We had a quick dash to Waitrose on wednesday, and as usual I wanted a herb smelling session. I sucessfully identified mint and basil which amazed a lady standing next to us.
Trampoline club is getting a regular three punters a week now. Good news except I get tired out as I never have to share my trampoline with anyone. The good thing about that is that we get to go to bumpers for half an hour instead. I had a great time playing with my friend Molly, even if she was much quicker at getting around the climbing frame than I am.
I had another week of walking round Tesco on Thursday afternoon for the weekly shop, I love it even of shopping now takes twice as long as it did before.....but I think thats down to my increased oppurtunities to talk to everyone on the way round.
I did an especially good picture at school of ripples on the water, the teachers were very impressed. I don't think they'd be quite so pleased with my reading progress at home though, I really have a distinct lack of motivation with it. Maths is another matter though, I love my numbers. I was the only one in my whole class who could do the big take away sums we were working on.
We had a great game of hide and seek on wednesday after tea, even Mum and Dad joined in.
They seemed to find me quite easily.
I did a little better, but soon found Dad in the cupboard under the stairs.
Mum proved to be a more tricky prospect, but we eventually found her in the shower of all places.
We went to Portsmouth on Saturday, to see the old boats.
It was nice to be beside the seaside again, even though it was FREEZING!
First stop was HMS Victory:

We loved looking around the outside of it, especially the amount of guns poking out of the sides.
But we also got to go on board to have a look round too!
A proper Navy man took us around to tell us all about it, I was dead keen and made sure I was right behind him at all times:

The boat had a very low roof, and it was great fun to watch the grown ups bumping their heads all the time as it didn't bother either of us at all. Sometimes there are advantages to being small I suppose.
He told us some brilliant stories about what life was like onboard, from the way they fired the guns, to what they ate and drank and what they did with the people who got injured during the fighting. A lot of it sounded pretty grim to be honest, but I loved it and hung on our guides every word.
I quite liked it, but got a bit bored towards the end. Apparently I couldn't have a carry as the cielings were too low?
At the end of the tour our guide said we had been so good that Mum and Dad should buy us an ice cream, I liked him even more after that!

We saw the only remaining sail from the Battle of Trafalgar in a special room, it was really cool and you could see holes in it from the canon fire during the battle. What was even more impressive though was a brilliant video showing a re-enactment of the battle. It really made what we had been told on the boat tour come alive.
There was also a whole building full of science things to explore, I loved the water things of course:

I loved the science experiments:

There was a special Marines training thing, where you had to kick and punch the light up targets, I got a great score of 147:

After we crashed a helicopter simulator into a cliff face (oops) I had a go on the climbing wall:

I was too short and too light to have a go.
And then we finally got to have the Ice cream we had been promised:

Which we had indoors as it was soooooo cold outside!
We had our third babysitter in a week on Saturday night, whats that all about?
Auntie Trish was the lucky one this time around though so that was good.
We watched Take me out and ate mini eggs. All the men got a date too, so it was a top night all round.
We quite clearly didn't get to stay up late enough though as we were soon hassling Dad to get up on Sunday morning (mum had already gone to work).
I wanted to go to the BMX track, well the sun was out and everything!
I was well up for it as well, I hadn't been to the proper big track in Andover before but I didn't let that put me off and soon headed off down the start ramp:

I was going at a hell of a speed by the time I got to the bottom, dad was screaming at me to put the brake on, but i was locked rigid in fear, holding on for all I was worth. I made it comfortably over the first jump before I started to slow down at all.

I was keen to try my new bike out on the big jumps that I could never get over on my old bike:

The good news was that I could go a lot faster and managed to make it over all of them! I was very pleased with myself:

Things all came to a rather messy end when I managed to fall on my bum in a muddly puddle. I was pretty upset about it and cried all the way back to the car. I soon cheered up once I was changed, Ned had given me a tickle and we had a couple of sausage rolls though.
We picked Mum up from work just after lunch and had a luxury hot chocolate topped of with squirty cream and marsh mallows...lovely.
I re-dressed the balance of my muddy bum later on, when I decided to go glam in some of my princess clobber:

Been doing the school pick up on the trike again:



