Colour Run 2016 • Me & Mine Project • May
The end of May is one of my favourite times of the year for our family. Birthday fun for Sammy, a party weekend and lots of family and friends at the house. I love it when all I can see through the windows as I walk through the house, is people in the garden, some on the patio chatting over a drink, some chasing the kids through the long grass that has suddenly sprung up from nowhere and the haze of colours with all the flowers coming back to life after a long winter.
I love the noise, the balloons, the build up and ironically most of all the after party, as I like to think of it. Where we all sit around with left over party food, plastic boxes filled with drinks that have been lugged from boot to boot, no picture perfect set ups just happy faces surrounded by post party chaos.
Sammy starts getting excited for his birthday almost 364 days in advance. Our boy who has the most enthusiasm for a party theme in the world lives and breathes it for weeks beforehand, like the absolute highlight of his young year. For the first time since starting school his birthday fell on a weekday and not in half term, and begrudgingly he went to school in a birthday badge, willing the day to end until his best pals came back for a party tea and it was finally the weekend. His teacher actually commented that it was like his head was spinning off with excitement and as we’ve only been at this school since last September I had to warn her that this was classic Sammy and worryingly we have 2 more years until we get to wake up and say happy birthday on a Saturday!
I have so much I want to share about his party celebrations but today I want to share our Sunday. The most colourful Sunday we’ve ever had.
Colour Runs are quite frankly amazing. It brings an enormous amount of people together, people who are there because they’ve lost or are losing someone they love and people who want to do something extraordinary on an ordinary Sunday, raising lots of money for an incredible local charity.
We took part in the Somerset Colour Run for St Margaret's Hospice last year and loved it, the atmosphere, the energy and the positive force that carried you over the finish line and into a rainbow cloud of powder paint. And this year the boys were old enough to take part. We left Yasmin and Logan in the arms of their very capable Granny and headed off in our tutus and neon glasses to join 1200 other runners in the 5k Colour Run 2016.
We laughed, we carried boys on shoulders and we walked/jogged and ran around the course in the hot bank holiday weekend heat along with lots of others who took the chance to take in the incredible views of the Somerset countryside.
I was so proud cheering on Ollie as he sprinted under the inflatable arch at the end of the course, his little legs so determined to finish the race.
The trouble is when you have a sweet 3 year old cousin at home, waiting with ice lollies, you want to share the experience with and she's too little to run, you have to find a way to bring the colour run to her.
So we did. Warm up and all.
I wish we had bought enough paints to have made their mini run through the buttercups and cow parsley have lasted an hour. They couldn't have loved it more, racing through the paths Rich has mown up and down through the fruit trees.
And the best thing of all is that every penny we spent at the colour run, at the powder paint stand all went to St Margaret's Hospice. If you get the chance to take part in one near you sign up as quick as you can.
Come and join in with us and share your family photo. It doesn't have to be a perfect capture, it just needs to be you and yours.
I've got this cheeky chops staying for a couple of extra nights, I can't tell you how much I adore that my sister and brother in law trust us to have her but also that she feels completely at home with us.
She totally feels like one of mine.