It was all worth it in the end

A couple of months ago I promised Isabel she could have a Christmas party, and today the day finally rolled around. She's been really looking forward to it, and we'd done quite a lot of planning - bought a snowman tablecloth with matching plates and napkins, some party bag bits and pieces, and all of the food and drink. She and I worked pretty well together while Emsy had her nap - we set the table (complete with sparkly Christmas sprinkles, naturally!), prepared the homemade pizzas, and tidied the house prior to the arrival of a small group of her school friends.

The table, before the hooligans wrecked it!

I was pretty nervous before the party kicked off - I even had a dream the night before in which I forgot to make the dough for the pizzas. One of the things which exacerbated this was that last night, as I was kissing Isabel good night, she looked up and said "it's my Christmas party tomorrow", then grinned and hugged herself and said "I love this feeling!". Oh, the pressure! If I hadn't been worried before, I was after that!

When we got up this morning I wondered for a minute if we'd even be able to go ahead, such was the state of the snow. As it was I had to cancel Emily's paediatric appointment for a second time because the main road down the hill into Wycombe was closed. However, since the party attendees were all local to us it turned out that most people could walk, so we went ahead with only two cancellations (including Isabel's best friend, but she weathered this storm pretty well).

Our house in the snow

And everything went pretty well - we played a few games (classics like Pass The Parcel, What's The Time Mr Wolf?, and the tray memory game) and then had a tea of pizza, garlic bread, crisps and cucumber, followed by mini Yule logs, mince pies and Nigella's Malteser traybake (looks very homemade, tastes lush!). The only slightly odd moment was that they had a conversation about death while eating their pizza, which was not really what I expected of a group of five and six year olds! Are they mature, or just bizarre? I'm reserving judgment for now. And after some post-food dancing and the distribution of Secret Santa pressies, they departed into the snowy night, gifts and party bags in hands. Cooking Christmas lunch is going to be a breeze after today!