I got rid of the last of my face scabs on Tuesday...I was mighty pleased, even if I did have some patches of shiny bright new skin on show in their place.
I had a big day on Tuesday, my first official school visit in preparation for September.  I've found out that what class i'll be in and that i'll have Neave and Luca from nursery in with me too.  I had a great time for the short jhour I was there and played with just about everythin gon offer from paints through to the toy kitchen set up.  I had to go to nursery afterwards, which meant a trip in with Luca and his Mum in their car.  I do still love a trip to nursery with them. 
Thursday and my picture was in the Newbury Weekly News along with all my friends at last weeks dance event...cool or what (i'm in the yellow t-shirt if you still have the paper).
It was also visit the dentist day, we were pretty excited about it.
We were indeed, I was in the room and in the chair before Dad had even hung his coat up.
Dad went next and then it was my turn.  Seeing as i'm four I decided it was time I went in the chair on my own and not on Dad's lap.  The dentist was very pleased with all our teeth as well which was good.
We had a walk to the park at Northcroft with nursery on Friday morning, we do love a trip to the park.  I held Luca's hand all the way there but had to share him on the way back, i'm good like that.
Then friday after Mum had finished work it was camping time.
Yay, we were so excited, we'd been going on about it all week.
It was a nice enough journey down but even the brightest optimist (Dad) couldn't be all that positive about the weather as we got closer to Croyde. 
It was grey, very grey.
It was windy, very windy.
It was rainy, very rainy.
Add a double booked camping pitch at the site and failing daylight and things were not looking good.
Mum was all for heading back into town and booking into a hotel for the night.
But I wanted to be in the tent, we had come camping after all.  Dad didn't need much persuading so camping it was.
We got to sit on the car while Mum and Dad struggled with the elements, for the first time in his life Dad didn't even resort to bad language and tantrums, he had to stay calm or Mum would have thrown him in the sea I reckon. 
After and hour or so, the tent was declared open and habitable, (this was sadly too late to save all the squashy foodstuffs that Dad had packed in the rear footwells....oops we rather crushed them all). 
Hooray, they did really well and we were soon tucked up in our cosy bedroom.  Mum calmed down and even made up a lovely story for us that had us in stitches.
Apparently the tent was getting a proper battering from the wind and rain, but we didn't notice, we were soon asleep.
We had a bit of a lie on saturday morning, Mum and Dad seemed relieved we'd survived the night I think. 
The weather still wasn't that good so we settled for breakfast indoors:

Even after breakfast it wasn't exactly beach weather so after a bit of reading from our books (Winnie the witch for Ellis and Harry Potter and the chamber of secrets for me) we headed into Barnstaple to visit a shop that is apparently just like Mum's but nearer the sea. 

We like to indulge her now and again.

We also had a visit to a really cool toy shop, there were loads of things to try out and play with.

Best of all though there were loads of gross things too, we particulalry liked this thing that looked like a net you get oranges in with a ball in it, but when you squeezed it, the ball bulges out of the net in horrible looking blobs....

....we had on of those each and grossed out as many grown ups as we could.

We headed back to the tent for a luxury luncheon, Garlic roule cheese and biscuits for me.

Cheese sandwich of course for me.

All accompanied by a lovely cup of hot chocolate, this is the life!

We hit the pool in the afternoon, I was sooo excited it was ridiculous.  I love the pool at this campsite, loads of slides and bubbly water and plenty of chances for me to show off my swiming prowess.

I developed a new 'torpedo' technique for gaining maximum speed down one of the smaller slides before hitting the big flume over and over again.

We were finally dragged out after two hours just in time for Andy to arrive. 

He hadn't bought any sunshine with him like we'd asked, but we let him stay anyway.

We had a barbecue for tea and then headed off for a walk accross the dunes:

 

And then back onto the beach for a quick game of volleyball:

And then it was off to bed again, this time without the howling wind:

The next day was a much better weather wise. 

Yeah, we had another decent lie in and Mum broke cover first as she was getting too hot in bed!

We had breakfast outside, like we were supposed to on a camping trip:

And then we packed up our beach gear for the day and headed down to the sea.  It was lovley and sunny and we couldn't wait to get digging, surfing and eating ice cream.

We set up camp and got busy with the toys when one of the Coastgaurds came along and told us all to keep hold of our stuff as the search and rescue helicopter was going to land on the beach just in front of us.

Wow, what top excitement.  Dad was worried we were going to get blown half way accross the beach and covered in swirling sand but Mum and Andy seemed quite happy to sit it out and enjoy the spectacle.

We decided to hedge our bets and half hide behind them.