We really love it, we put on a good show for all the other kids.
And I get to give loads of willing girls a ride round the playground.
I had stretch and grow at nursery on Tuesday, Jenny told Dad that I was really brilliant at it. I tried really hard and asked plenty of questions and lots of answers.
Trampoline club was good on Wednesday as well, there were a few more there this time around so the cat and mouse and eggs in the basket games were great fun.
We had a game of Wii party in the evening and I was a dead cert for the win. I was miles in front (after swapping with Mum) and nothing could stop me.......except Ellis pressing the off button by accident.
Ooops, sorry Ned.
Sorry doesn't even come close on this one, I was utterly devastated.
We went shopping as usual on Thursday afternoon but this time I was allowed to roam the aisles rather than be shackled in the trolley. I loved my new found freedom and was a real help to Dad I think.
And while all this was going on I was on my school trip to the Pitt Rivers museum in Oxford. I totally loved it. There was all sorts there from really old Egyptian things, to all sorts of exotic stuffed animals on show and I even got to hold a real Velocoraptor bone (they had feathers rather than scales you know) and a Tyrannosaurus tooth! It was a really good day out and best of all it's free to get in so i'm sure if I ask we'll get to go again to see all the stuff we didn't have time to see this time.
All set for nursery friday morning, but where were my gloves? In the back of the car, at Dad's work! Oh no, what am I going to do about that? First off, have a mega tantrum at Mum until she suggests I ring Dad at work and ask where they are. Which I did, I bet he loved that phonecall. It wasn't that cold in the end though, mum made sure I was nicely tucked up in my blanket.
We went for a walk on Saturday morning, along the canal in Aldermaston to see if we could feed the ducks.
We only found two ducks, and it turned out that they weren't even remotely hungry!

Still we had a nice climb on the locks and had a good old nose though some of the narrow boat windows.

Then the main event of the weekend (for me anyway) with Hugo's birthday party at Eddie Catz. It was brilliant, even if there weren't any gorls invitied. By the time I got home I was totally exhausted. So much so that when Alan and Hayley arrived to babysit for us, even Uncle Alan said I looked a bit iffy. Perhaps thats why we had to go to bed so early?

It wasn't that early Ned, mum and dad didn't even leave until way after our bedtime.
I asked if we could go to the bach on Sunday for some bacon sandwich action, I didn't meet any opposition so we were soon off to Lepe.

It was pretty cold to be honest:

But we wrapped up and tucked in:

Before hitting the park for a few laps of the course:

I was the undisputed king of these walking wires.

So monday then, mum and dad decide they are going out AGAIN!

Not happy, until Auntie Christine arrived of course.

We had tea with her and then we had a few lovely board games before story time and bed.

Trampolining club was back on after the Christmas lay off, brilliant! There was only me and two other boys but I didn't care at all. I bounced, did loads of tricks (particularly good was my split jumps this week) and we even had a games session of eggs in the basket and cat and mouse. I also made sure I told the instructor lady about every single present I had for Christmas and every single place we'd been over the last month or so in great detail. I bailed early so we could have 20 minutes in bumpers. Much to Dad's relief, i'm quite happy to go off exploring the climbing stuff alone as some of it is a little bit tight in places.
When Ellis came to meet me from school she was on her trike, brilliant! I love it when she brings the trike as we have got quite an entertaining double act going on with it.
Yes we have Ned, even if we did both end up flat on our backs when it flipped over backwards.
I went to Shimons for tea on Thursday night so that was cool.
I got Dad to myself all afternoon, lucky me eh?
Once Dad picked me up from nursery on Friday we went to Waitrose to get some baking ingredients, we were going to make rock buns with a twist, using chocolate and marshmallows instead of yucky old raisins. They didn't have any marsgmallows though (which is a good thing as even though they're pink I don't like them) and after careful consideration we settled on fudge pieces instead.
Good choice there Ellis, as soon as we got home from school it was cooking o'clock....the sooner they were in the oven the sooner we had the bowl to lick clean you know!
They turned out a bit more like biscuits than buns but they tasted nice so we weren't too bothered.
We went swimming on saturday morning to the Coral Reef. It was pretty busy when we got there but it didn't bother us, we soon made room for jumping in off the side!
...and some heavy duty splashing of course. I also made the big step of going down the fastest flume slide for the first time. I had a couple of goes on the medium one and decided it was time. The flume itself is an even smaller diameter than the usual ones so it was pretty scary but there was no backing out. It was fast, really, reallty fast. So fast in fact that it made my head bang back against the slide in the first corner. It was quite a bump but it didn't put me off having another go!
Abi and Faye came round to see us Saturday night, we had tea together:

Before we had a good time playing with our Barbies and cuddly toys.
I tolerated them for a while:

But decided an early night was the best policy.

