13th November:

Up at the crack of dawn this morning as we were on the Gingerbread House shift again and this morning over 500 people come in for their breakfasts plus 60 take outs.  Jane and Viv were on trays, helping families carry their trays of food to the table, which did give them time to chat to the families also and some other volunteers. We came across Zorina a young girl we met last year who was then doing her community hours for school but who is now here just to volunteer, she was doing 3 shifts today as she lives over an hour away so gives up a day rather than make the journey three times! My role was as a runner, now do not snigger at that description of me as I was busy, busy, busy!!

My role was to keep the food that was being served topped up from another cabinet, sounds quite straight forward but I worked my butt off filling the sausages, the biscuits(like a scone), the gravy (like nothing I have seen before or really ever want to try), the fried potatoes, the scrambled egg (so solid you needed a knife to break it up), the pancakes (thousands of these) and all the different types of fresh fruit, melons, bananas, mandarins, yoghurt. I had to take the empty containers to the correct area in the kitchen, get special orders for families, replenish the fruit juices - two hours of non stop work but great volunteers today also.

We had quite a discussion at the end of the shift with two ladies who quizzed us about the Royal Family......is it true that Charles is not going to be King and that William is giving up his chance to be King so that Kate is not hounded like his mother. We had no answer as we said that we had read it in

Walmart's too so it must be true! They were fascinated by our Royal Family and asked loads of questions which we tried to answer...how old is the Queen, will she abdicate, what do we think of Camilla etc etc. They do love the Royal family and our accent!!

Had our daily fix of Walmart to get something for lunch and as Viv was starving we decided to put the oven on but guess what, it didn't work the whole oven and top had no power.   We searched for a switch that could have inadvertently been turn off but found nothing. Eventually got in touch with Sonya who came round bringing with her an electric fry pan in case she couldn't get oven to work but it was just a fuse gone so easily solved.

Tonight it was Christmas and what a great night, Jane and Viv put up their hands for the crafts and I opted to be an Elf, helping in Santa's Grotto. We were all busy all night, I didn't see Jane and Viv until the clearing up time when they were trying to escape from Nasta, the young lady in charge of the evening . It was funny as they were like two naughty school girls trying to escape but kept being caught out!!

My role in the Grotto was wonderful, the children all came in and Santa spoke to the children and had lots of photographs taken while I took the parent cameras/iPhones and took pictures for them. They then went off to receive their gift, fantastic gifts they were too.  A large corporate group arrived just as the last child had seen Santa and insisted on having their photographs taken with him and Mrs Claus, I did have the urge to do a 'Viv' and just add myself on to the end of their picture but thought better of it and took their picture for them instead..

Our highlight of the day was the lovely people we met and the lovely things they said about us. We feel humbled to be appreciated by so many people

An executive decision was made by us all tonight and that was to take ourselves off Saturday nights  shift and have a final meal out together, something we have not done and are quite looking forward to.

Tomorrow another busy day so night all xxx