I am going to do this a little different than my standard one day per post and cover the highlights.

We give our kids a lot of freedom at these. The basic rule is that Ian had to be with another family member but other than that they were free within the hotel / convention space. My wife kept track of the talks they planned to go to and everyone had the hotel room as a meeting point.

For my wife the weekend was largely about two of her favorite authors; Tanya Huff and Janny Wurts. So most of the talks she went to involved one of those two authors. For her the highlight was getting to meet these two authors. She got a lot of her books signed. She also got to buy artwork by Janny Wurts. She mostly bought prints but she also bought one original watercolor. The biggest highlight for her was being able to sit down with Janny Wurts and have her go through her sketchbook. I was there and it was interesting for me but for my wife it was ‘oh is that…’. To which Janny would respond ‘yes’. There was one that I got the impression was a location from a future book. No Spoilers. I don’t think my wife even got any spoilers from it really.

For Philip and Ian there was a film making track where they went through the whole process of making a movie over the four days of the convention. They started with coming up with ideas, writing a plot and finished with actually filming and editing a short movie.

Margaret was much more eclectic taking in talks on writing, arts, Doctor Who and a variety of others.

For me I went mostly to ones on writing with a few Doctor Who and Science ones thrown in.

For all of us the Masquerade was a highlight. All of the kids competed this time in the Rising Star class. Margaret and Ian went on as a team dress as Tiffany Aching and a Feegle. They had recorded a parody of a song talking about Feegles. It was hilarious and probably helped them win. They took Best in Class – Rising Star – Presentation. Philip went as a Ranger from a book series that he has read. He had spent a lot of time on making his costume and his bow. He won Best in Class – Rising Star – Workmanship. A win moves you up to the next class. It means that next time they will be competing with adults.

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