I stayed up super late and had a great time!

There wasn't a whole lot of action on Sunday morning other than Dad trying to destroy the kitchen, one unit at a time. We left him to it and slugged about watching telly for a bit until we were forced to go to Sainsbury's, looking for an apparently unavailable specific sized cake tin for the afternoons pudding. They didn't have one and we had to make do with the next nearest size.

After lunch we took the bikes down the park.

To have a go with my rocket I got for christmas. You had to mix baking soda with vinegar to make it blast off and I was really excited. The problem is, we had Baking 'Powder' or Bicarbonate of 'Soda' in the cupboard so we weren't quite sure which one to use (even after a Google session). In the end we plumped for Baking powder which I think was the wrong choice, given that the rocket failed to do anything other than produce a small stream of white foam while it sat on it's launch pad.

As if that wasn't bad enough, a little dog decided to have a wee up the back tyre of my bike! How rude, I was not a happy girl at all.

After school today we went to Tesco to get Hugo his birthday present and card (it's his party Saturday and i'm talking about nothing else).

And after that the excitment levels went up a notch with a trip to Homebase of all places.

Actually, it was pretty cool in there, I loved the axes!

And I got some lovely pink storage bins to keep all my lovely new christmas toys tidy!

No pictures again this week i'm afraid.....
First up, a little confession. Now Ben spent quite some time tuning my guitar for me last week. I hadn't realised this though and subsequently spent a good while turnign all the knobby things around at the end of the guitar so they were all in a nice line. Oops, Mum saw me add my finishing touches and helpfully pointed out the error I had made....
Dad went back to work on Tuesday morning while we all stayed in bed. Then we went to town with Mum for a new year haircut each.
Sadly everyone else seemed to have the same idea and we had to wait ages and ages.
We went back to school and nursery on Wednesday, I think we were sort of looking forward to seeing all our friends.....
...but sad that we had to get dressed and be off of the sofa before 10 am.
I had a great day though, I got to catch up with all my friends, especially Eva. We spent most of the morning playing Mummies and babies, taking it in turns to sit on each others laps. Although I also enjoyed helping jenny to clean the fish tank out. Apparently the goldfish poo in their own water? I took some convincing about that, silly creatures.
I had my first day back with our new teacher, it went okay I think. Nothing to report really, other than I got Dad to bring my new BMX when he picked me up so I could ride it home.
Thursday was shopping day, yes, we finally managed to munch our way through the mountain of food we bought before christmas and actually needed some more supplies. I was pretty sleepy by the time we got there and managed to amaze several passers by with my ability to slump and sleep in the trolley seat.
We've been learning all about Charles Darwin at school, this is right up my alley and i'm lapping it up. We've had a really clever wildlife and nature expert lady in to talk to us all as well. She even took us all out for a walk around the school grounds to see what interesting specimens we could find on Friday.
We got taken shopping on saturday.........
..it started off really well as we went on the train, unlike our London trip we actually had loads of seats to choose from!
We loved looking out of the window to see what we could see. There was plenty to comment on and i'm sure the rest of the people in the carriage loved having two little tour guides on board with them.
It wasn't all fun and games though as we had to actually go in some shops when we got to Reading.
I won't complain as I got some lovely new clothes.
And I suppose I shouldn't either, as I got to spend some of my Christmas money on a super cool changeover-track-corner for my Scalextric.
We had a really fun run back across the train station to catch our train!
Which we did in the nick of time, so we settled down and had a nice drink and some sweets watching the world go by again on the way home.
Lazy morning on Sunday, watched some telly, ate some breakfast.
After lunch we had a trip to the park, I took my new radio controlled truck for a spin.
And I got stuck up a tree, Mum had to rescue me.
Then we made a visit to visit the still very new Finley. I was really excited about going to see him and couldn't wait to have a cuddle with him. I did a very good job too, he didn't wake up or anything and he loved squeezing my finger.
I thought he was very lovely too, but was more interested in splashing down on the beanbag with Marney (who just so happened to be visiting at the same time as us).
Back to school today, we have started having recorder lessons. I've learned the note 'B' today. Not to mention earning two golden time minutes.....a good day!

