Snowball fight? Kate checks it out
A PLAYFUL snowball fight saw the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge enter the festive spirit yesterday.
The royal couple were showered with artificial snow as they hosted a party for RAF families at Kensington Palace in London.
Kate handed her cotton wool snowballs over to the children before helping them make sweets and decorate cards.
Looking glowing in a £1,500 Emilia Wickstead red tartan skirt, Kate sympathised with the 200 husbands, wives, children and parents of men and women who will spend Christmas in Cyprus while on operations against Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
She and William travel to RAF Akrotiri today on a “Royal Mail” flight loaded with gifts.
Kate recalled when her husband served as an RAF search and rescue helicopter pilot.
She told the families of personnel from RAF Coningsby in Lincolnshire and RAF Marham in Norfolk: “I know how hard it feels when a loved one leaves home to do the job they have trained for. The absence of people you love must be especially hard at this time of year.”
Among the guests were nine-year-old twins Isabelle and Elizabeth Gladwell and their mother Rebecca from Marham.
The twins told Kate that their father Marc, a corporal in supplies and logistics, is posted in the Falklands – prompting her to say: “I hear penguins are very smelly.”
Rebecca, a teacher, admitted it was tough having her husband away. “This is their fourth Christmas without him,” she said. “It doesn’t get any easier, but we have lots of things planned.”
Asked why he had not brought his own children, William, who was making truffles, said: “Because I can’t do this and look after them.”
He also suggested that making sweets was his forte.
“She does the cards and I do the chocolate,” he said, gesturing to wife Kate.