After a short wait the helicopter came into view over the dunes, circled the beach once really low and then took a run up before plonking down right in front of us.  It was amazing.

And dad didn't need to worry too much as it didn't really kick up much sand at all.  It was a bit noisy though.

Four men jumped out of the big door and took a stretcher up the beach, all the while they were gone the blades were still swooping round and round.

They eventually bought a surfer and his mate back on the stretcher and took straight off, no doubt taking the poor chap to the hospital, hopefully he was okay.

As it flew away the pilot gave us a big old wave and then they were gone!  Within a few minutes the makeshift helipad was being used as a cricket pitch!

We were pretty hot by this point so it seemed only right to go and get in the sea.
Armed with our boards we were off  (accompanied by Ellis singing 'O mama, I wanna go surfing' all the way to the waters edge.

There were plenty of waves and after a while and a little help we were catching some right screamers, right up onto the sand.

I went out really deep with Mum and was getting some real monsters.

And i was joing him on the same wave as he got closer in.

We got turned over a few times but made sure we went back for more.

After all that effort it was well and truly ice cream time.

And then it was digging, a game of ball and then bury Ellis in the sand.

I think that just about covers a day at the beach?  We headed back up to camp to pack our things up, leaving only the table and chairs outside for a fish and chip supper before we headed off for home.  Perfect:

I really didn't want to leave...like really.  Full waterworks the lot. 

I'm sure we'll be going again soon though.

So I was a little toad at nursery on Tuesday. I decided I didn't want to do as I was told and please myself instead.  It has to be said that this is most out of character for me, so I think Claire Bear actually found it quite funny really.  Normal service has been resumed now though.
I also learned to hang upside down, by my legs with no hands in the school playground, cool or what?
I was also doing cool tricks in the playground after school, removing wobbly teeth to order.  I think Ella was well impressed, she even went and got a tissue for me to wrap my tooth up in.
We decided that we should have a trip down the park after tea, but I decided, as I didn't want to wear my helmet that i'd take the scooter instead of my bike...bad mistake.  On the way home I had a rather heavy crash while trying to perfect my bunny hop technique.  It was a face first crash and it happened so quickly that I still had hold of my handlebars as I hit the floor.  So on top of my squashed nose, grazes and unicorn style head bump I also had five skinned knuckles.  I didn't even cry straight away....until I got home, Dad carried me and was covered in blood which set me off when I saw the state of his shirt.  Mum did a great job and sat me down and got me all cleaned up.  She was a bit worried though when I couldn't really tell her how many fingers she was holding up, didn't know if we'd had any tea or not or how i'd done this to myself.  She made a quick phone call and they suggested I get checked out at hospital.  I didn't really like the idea of that much but I gave in.
I was pretty worried about the whole thing as well, but did my best to keep Ned cheerful.
I got checked out and the nurse said that I was okay really, so that was good.  I fell asleep on the way home.  When I woke up next day the tooth fairy had still been, £2 this time as well because apparently the tooth was super clean and nice.  Result, in fact it was a bit of a shame that I didn't maybe knock a couple more out in my scooter crash.....
I had a pretty impressive collection of scabs to take to school with me on Wednesday, which I wasn't too keen on.  I like to keep it low key at school.  No chance, everyone wanted to know what i'd done and the teachers went into fuss overdrive.  Oh dear.  I even had to stay in at playtime to do quiet activities, turns out that this wasn't all bad and I got to stay in and do Lego with Tegan and Ella.   When Dad came to pick me up and ask me how my day had been I gave him a one word answer....tedious.  What made things even worse is that I had to miss Multi Skills after school as well.
Yeah, poor old Ned, at least we could leave for my dancing in plenty of time though so that made a pleasant change.  We go there early enough to have a proper chat with one of the dance teachers before the lesson started while Ned sat in the car, hiding his scabby old chops.
The fussing continued into Thursday at school though, I was well and truly tired of it by now, so it was a good job I had my dancing day on Friday instead:

There were a few of us from school and loads of kids from some other schools and we had a really good day, even though I didn't really want to go through with it when we arrived.  I was worried about having to fend off scab questions and didn't really know what we were going to do all day. 

I got to go to nursery with Luca as well, excellent, Mum didn't even come with us either.

We put on a bit of a performance for the  mums and dads at home time which went pretty well, I really enjoyed it actually.

Seeing as Mum was with us and didn't go back to work we had a bit of time to fill so we headed to the newly opened play stuff in Victoria Park.

Yeah, finally!

It was brilliant, I really liked it and was all over everything as fast as I could:

I wasn't quite so excited as Ellis, even before I smashed myself in the eye with the sand digger handle.  Oops, that'll be a big black eye to go with the scabs then.