The Wednesady before Christmas was another mum/dad split. Uncle Den popped in, to say merry Christmas as they were going away for a few days and settled in to watch the last part of the nativity series that had been on BBC One every night, we loved it.
Thursday, Mum was now off work all day. We went to Eddie Katz in the morning and had a good old play.
Yeah, we hadn't been for a while and we had to show Mum around as she hadn't been before. She was much better value than Dad because she even went down the twisty blue slide with me.
We picked Dad up from work and went straight to Pizza Hut for lunch. We had a short wait but it was well worth it as we got to sit on one of the big cosy round tables.
I ate loads and loads, most of it was actually savoury, what a shocker!
We went to nursery in the afternoon for the Santa visit (re-scheduled due to him feeling poorly when it was our carol concert). It was nice to catch up with my friends I hadn't seen for a few days and we were soon all sat on the rug waiting for him to arrive. He had a present for all of us in his sack and I wasn't at all shy about going to collect mine. I even said a nice big thank you (without being prompted) which made Mum really pleased. The present was a Christmas CD, which I insistted Dad put on as soon as we got back to the car.
We had a drive round looking for outside Christmas lights and decorations, I love doing that.
And with my CD on it was even better...even if I did fall asleep and miss them all.
Friday was of course, Christmas eve....how exciting!
We had a morning with Mum as Dad still had to go to work. We drove her slightly mad I think.
We had a visit from Sue which was cool as we hadn't seen her for a while.
Dad was soon home from work and we headed off out to the pub to see all the gang before Christmas. I headed straight or the games room with Max and Leo.
And I headed for Abi and Joshua who were sat around the table with the grown ups.
We drank fizzy drinks, played dominoes, ate crisps and even tried pork scratchings (yuck) before everybody started drifting off, wishing them all a happy christmas.
Then Alan did a doughnut in the Gayo in the snowy carpark, which was really cool.
We went home and had a luxury hot chocolate.
Topped off with squirty cream and chocolate sprinkles! After that I was ready to go to bed even if it was only 5:30 in the afternoon. I thought that the sooner I went to bed the sooner the morning would come. I wasn't allowed.
Slim and Trace came round to see us, we were pleased to see them of course.
I showed them how far Santa had got on the Norad website and we worked out how long it was going to take him to get to us.
We had a few jobs to attaned to, the Reindeer food had to be sprinkled out on the drive:



I put out a mince pie, a carrot and a drink for Santa.
And I left him my Santa book to read in my bedroom. When I got into bed I just couldn't stop smiling as I was so excited.
Then it was sleep time.................
...............before we woke up to find that he'd been and filled our stockings! (not too early of course, only around 5:30am):
I had a note from Santa, left on my book thanking me vey much for leaving it out for him and how he enjoyed a five minute break to read it on his busy night.

And here I am with my yucky farting slime filled toilet. What six year old wouldn't be happy with such a gift? The rest of my stocking contents were also really cool and it took me no time at all to get the rest unwrapped. Then I had to wait for Ellis to wake up....and wait.......and wait for what seemed like FOREVER!
It wasn't that long Ned, I had to play stocking catch up:

And then it was downstairs for the real action:

There were two proper big presents to unwrap, mine had a Hello Kitty surf board in:

And mine had a BMX in, a real BMX, a few of you may have heard me mention that I wanted one once or twice this year?

I had so many lovely things that I didn't know where to start, I thought i'd start with some make up though:

I tried my bike out for size, Santa got it spot on of course:

Auntie Trish came round to see us, which was really nice. She had bought a few stray presents for us that got left in Basingstoke apparently?

Even though every shop in the world was apparently sold out of them, Santa came through with a Barbie puppy swim school for me:

We headed outside for a little bit, to have a quick spin on my bike (through the snow).

And to throw some of our smart little bangers from our stockings.
Grandad and Anne came round for lunch with a few more presents that had found their way to Swindon.

