Christmas Camp

Sunday we were all up, car packed, rooms rearranged for Dad to come in and decorate and in the car before 10am :). The journey was smooth and straightforward all the way with no stops at all until we reached Okehampton other than a quick dash into the Sainsburys at Bournmouth for tissues as no one seemed to have brought any and Scarlett – one of several people who seemed to bring a Camp Cold with them – had failed to bring any with her. I also picked up sugar, a forgotten essential for mulled wine and a Christmas cd as we didn’t have any Christmas music in the car and I felt like we should be listening to some. The Christmas cd was one of those ‘sounds like’ types though where the original artist was not the one singing the song so Ady took it back and despite my suggestion he buy a different one he just got a refund.

We wildlife spotted all the way, hoping for deer but not seeing any other than the five legged stone one along the way. We did see buzzards, kestrels, loads of other birds and a fox slinking along the side of a field of sheep.

Once at Okehampton we had nearly an hour to kill before we were allowed in the hostel. We’d driven through all sorts of weather conditions from no snow at all at home to the odd pocket of loads of snow in places. Okehampton had a dusting that had frozen so it looked very pretty and festive but was more ice than snow. We parked at the Co Op and I dashed in for some sandwiches which we ate in the car before heading to the hostel.

The manager greeted us with the news that the previous group had not actually exited the building yet. They were a religious gathering who wanted to have one last shared prayer before they left. So he made us a tea and a coffee and we sat and had a chat in the dining room with him while the cleaners finished tidying and the group said their prayers. He showed us round, explained the various bits of kitchen kit and then showed us the rooms which have been quite substantially upgraded since we were there back in 2005 and many are now en suite (the 2 and 4 bed at least, none of the 6 bed are). New flooring has been laid and new lighting in the lounge – we didn’t really like the new lighting actually as it made it too light of an evening so we took some lightbulbs out in the end to reduce the glare a bit. The disco lights were cool :).

Paul the hostel manager left us to it and we went round armed with white tac from the pound shop and our door signs to allocate rooms. I thought that took a lot of doing but actually removing the bloody white tac at the end of the week was probably harder work ;).

We got jacket potatoes in the oven, mulled wine in the soup tureen and first arrivers were with us – Kirsty & James, swiftly followed by Helen & Chris. I’ve lost track of who else arrived in which order other than of course Stella came very last over half way through the week.

Everyone else gradually arrived, rooms got filled with people, the jacket potatoes actually cooked and we sorted out toppings of cheese, beans, tuna and set up the servery.

We ate, we cleared up, we had cake, we drank tea, we drank wine, we played games, we knitted, we chatted, we stayed up far too late. I’m guessing you can guess who did which from that list ;).

Monday I got up far earlier than I’d have liked given the lateness of the night before as the big food shop for the week was being delivered between 9 and 11am. The only supermarket which would deliver to a business address was Tesco so I’d gone with that as we’d have not fitted a whole weeks worth of food shopping for 60 people in our car, I didn’t really fancy doing it in real life anyway – it would have been many, many trolleyfulls! We’d debated getting it delivered on Sunday but the window was 2-4pm on Sunday so too early, also we knew there would be more people around to help on Monday morning!

I was getting twitchy as the time moved towards 11am but it arrived just after. I later got a text message to tell me the shopping would be late (several hours after it had actually arrived) and when we got home yesterday there was a message on our landline answerphone to apologise for it being late – I’m guessing they did everything to avoid talking to an actual person! 😆

It was lots and lots of shopping, but people swung into action, we opened the fire exit direct into the kitchen and it was unloaded and put away in minutes :).

I realised we were missing a couple of necessary items and also wanted to get something else for my secret santa and gloves for all four of us. We *never* manage to keep gloves from winter to winter so I always end up buying pound shop pairs each year. Ali kindly agreed to be nominated adult for Davies and Scarlett should they need one as neither of them wanted to come with Ady and I so we headed down into Okehampton for gloves, the bits we needed and a couple of things for Ali. We also realised as we walked past a shop window that we’d forgotten crackers for Christmas dinner so bought ten boxes of those too. Felt very festive running about for last minute bits and very nice not to be doing it in the usual just-before-Christmas crowds – a definite plus to having Christmas early ;).

Back at the hostel Scarlett had been searching for ketchup and Davies had sprained his ankle – just as well we don’t leave them often ;). The ketchup had been found on a table, Scarlett made me laugh by accusingly saying ‘so it wasn’t on the shelf where you said it was!’ as if it had some sort of gps allowing me to know at all times where it was located, I’d simply said I had put it on the shelf! Davies had been attended by Dr Helen and prescribed rest which his little posse of mates were ensuring he took to the letter and waiting on him 😆

I think a group went out for a walk or a geocache but I stayed behind and along with various others got curry prepared and cooking for dinner.

