My new favourite

4years 61days

..... photo of Katie that is. It captures a "calm before the chaos" of our day but more than that its her as she is at 4years 2months old. She cannot help but dance. In an empty studio, she will dance her heart away. As she did while we waited for her ballet Christmas party.

The empty studio and elegant little miss slightly belies the party. It was a fabulous time of wonderful amusing dancing crazy. Agadoo. The pizza hut song. Katie's first can-can. Balloon races. Musical Christmas dancing-statues. Rudolph conga. Beautiful fairy skipping. Just a few little sweetie treats and a lot of Christmas cuddles from her wonderful teachers and friends. Ballet this year has become an even bigger part of both our lives. I love that we found the school we have. Its brilliant in terms of technique and the incredible work they put into each student. But its a family too. Its professionalism with a wonderful heart to it. The party today was all those things.

After ballet, we walked (skipped on Katie's part) into town. We did the last couple of bits of Christmas shopping before we went for our Christmas theatre trip. We went to see Little Red Riding Hood. Katie quite liked it, although it was a bit too much of the bad bits of pantomime for both our liking. She really liked that just across from us was one of her good friends. Who we were getting a lift back with.

They were giving us a lift because this afternoon was the church Christmas party. 40 children in a big party room at the leisure centre. When we arrived there was a huge paper "snowball" fight going on. They played pass the parcel, they made marshmallow snowmen, tree decorations, played ladders (a much loved game from my childhood!) turned leaders into human Christmas trees. They had the Christmas story. They had a yummy hot tea. Then Katie made her first Christingle. She took so much care with it. And in between it all, she twirled and danced with Cousin2.