Goodbyes & Graduations

On Wednesday we had a great last playdate at the ACC nursery with Freya & Jasmine who fly back to the UK on Saturday.

The ACC has just spent three months or so renovating the space a the old nursery was a bit tired-looking. Well, the new nursery was designed by some apparently, top named architects - who obviously know nothing about designing things for kids. Although on first glance, the room looks bright and airy, all painted in shades of orange and yellow, they have made rather a large number of bloopers.

1) LOADS of wasted space that in an already small area is just a shame.

2) In order to look 'tidier' they have put all the toys away in heavy wooden cupboards - the doors of which can easily trap little fingers. The toys are not actually being used either, as the children don't realise they are there as they are hidden behind these cupboard doors.

3) The whole room is surrounded by hard wooden cupboards with melamine veneer coverings and all with sharp edge corners, so now the nursery manager has placed all those self-adhesive corner bumper things on every single corner of each piece of furniture - most of which have started to become unsticky within 3 days of the nursery opening and are now a choking hazard.

4) The floor surface has been layed with hard, rough plastic. Not nice for crawlers at all. My friend Julie, who is a member of the ACC asked the club manager to get down on his hands and knees and crawl on the floor to see how he liked it, when he commented on how good the floor looked!!

And that is just for starters. You know, some poeple just have NOOOOOOO IDEAAAA!

Ok. Off my soapbox.

Wednesday was great fun never-the-less and then I spent Wednesday evening with Zoe at Shihlin Night Market shopping for leaving presents for friends. I got back much later than I should have done as I ended up following signs to 'Cheng De Rd' which is a large road not far from where we live, but heading in the wrong direction so I ended up in the City. DOH!

Thursday was Annalise's last day at school. She was so excited as from 11am till home time, there was a class party and all the mums and dads were invited so Juliette and I joined in on the fun. I managed to get there a bit early and caught Annalise at the end of her gymnastics class - the photo you see is of the early stages of her doing a handstand against the wall! (I took the photo through the window so she didn't know I was there!)

The party was lovely and Annalise took the camera and took photos of her friends - and though all the goodbyes were sad, I think she's had an amazing first year of 'school'. I'm so glad we put her in it. Juliette was in her element - not sure how many cupcakes she ate but I have to say she didn't sleep all that well last night! Major sugar-rush methinks.

Thursday night, Andrew was on babysitting duty again as I went out for our last Girly night out of the year to say goodbye to Sharon. We went to Alleycats and had an evening of great pizzas, wine and chat. I left earlier than the others (Andrew needed to get on with work) and also because I wanted to avoid the teary goodbyes at the end. (Which I managed to do, so the other girls said!) Thank God - I really hate goodbyes. I will miss Sharon loads - but she is moving (at thi stage) back to Kent so I'm hoping we will see her sometime this July - maybe the first or second week for a couple of days.

Today we've just finished having a playdate and lunch and swim at Julie's house (daughter, Amy) which was brilliant - the weather is back to being lovely again so fingers crossed it'll be a great day tomorrow for our second hand sale/summer fair at school.

It's one of Andrew's biggest day/nights today - Graduation Day - at school which he organises and sets up and produces, so we won't see him till tomorrow. I think he plans to go clubbing with the kids after the Graduation and party finishes so I'm expecting him to have a hangover tomorrow at the fair - NICE!