Christmas dinner was of course a pigs in blankets fest, we love them!

Team them up with the crackers and the relaxed rules about how much we have to eat before we can have pudding and we were well on to a winner.

Later in the afternoon we headed off out to Auntie Christines, rather surprisingly there were yet more presents to be had:

Here we are with our very own copy of the sound of music to watch.

A double dose of Auntie Trish as she was there too, I helped her on a winning streak at shut the box:

Alan and Hayley arrived later on, even though poor old Hayley was struggling with a savage sounding cold.

Guess what? They had......presents!

We stayed really late and had a lovely time, thanks for having us!

And thanks to everyone we saw on the day (and indeed the days before) for such lovely presents. We really were very pleased with them all and know how lucky we are.

So boxing day then, nothing planned, just a lazy day eating and playing.

It was lovely to be able to go through all our new stuff properly.

Sadly mum was back to work on Monday so we had another lazy day going through our new stuff.

Another go with our bangers and a little bike ride for all of us. It was still a bit snowy though.

So after three days of staying mostly in, we thought we'd better get out and about. We took some bread to feed the ducks in the park and then we went to meet mum for lunch.

We took her to the pasty shop and then went to get little Finley a present.

Yes, we've got another little friend to play with, congratulations to Chris and Kate!

We went home to watch Dad's favourite film ET. We hadn't seen it before but Mum said it was really sad and she always cries when she see's it. I didn't cry of course, and I loved the BMX bit!

I cried, I cried quite a lot when the poor little chap got all poorly. I also cried when he got better and went home to his mummy and daddy.

Wednesday and we went out again, this time to Avebury stone circle, it was really foggy on the way and Silbury Hill looked really cool with the mist all around it.

It was a really good explore with plenty of hills to climb.

The stones were pretty strange, some of them looked like they would fall over if we gave them a good old shove:

But they didn't, I suppose they have been there like that quite a while:

We went back to the car and had a lovely picnic and a sing song before we headed home.

Thursday was Ice Skating day. We took Andy along (and got in on a 'family' ticket).

Here I am in my rather fetching ice skates:

I know this will probably sound a bit stupid but the ice was just so slippery!

Dad and Andy did a really good job of keeping us upright.

And by the end of it I was sort of getting around quite well on my own:

Friday and Dad finally cracked and took me to the BMX track. It was pretty muddy and soft but I made the most of it and my new bike was brilliant:

I certainly showed Dad, Owen and Andy how it was done.

After one lap of the track I curled up in the tent with a few cuddly toys and the picnic and snuggled down for a kip:

Well it was now the weekend so Mum was back off work for a couple of days at least.

We made the most of it by going to the Cotswold Wildlife park, a winter favourite of ours.

First stop was the Lemur enclosure where thay aren't in cages and like to run around and jump about the place.

I thought maybe some gentle provocation would get them to perform:

This was about as close as I was prepared to get to them:

What? Lemur? In my hood?

We loved listening to the keeper lady do a talk on them and we learned all about where they live in the wild and what they like to eat.

The Otters were on good form, having a game of Otter tag:

And the Meerkats were really funny too. We got to them at feeding time, and do you know what they ate? Hard boiled eggs!

We love the farm section and I managed to help Ellis over her fear of animals larger than cats:

Yeah, I got really brave and loved these little goats:

There was a lioness that you could kiss through the glass:

And there was a brand new giraffe enclosure and even playfighting Rhino's.

Of course there was also the train, we were very lucky and caught the last one of the day:

We went to Grandad and Annes for lunch on Sunday. As we left Mum and Dad, in a devious, sneaky move snatched our Muzzy and blankey and put them in the washing machine.

To say we weren't happy was an understatement. We screamed and wailed like we'd had a leg cut off.

We were just about over it by the time we got there and we had the coolest little cakes ever with lovely pink and purple icing.

And then we watched Madagascar as it was a little bit too cold and muddy to go to the park.

Mum was back to work on Monday so we took her out for lunch again, then it was home to watch Snow Buddies on DVD and then a visit from Auntie Christine and Uncle Ian.

We showed them all our lovely presents.

I did a few peg board pictures with Auntie Christine.

And I took uncle Ian on at Draughts.