We had a lazy morning on Saturday while Mum went to her work meeting.

We watched a bit of telly, nothing exciting.

Then it was eventually time for the summer fete at school.  We got there when it started as Dad was on barbecue duty.

Well if Dad was on Barbecue duty, I was on winning sweets on the tombola duty.  I won loads!  I had to use Ellis' bag to conain them all.  I loved coming over to show Dad my bounty, I even let him have a couple.

I had my face painted:

I decided against that what with all the scabs and that and settled for a skull tattoo on my arm instead, cool or what?

We played all the games on offer pretty much, I almost won a coconut too:

I very nearly trapped the rat:

And I got to give my friend Garran from the juniors a good old soaking with my six sponge assault:

We stayed a lot longer than we thought we would so we were in a bit of a rush to get ready for Grandad and Annes' 10th anniversary party.

I got to wear a lovely dress and sparkly shoes and I was promised dancing!

We had a great time, especially with mum's cousins who i'd never met before.  They were technically old enough to know better I suppose (all three of them were in their twenties after all) but that didn't stop them.  We had sword fights with drink stirrers and ninja beer mat throwing amongst other things.

I danced with Mum, I danced with Dad and if I had to I danced on my own and I loved it.

We stayed really late, it was pretty much 1 am by the time we got to bed....

So there was a monster lie in session on Sunday morning.

Hmm, it was 12 o'clock before I finally surfaced, not bad eh?

We quickly gave Dad his fathers day cards and presents, stuffed some lunch down our throats and then set off for an afternoon at Legoland (we had to renew our season tickets)

Although we got in late we made up for lost time and hit the cars first.

We got to go on the brand new Atlantis ride where you go into the water in a Lego submarine through a big tank with real life fish in it.

Not just any old fish either, cool rays and even sharks!

We loved it and the tanks in the ride exit were cool too, you could poke your head up in them and everything:

I finally got a picture of Ned's scabby nose (he'd banned camera's all week):

And I took a nice one of the Atlantis ride sign:

Now i'm geting bigger we're going an all the rides as a four, it's gret fun.  We all went on the big old pirate ship for the first time and then I decided it was time I went on the big dragon rollercoaster:



Just like Ned, I wasn't keen on the bit inside the castle itself, but once we were up the hill and thundering down the track I loved it.  Mum and I screamed our heads off all the way round.  I declared the ride 'awesome'

We hot-footed it over to the Viking river rapids for a good old soaking.  Dad din't take the brunt of it this time though...

...no, I seemed to!

And then there was just time to play the computer racing game and head off home, not bad for a half day trip!

Basketball at multisports this week, I love basketball so I was well pleased to have a chance to show off my super cool ball dribbling.  I also got to do a bit more dribbling when my wobbly tooth finally came out!  Mrs Stephenson was passing by and very kindly wrapped it all up safe for me to take home and show off (and most importantly, cash in with the tooth fairy).  So here's my new look:

The one right next to it is pretty wobbly too, so that won't be far behind.  Anyway, I placed my tooth under the pillow and it was replaced in by morning time by a shiny £1 coin.  I assured Dad that this was the going rate, he seemed quite pleased with the amount....?

I had another lovely time at dancing on wednesday afternoon, it's the highlight of my week.

I didn't have a book to read and Dad forgot my DS so once Dad gave up with our interesting 'walk' we got back in the car and listened to the new Frank Turner album, well, track 6 anyway.  I love it. 

I'd been going on about going to the city playground for ages and ages and ages (we go through on the way to nursery in the mornings), so on Friday afternoon Dad could take no more and finally gave in.  We even got there by bike which was a double bonus:

What wasn't quite so great was the weather....hail.  Big lumps of hail.  The hail itself was fantastic and I loved it, but what I hadn't bargained on was the affect it had on all the metal climbing stuff...it all got a bit slippery.  I had a bit of an off and ended up on my bum and hurt my fingers too.  I cried.  I really cried.  I cried all the way home on the back of Dad's bike and had to call Mum at work to cry at her too.  I'm back pestering Dad to take me there again now though.
We had our boys BMX outing again on friday night, this week we ventured down to Eastleigh to ride their new track.  It was a nice downhill affair which made it easier for poor old Dad to keep up.  The skatepark at the bottom of the track looked even more fun though if truth be told, shame it was a bit too wet to ride.
Mum went to work on saturday, boo.
It wasn't so bad though, we slugged in our pj's and watched one of my new Tinkerbell DVD's.
Yeah, I quite liked it too, i'm a sucker for a Disney film.
Sue finally caught us in after trying since Easter, she bought us our lovely birthday presents and even an Easter egg...Brilliant!
Yeah thanks Sue.
We then got dressed and headed for the park on a mission....to get rid of my stabilisers once and for all.
I gave her plenty of coaching.
They were off, and so was I, don't know what all the fuss was about?  I definatley don't want them back thats for sure.
We had a spot of lunch and then picked up Owen to go to the Leckhampstead Dog Show and fete thingy, sadly we were too late for the Dog show, so we had to make do with poking around a fire engine and smashing crockery with balls.
This was so much fun:

