Meet the Princess of the Bouncy Castle

Last term our kindergarten committee (along with the teachers) planned a "Wheel-a-thon" fundraiser. The children got sponsored by their friends and families to ride their bikes, trikes, or scooters around a track we set up, and then the mayor came and gave prizes and we had a sausage sizzle. It was my first Wheel-a-thon, although they are apparently common fundraisers in NZ. 

It was decided at the planning meeting that we should have a bouncy castle to help keep the children entertained while they weren't biking/scootering. There was an awkward moment when everyone realized that someone would have to stay by the bouncy castle the whole time to keep everyone safe, which is not a very fun job. 

Then in occurred to me... I could be the Princess of the Bouncy Castle! The children would love to have a fancy princess show up to the Wheel-a-thon, and it would add lots more imaginative fun to the bouncy castle set up. After everyone recovered from my unsuspected and rather loud proclamation of this decision, they were all thrilled to have the bouncy caste supervision problem sorted, and excited at how much the children would enjoy it.

That week, I took and edited this picture, then turned it into a poster advertising the Wheel-a-thon. I spent quite a bit of the week being amused watching the children pull their parents over to it, saying, "Emma's a princess!" Many of the parents gave a distracted, "Yes, a princess," before doing a huge double take and exclaiming, "Emma really is the princess!" 

I also edited myself into this picture of a bouncy castle, in case we wanted more realism, but then the bouncy castle we actually rented was different colours, so I didn't use this one. I realized, far too late to do anything about it, that I didn't get any pictures of me with the actual bouncy castle I ruled over. Oh well.

At the last moment, I decided to wear my princess dress to kindergarten during the day of the evening Wheel-a-thon, to get the children (and parents) excited about it, so that more people would come. The children were hilariously in awe of me for a while, many of them coming up, shyly taking my hand, saying softly, "You're a real princess," and then darting off to smile at me from a distance. Of course, many of them got over this quickly, which was good, and we had a lovely day.

We sang one of the songs I've taught them recently, in which the children are my horses (my royal horses in this case). In this picture they're giving me high-fives as we count how many royal horses I have.

By the time the Wheel-a-thon started, it was too hot for the velvet sleeves, so I was a bit less formal for the actual event, which turned out well, as I had to climb around a bit to maintain some semblance of safety in my bouncy domain. Keeping children safe and trying to rotate them through fairly while keeping the numbers inside below the maximum was a task that taxed even my royal capabilities, especially given that there were tiny 1-year-olds in there with hulking 12-year-olds.

Notice, please, that I am holding the hand of one of my kids, and that you can see the gold of her beautiful Princess Belle dress she wore in order to match me. There was also a Queen Elsa in attendance. I regret that I can't post the pictures I took with them, because they are the most precious little royal girls you've ever seen!