Sarah and Abbie came along in time for dinner, which was lovely. I so wish Sarah still Home Educated, camps always feel like she is missing so it was great to have not one but two guest appearances from her, even if we couldn’t persuade her to stay over :).

Monday was deemed Birthday Night so out came the cakes spelling HAPPY BIRTHDAY, along with specially made cakes each for Scarlett, Alys, Jax and Alison. Gifts were given – thankyou to all who gave to Scarlett, I have no idea what was from whom but she loved everything she was given, the edible things lasted about an hour! 😆 and Alison and Jax were presented with their canvasses which were both gorgeous 🙂 I think they were as pleased with them as we all had been when we first saw them.
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Queue for cakes and then seconds of cakes and then wired children were released to continue rioting round the hostel while we did our own more peaceful version 🙂

Tuesday Stew Day 🙂

I didn’t leave the hostel but there was another walk that Ady and the kids joined in with. I love the mixing and mingling of groups, adults, children, pairs, trios and bloody great packs of people that morph and merge over the week. I’m rather getting ahead of myself, I intended the soppy sentimental bit to be at the end (and don’t think for a moment this brief foray into it excuses you from the round up dripping with love) but the walks were a great example of this with some kids and some adults going and some kids and some adults left behind with everyone in each venue assuming responsibility for those around them regardless.

The Latin etc. gang had brought along loads of crafting stuff so lots of us joined in with that. I made a fimo charm thing and helped my two with their dyed squares. Later Scarlett and I made Latin etc more Goddard etc with added craziness as we tried to dye a purple streak each in our hair. It didn’t really take but I enjoyed wearing a bit of tin foil and Scarlett loved sitting with her head dipped in a bucket! 😆
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People appeared to peel and chop veg, make dumplings and get stuff happening. I made a pile of mince pies on the basis if I was in the kitchen anyway keeping an eye on stew I might as well be doing something else useful.

Stew of course means the usual ceremonial Dumpling Tossing, by now a proper NicCamps tradition. So Scarlett and Alison were summonded, Rachel came along too and after the vegetarians frankly poor beginning we carnivores showed them how it’s done. Loved the hermatic sealing of the veggie stew and creation of splashback for this. For the record we lost fewer dumplings than they did ;).

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Far too much morphing of days into each other to provide more details than that…

Wednesday was Pennywell day. We’d loved this five year ago and at last Christmas camp several of us had watched the video of it with teary eyed nostalgia so it was fairly instrumental in us booking Okehampton hostel again. It was further away than I remembered. We all left on time having given everyone more than sufficient leeway for working on Home Ed time after us being rather tardy for the Planetarium last year. I’m so sneaky 😉 of course it would only work this once as next time everyone will assume I have added time and not bother leaving when I say. D’oh!

So we arrived, were held in the foyer next to a sign welcomming us as ‘Goddard Home Educators’ very laughable given I barely Home Educate any Goddards let alone anyone else 😆 Eventually I was ushered in to pay while the rest of the group were taken away by Mark The Elf. And a very enthusiastic elf he was too. I suspect given some of his play narrating (he was also a narrator, guide to the cafe and a waiter) he is a Believer and I wonder how much of his vim was due to it being only day two of the nativity experience but he gave me a run for my money in perkiness and optimism ;).

The barn we were herded to for eating lunch was freezing. It had a single heat source which we gathered around and ate lunch while the kids admired the animals and the bouncy castle. There were goats, sheep, pigs, piglets, ducks and various birds. The animal enclosures were rather hilariously entitled with different animals (pigs had DONKEYS, sheep had GOATS and so on) but once you’d got past that – and we as WWOOFers of the future were able to clarify for anyone unsure 😉 it was great to be able to get up close to them. Scarlett cuddled ducks, I had a quick cuddle of a pig and lots of the children bounced on the bouncy castle.
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Next to the Nativity Barn where we were slightly dismayed to realise we would be sharing the experience with another group 🙁 This meant we didn’t get to have a Joseph or one of the innkeepers or wise men from our group. To be honest I suspect this wasn’t actually an issue. Scarlett wanted to be Mary for the sole reason she wanted to ride on the donkey, Davies wanted to be a shepherd for the sole reason he wanted to carry a lamb and judging by the whispers between the children and the hands shooting up those were the main desired parts all round.

