Messy, Mad and Magical: Lidl Messathon – Raising Money for NSPCC

 

On Sunday we were invited to the Lidl Messathon in association with NSPCC. I’d always known about Lidl’s connection with NSPCC but I had only heard of Messathon in passing, so I was intrigued to find out more.

Messy, Mad and Magical: Lidl Messathon with NSPCC

Over 3 years Lidl has pledged to raise £3 million for NSPCC’s work with children in schools to raise awareness for speaking out about abuse. We have a personal story with regards to NSPCC and their intervention to protect George and Molly from a serious safeguarding issue outside of the home when they were very young. To this day my stomach lurches at the thought of my children being in that situation so it felt like a very poignant event for us to attend as a strong family unit.

As well as this, I was (of course!) excited to see a bit of Brum! We didn’t have long to plan our day out to Birmingham (my lovely hometown), but we did manage to squeeze in a visit to Lidl to grab some swim shoes for the kids. We packed our bags with towels, lunch, drinks and a change of clothes and hit the road…

https://www.instagram.com/p/BlhujE1hn8V/?taken-by=kallenwriter

 

It took less than 2 hours to reach Sandwell Valley Park and you could hear the buzzing atmosphere as we parked up in the car park. We grabbed a little snack and headed in to join the fun!

Once we received our wristbands we bought a little NSPCC pack for £10 (this included NSPCC goodies such as headbands and badges) and had a ‘before’ picture taken…

 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BliBQ44hGIa/?taken-by=kallenwriter

 

How clean (and naive!) we look…

Soon enough it was time for a quick toilet break and then a warm-up before the race (you can catch these on my Instagram Highlights!). The warm-up was a lot of fun and Team England and Great Britain rhythmic gymnast Mimi-Isabella Cesar was there to cheer everyone on and hand out medals at the end of the race too.

Teams were staggered at the starting line to prevent overcrowding, which worked really well as we went around the track. I was actually quite nervous before it began because it felt like sports day all over again, haha! As we ran towards our first obstacle my nerves began to show a little, but by the third and fourth obstacle I’d relaxed into it and, even though I was a hot, sweaty mess, I was enjoying every second of being together as a family…

 

There were various obstacles, including tunnels, hay bales as well as lots of NSPCC volunteers dousing everyone in powder paint! My only advice would be to prepare yourself for the messy elements, and if you don’t want to do a certain part or have certain things (water, powder) thrown at you then don’t be afraid to skip it. There’s loads of fun to be had, so missing one obstacle if it creates any kind of anxiety really isn’t a problem…

 

 

We all had a go at everything and had a lot of fun doing it all, but I did choose some of the easier elements on some of the obstacles and I also fell and slipped quite a lot – it was so funny at times! I felt a deep sense of satisfaction at the end of the course because we’d given it 100% and I was so proud of George and Molly for doing it too!

Warren really got into the whole thing and even achieved this…

 

 

He’s such a cutie! I can’t believe he did it, but then he did once hold the school record for high jump! What an absolute legend.

When we got to the end we were all so happy and excited to receive our medals, plus there was the chance for the kids to splat the parents with muddy sponges. I liked this part because we were a bit disappointed when the race was over, so this extension was perfect!

 

 

Even after this the fun wasn’t really over, because once we’d got cleaned up a little and changed our clothes we were able to have a little nose around the site. There was pizza, coffee, burgers and more on offer, as well as the chance to make your own scone! We missed out on some of the things because we were on the last race, but we still had a lovely time together before heading home.

 

 

It was so lovely to see so many families taking part and spending such lovely and fun quality time together raising money for a fantastic cause.

Did you take part in Messathon? How did you find the course?