Fun Packed Weekend

I hope you all had fab weekends, ours was filled with Christmas fun. On Friday night they had the opening of the Winter Wonder Lights at the Wildlife Experience, (a local museum). It was amazing. They had made a little trail round the outside of their building and put up lots of the most wonderful lighted animals.

There must have been thousands of lights, I wonder how much their electricity bill will be next month!!!
But it was jolly cold. We were all wrapped up like sausage rolls but we were nearly running near the end, just to get into the warm.
Ahh, inside at last. They has opened up parts of the museum for us to explore and to warm up.
This was a 'Write your letter to Santa' station. They had supplied stamps, ink, colouring pencils and of course the pre-printed letters. I was super impressed, they had done it really well. It was also the place to get your hot chocolate before braving the cold again. Once letters were written, hot chocolate consumed, it was time to go to the courtyard to see Santa and the live reindeer. Afterward they were playing 'When the Grinch stole Christmas' on their big screen in their theatre. Just wonderful.
Then on Saturday we went to the Hammonds Factory Candy Cane Festival. I tried to go to this last year but didn't make it. Wow, it was super busy, I am not used to super busy anymore. I really wanted to go on the factory tour, (as I had told the children that it was like 'Willy Wonkers Chocolate Factory'!!). But I think everyone else had the same idea. The queue went on and on and on. There must have been hundreds and hundreds of people queuing to get into the factory. So I made an executive decision to skip the factory and just go into the shop.
There was an enormous queue to get into the shop. Still undeterred, I shuffled my way in and we chose our candy canes. I then had to queue for an age to pay for them.
We thought we better do a quick taste test outside the factory, you know, for quality control. The candy canes passed with flying colours!! Well worth the queues.

Note to self, visit Hammonds Candy Factory on the 1st December, do not ever attempt to go during the Candy Cane Festival again. Check!!! Have a happy Monday.