Fran was nominated to be Mary – a shame that she was deemed too big to ride on the donkey so I saw lots of the girls who ended up being shepherds or angels muttering about her not getting to ride the donkey anyway but she did a beautiful job complete with many facial expressions and other dramatic effects. The angel Gabriel was Elinor who did a fab job in the same sort of garment Em and co ended up wearing on the M5 later in the week, Catie did a splendid job of singing like a proper angel, Tilda won everyone’s hearts as an angel in DMs, Mary directed Joseph who was half her size, the massive posse of shepherds with Claudia as my favourite grabbing handfuls of strawbale out of the ‘shepherds hill’ did their trooping round after the cuddly toy sheep and Ben (who always wins my vote for comedy value after his Centerparcs escapades in January) stole the show for me by responding to Mark the Elf’s question of how Mary might feel waking to find an angel in her bedroom with a loud ‘ARGH!!!!’ 😆 It was classic kids nativity play stuff, how fab we HE parents don’t miss out on it after all :).
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We outsung everyone, with particular mention to the descant singers on the carols and then went to see Santa. The kids got the usual tat – Scarlett swapped her Secret Diary with Libby for the younger girls cuddly toy monkey, Davies got a truck which I suspect is already lost. I got a picture with Santa 🙂
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After some milling about near the reindeer Mark the Elf came over and asked if we wanted to see the Christmas film. I confessed what we really wanted was a hot drink so we went through to the cafe for tea, coffee, mulled wine and mince pie for adults and squash and biscuits for children. Scarlett became an honorory grown up for a cup of tea, I suspect a few other children did too. Mark the Elf came to chat to some of us about how great Home Ed is. Not sure if he thinks everything is great or if he was sincere but he was enthusiastic nonetheless.

I think most of us decided to go to House of Marbles and ended up in a convoy there. We were responsible for a wrong turn and an all the way round the roundabout waving at the people behind us turning and Chris did a wrong lane at the roundabout move too but we all got there. Its a fab place and they dealt well with the onslaught of about 35 children into their breakable environment. We pressed buttons, cooed at amazing marble runs, watched the making marbles demo and succumbed to buying a few.
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We headed back with me realising we would be among the last back and probably people would be waiting on me for dinner prep commencement. Was really chuffed to see a start had been made on onion chopping :).

We launched straight into pasta meals with rather more options than had previously been planned being made but everyone seemed to have something to eat :).

As is traditional on ‘Christmas Eve’ we started prepping veg for the following day so potatoes, carrots, parsnips were peeled and chopped and crosses were put in sprouts. We had a crack team of kitchen crew who got it all going on and included Scarlett. I love that she had a hand in making that massive dinner for the masses :).
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Veg all done we headed upstairs and it ended up being the night the gamers were up til about 3am and the rest of us were up pondering all sorts of deep stuff (we had Jonathan with us for quite a while) before getting all tangled up with the wool puzzle Jax had brought along. The final handful went to bed just before the rest of the hostel woke for the morning. I insist it is not morning until it is daylight… but it’s fair to say we’d have put Santa off of stopping….

Thursday Christmas!!!! We woke to a snowfall proclaiming the real deal for the day. I’d had all of 2.5 hrs sleep so was not on top form but had a shower and got dressed intending heading to the kitchen to get cracking on dinner. The lure of the snow proved far too tempting though and after a cup of tea I put on coat, gloves and boots and went outside instead having stuck the ovens on to pre-heat.

A fantastic snowball fight ensued between James, Wayne, Zoe, Chris and I with Ady on camera duty. Some of the kids were doing stuff with icicles and snowmen while some (Poppy, Skye, Davies, Maddy, Marcus, Eve) joined in. The snow was powdery and hard to clump together to form balls but we had a bloody good go and a really good laugh.
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Back inside we buckled down and the Kitchen Krew did basting, dealing with the Crazy Oven (I have a nasty burn on my thumb and a lesser one on my wrist, Zoe got an injury too but we eventually showed that oven who was the boss), writing motivational notes on the clippy thing and generally getting everything happening. Alison and I made pastry, Zoe made stuffing balls and peas aside we were on track for our 2.15pm prediction.

After dashing off to get dressed for dinner and getting James on carving duty we decided to do crackers first and the noise of so many of our wonderful friends singing and toasting each other with Christmas wishes was quite overwhelming. The memory of standing behind the hot plate singing along with Rudolph will stay with me forever :).

The peas finally boiled, everything came together and armed with a crack team behind the hot plate and another the other side we got everyone served with Christmas dinner. The servers were seated and eating by 3pm and toasting ourselves :).

