promoters, the Torch bearer's bus...loud music, dancing, flag waving, cheering and lots and lots of smiles. It was so cool.

 Family snap, Heather trying to avoid it as usual





The street just got busier and busier






Me and my Mummy - she was as excited as me!




 
 
 
 






 Me and my girl waving our flags




Claire and Rory





 




 
 





 
Our wee flag wavers were getting a bit bored - and then it all arrived!



 
The start of the Met Convoy vehicles
 
 
The sponsor vehicles arrive
 
 
Olympic Torch Bearers on their bus
 

 
 
 
The Coca Cola Bus
 
 
 
Mum was given an Olympic bottle of Coke! Woohoo
 
 
 
 
This is when we realised we were right at the handover point - for the next lot of pictures you'll need to look hard to see the flame and handover. My Mum did manage to get an amazing picture of the handover because she stood right in front of the camera that took live feeds of the relay  - for a few seconds, the world will have seen my Mum instead of the handover...ha ha ha
 
 


 
 
 
 
 
 
Mini Olympics and Picnic
 

Gold, Silver and Bronze
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
Chris gets the Egg and Spoon race underway
 
 
 
It honestly took ages to get them all ready at the same time.
 
 
 
 

Willy Wonka Party ~ Evan turns One!

Wow...how did it happen? How did my little boy get to be age one already? I just don't know where the year has gone? The last twelve months have flown past in a whirlwind of laughter, sleepless nights, adventures and chickenpox...


So to celebrate our little cutie turning one we had a bit of a party!





When Heather turned one we had a big garden party in the theme of a Mad Hatters Tea Party. It was the most beautiful day and the sun shone all day long (a rarity in Scotland) thank goodness because there's no way we would all have fitted in the house. I really must post the pics from that one too!

We decided, long before Evan was born, that if we were lucky enough to have another baby, we would have a Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory party as we thought it would be cool. However we struggled for a while to come up with fun things to do for the theme - we have looked through EVERY Wonka themed party on the internet - I am not kidding! (Alice in Wonderland theme was way easier to get things for - you could buy loads of bits and bobs online) So, after a lot of thought and research and coming up with nothing we just let our imaginations go wild and we came up with a couple of cool things.

Ian decided to make all the downstairs rooms themed, to have wonka ticket invitations (naturally) and factory gates at the front of the house. We decided to make a cool Violet too. I thought it would be cool to make our hall look like the inside of a factory and to make EVERYTHING on the food table edible! I am known for having crazy ideas but I am never quite sure how to make them a reality - this is where my FANTASTIC other half steps in and works his magic!!!

After many, many weeks of buying supplies and many, many evenings of printing, building and constructing - Ian had made ALL of the props. (I would love to say I helped but that would be a big fat lie - I was just bogged down doing work.)


Evan's birthday is September so we would have to have the party in the house - there's no way of knowing if it would be sunny, hailstorms, snowing or blowing a gale! We ordered a bouncy castle (with a rain cover) for the garden to keep all the kids busy.

We went to a lot of effort for this party and had invited about 60 people (no idea where they were all going to fit...) and had all the food ordered and ready to collect on the morning of the party. We were really excited and everyone said they were coming...but then...2 days before the party...CHICKENPOX!!!!!!!!!

We couldn't believe it. I could have cried. Poor Heather was covered in spots. The wee soul was ok and, fortunately, had quite a mild case of chickenpox. We had to inform everyone we had invited - sadly 24 people cancelled...we were absolutely gutted! As it was the day before the party, we couldn't change the food order. We had a bouncy castle and candy floss machine coming and now loads of kids weren't coming. So that everything didn't go to waste, we sent out some emergency invites and luckily our wonderful friends stepped up.

So, here is what we came up with...


Cake making with my baking partner (and amazing friend) Tracy, the night before.


 Tracy and I making a rainbow Birthday Cake - you can see the science equipment on the cupboards in this picture. We also had safety warning signs up too (see behind the cooker). Excuse the Santa pinny and I'm still in my work clothes!
 

The themed rooms:

The Inventing Room


I borrowed a bunch of lab equipment and safety glasses from school so that we could make the room look like there were experiments on the go. We ordered mini lab coats and dry ice too. The beakers were filled with coloured water and had dry ice in them so they were bubbling over and 'smoking'...it looked absolutely awesome (sadly we forgot to photograph them but hopefully one of our friends did). We also ordered special spoons so that you could put the dry ice in drinks for the same effect - too cool!





The only experiment picture I have - it was the night before and we were just checking it worked.

Ian printed out images of science equipment and pinned them to the cupboards. He also made a large tube and printed out Augustus Gloop and made it look like he was stuck! We also hired a candyfloss machine too.

We had little lab cots and goggles for the wee ones.


Before everyone arrived we took some pics of everything but discovered after about 30 minutes that the memory card wasn't in the camera - argh! We don't have many pics of the kitchen as a result, hopefully friends do though.






















 
 
Ian and Tracy were experts at it...Les, not so much!
 
 
The TV Room

The TV room was paid homage to Mike Teevee. Ian made a cardboard cut out of a TV and we bought some wonka dressing up stuff; oompa loompa wig, wonka purple hat and crazy glasses. We tried to get pictures of everyone (especially the kids) in the dressing up stuff  whilst holding the TV. They are brilliant!





Cam and Heather







Jenny and Grampa








Auntie Leanne and Uncle Paul







Uncle Gordon and Auntie Lessel





























 A great Family portrait!




...and the special Birthday Boy
Some other pictures:

The Sweetie Shop!

The living room was a sweetie shop.











The Hall

We made the Hall into a factory. The tubes appeared to be travelling through the walls and ceiling and looked as though they were all filled with sweets (I have a very, very clever husband).




 



 
Can you guess who this is meant to be?






 The factory rules...Health and Safety is very important!

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Chocolate Room

 

A lot of green icing was required and a huge amount of chocolate icing too. The little trees were really tricky to make!!! 


Ian spent a few evenings out in the garage sculpting the foundation for the landscape out of polystyrene. It was then transferred to the dining room table (2m x 1m). We then spent 5 hours covering it in a huge amount of icing and chocolate and then awe added all the finishing touches.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Here are some pictures of it coming together 

The table starts to take shape - it took around 5 hours to ice and assemble. It took a HUGE AMOUNT of icing. We worked out that the calorie content of the entire table was in the region of
100,000 cals!!!


The chocolate icing had the most calories - it was around 35,000 alone!
 
 


We painted melted chocolate  to create the waterfall - Ian put half maltesars in it to create bubbles - it looked cool!



Toadstools were too cute...Tunnocks Tea Cake covered in icing and on a marshmallow.



By far, the hardest thing to do was create these trees!!! It took quite a few evenings to get them to work. Icing wrapped around wire.
 
The cake was the top part in this photo. Little cupcakes to look like grass (first time using a grass nozzle - worked well). Ian and Trace created lots of lolly-shapes out of sweets.



















A couple of other pictures from the day

Uncle Paul's first turn on a bouncy castle!!

 
 
Grampa and Colin
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


The A Team 
 
The Grans

 
 
 
 
 
 
my wee team plus our fabby friends waving bye to Granny and Grampa...not everyone was given such a formal farewell!!