Bag-tastic

Tuesday was more neatly organised madness, with week two of the after school club - well neatly organised if you didn't look inside the bags of craft items we lugged into school, and home again afterwards.

DH is always optimistic that we won't have nearly as much stuff afterwards, but the '12 baskets' rule always seems to apply. No matter how much the children take home, you still seem to have almost the same amount left at the end after all the gathering up of leftovers has been completed.

The mathematician inside tells DH that this cannot possibly be true and it is merely one of my exaggerations. Yet, with his own eyes, he has seen that it is true. The exception being that we did give away a block and a half of The Works best clay, and that made a noticeable difference to the weight of the heaviest bag. The lightest bag, containing sheets of tissue paper, felt no different. It felt empty on the way in and felt equally empty on the way out. Volume-wise, it was probably bulker on the way home, as the children, in the eagerness to help clear up, tended to grab the tissue paper and stuff it into the bag. I tried not to wince. It's cheap stuff, brilliant for craft making, but I hate to see it go to waste, just through carelessness.

This week our theme was forgiveness. A great concept for the children to think about. The trouble is, that whilst I was preparing, I was reminded of the people and situations I need to forgive. If that wasn't bad enough, I then had to consider what actions of mine might require forgiveness... All of a sudden, forgiveness isn't child's play anymore, it is a reality of living out our Christian faith in a complicated and complex world.

I am a 'work in progress', may I have the grace to remember that others are also 'works in progress'.

Meanwhile, the snow shepherd is also a work in progress, as it shrinks



















and shrinks.







Until it looks more and more like the grim reaper. The end is nigh..