Another, quite un-primed team swung into action on plate clearing and washing up duty before we all retired upstairs to get ready for secret santa. As we were waiting for a few people we did some singing including a very rousing chorus of the 12 days of Christmas :). Eventually everyone was with us so we doled out Secret Santa gifts. I think all of ours were well recieved and we all loved ours – I suspect we are all the harder to make for knowing we know in advance who we are recieving from… Scarlett got a couple of books – one with dolphins and one with Wondering Wombles, along with some home made biscuits. Davies got a home made box containing a notepad and pen all fimoed up, a fimo note / photo holder, some chocolate and a necklace and wrist band made with fimo beads. Ady got a slab of chocolate in a lard wrapper and I got a glass box with emergency supplies of meat in it. We loved them all 🙂 Thanks lovely friends :).

Lots of the children headed off to do a dress rehearsal of their play and we sat around. Sarah arrived and finally we all headed down to the dining room for the play. I decided to miss the play and instead cook the mince pies I’d made earlier, Ady helped me cook the Christmas puddings, warm up custard and clear down the hot plate so we could use it for that.

We adjourned upstairs after the play for carols and orchestra which was just lovely, particularly the chimes. Jan and Catie sang us a Christmas Pudding song and we all went back downstairs for our final dinner lady turn at the servery ‘pudding or pie?’ ‘custard or cream?’ and did a fine job of slopping custard about and pretending to be in a Carry On Film.

Back upstairs we put a film on and sitting down in near darkness without the stimulation of actually chatting did me in. I dozed through the film and then decided the only sensible place to be was bed. I did slightly regret it the next day and half wished I could have found a last little reserve of stamina to share the last few hours with friends but I was asleep almost instantly so it was the right thing to do.

Friday The usual chaos that is trying to put a hostel back together, return belongings to the correct owners and tidy up quicker than the children can untidy again! The kids are mostly old enough to help now and they did a fab job of tidying up with Ben earning a special mention for emptying the bins in everyones bedrooms – yay Ben :). I did some fridge and kitchen clearing – I was really pleased with how the food lasted out, we didn’t have stacks left over, we only had to dash out for two containers of milk and 4 loaves of bread which I thought was excellent and I think we fed everyone well at bargain prices 🙂 We were over on rice, pasta and baked beans but I knew I’d got extra portions of all of those on the basis they are cheap, even the pickier kids tend to eat them and they can be used for lunch, dinner or other hungry moments. There is no real science to my food calculations so I’m always pretty proud of myself when it comes together :).

As ever there is a critical number of people who just need to leave so numbers are sufficiently reduced to actually tidy. People with little children, longer journeys or pressing reasons to be away earlier left leaving behind what seems to end up as the ‘usual suspects’ for the final push and last cup of tea together. Sadly the very last hour was a tense and sad one as poor Elinor had a nasty accident leaving us all dashing about trying to find calpol, milk, bits of teeth, postcodes for the hostel so Chris and Helen could sort out an emergency appointment at the nearest dentists so it was with tear stained cheeks most of us bid each other a final goodbye.

Our drive home was very straightforward although bitterly cold outside the car with the temperature going to minus 7.5 at it’s lowest point. For rush hour on a Friday it was very quiet on the roads, I assume many people had not been at work. We arrived home at about 5pm. We’d thought we were already tidied out but we realised we needed further tidying reserves as every single room in the house was upside down having been decorated by Dad while we were away. The hall needed shoes, boots and coats putting back in their rightful places, the lounge needed pictures hanging back up, curtains rehanging, sofas pushing back to place, TV and unit putting back where it belonged. The bedrooms all had beds in the middle of the room with all the other contents of the room stacked up on the beds and the kitchen and bathrooms were in disarray too. We also had the contents of the car to bring in and put away. We all helped and then the kids had a bath while Ady and I did the heavy stuff.

The kids ate dinner and went off to bed, we had baths, had dinner at a far more usual to us time and were in bed at a not too ridiculous hour ourselves.

To start naming people who made the week so wonderful would be doing a disservice to everyone else. Every single person – adult and child played their part in making it the wonderful week it was – by chopping, cooking, washing up, by sweeping, making tea, bringing a craft, leading a walk, taking photos, making someone laugh, offering a cuddle, put thought into a secret santa, said thank you when handed a plate of food, throwing a snowball, singing, playing an instrument, watching someone’s baby for five minutes. I feel so very priviledged to be part of this amazing circle of friends, to love and be loved by such wonderful people, to have you all in my photos, helping to make my childrens childhood memories, sharing all that magic. I love you all and hope we share many more Christmasses together in years to come. xxx