Life's just not fair

We've had a very busy Sunday today. We said goodbye to our guests this morning before heading to a 4th Birthday party in the centre of Brussels - our friends literally live 100m from the Manneken Pis. From there we headed to the Theatre to watch the children's charity Christmas concert of The Snowman.
The first part of the show involved a young person's guide to woodwind and percussion which Olivia was very interested in and has asked if she can learn to play a musical instrument properly, so perhaps we'll look into it in the new year.

Before the interval the winners of The Snowman drawing competition were announced. Olivia worked really hard on her entry and her entry was placed on a private Facebook page. She has been checking the page for weeks to see the other entries and although there were some good entries (there was no age limit) she (and we) really believed that hers was in the top three. As the winners were called out and asked to collect their prizes on the stage I watched Olivia closely and I actually had butterflies in my stomach. When her name wasn't called out the look of confusion and disappointment on her face was quite heartbreaking and I did everything I could to hold back the tears as my husband enveloped her in his arms. The eight year old who won had drawn a truly lovely picture and it was easy to see why she won but it was very difficult for us to maturely explain to our daughter why a five year old and four year old who had drawn nothing but matchstick men and blobs and scribbles of colour got a prize and she didn't. It just didn't seem fair. However Olivia was very gracious and soon forgot about the whole episode when she spotted some of her friends during the interval. I hope they introduce age groups for the competition next year as the rest of the show after the interval was really lovely and the kids really enjoyed it, so it would be nice to go back.