Probably best not to try it at home though.
As if we hadn't had enough excitment for one day it was round to Auntie Christines for Laura's birthday in the evening.  Lovely as it was to celebrate Laura's birthday the real attraction was of course Darcey.
Yeah, we love Darcey and couyldn't wait to get some cuddles in.
And to help her along with her chair swing thing.
We had a few games of shut the box too, I love shut the box and even managed to actually shut the box on one occasion.  Sadly it was before we started playing for money though.
Sunday saw the last of my birthday activities with my party at Northcroft.  We had a bouncy castle to play on as well but most of us were more interested in the gymnastics stuff:

We also did some running races and stuff accross the hall, I loved that, even if I didn't have much competition from Ellis' little friends.
Next up it was a session in bumpers, I love bumpers so Iwas really excited, I was even brave enough to go down the big slide, well I am 4 after all.
I had a great time chasing the party organiser around and throwing balls at the little ones in the ball pool.
Dinner time was next on the agenda:

If Dad thinks we eat slow at home, he hadn't seen anything compared to this lot! 

Ha ha, we were just enjoying ourselves! 

We were gagging to get the cake out and get on with our ice creams though! 

All in good time Ned.  I had a great time with my friends and also got some really lovely presents from them too.

So a bit of news then, I've been chosen by school to go to a dance event (only 12 from the whole school) because of my aptitude for rhythmic activities, balance and co-ordination apparently.  I wasn't so sure about it at first but when I realised i'd miss a day of school I was won over. I'm really looking forward to it now actually.

Mum and Dad got a load of letters and forms about me starting school, exciting stuff eh?  I can't wait to go and this makes it all another step closer I suppose.  There's various visiting days and what have you as well so it's all go!

Oh look, here's the video!

So we've been away agin as you have no doubt noticed by now.

But there were a few notable things that went on before we went so going way back, my friend Lois at nursery's Dad bought in hus ambulance for us to have alook at.  We sat in the drivers eat, took our blood pressure and used a stethoscope to listen to each others hearts.  We loved it.

The other truly huge event was me being re-united with my beloved blanky.  Jenny found it in the laundry room at nursery, she's the best!  I loved snuggling back into it, a muzzy was okay but not as good as the real thing.  We had to pick up a few things to eat on the way home from nursery so quickly nipped into Sainsbury's (yay, escalators) and we bumped into Darcey taking Laura and Auntie Christine for a trip out.  I even got to have go pushing her buggy.

Then on Thursday we took Mum out for lunch and just so happened to bump into Alan, wandering aimlessly around town, so he tagged along too.

In the mean time i'd been on a reeading crusade to get my backlog of books finished before we broke up for half term.  After a massive effort I just about managed it, before we jetted off to sunny Spain:

It was an early start though, my goodness was it ever an early start. At least we had Kimi, Marny, Ben, Rach and Andy in tow.

It was a short flight with plenty to see out of the window of the plane and we were soon touching down at Barcelona airport.  I was pretty excited to get going and see all the sights.

We arrived at our villa after driving up and up and up into the mountains and were pretty impressed, bunk beds, lots of rooms to hide in, a couple of balconies and of course a swimming pool:

As usual the race was on to be first in the water.  After Andy got beaten by us last year in Florida he wasn't going to be caught out again this time round and had packed his swimmers in his man bag.  He was in straight away.

We weren't far behind though and we had a great time splashing about.

I dived, I snorkelled, I rode Milly the inflatible shark, I bombed.

And I managed to swim all the way accross the pool and pool and back again all on my own (well, with my armbands on).

It wasn't all fun fun fun woth the pool though and I had assumed the role of pool attendant for the week:

The view from the upstairs balconies were really nice accross the hillsides, especially at night or in the morning:

We had a trip to the beach:

But it wasn't like Cornwall, as the sea was actually quite nice and warm.

And these showers were nice for de-sanding the old feet before putting your flip flops back on:

We struck some catalogue poses:

Yes we did indeed:

And another for good measure:

We took a trip into Barcelona city on the train (mum sorted it out nicely, she's good with trains, even abroad). 

It was a lovely journey all along the sea side.  We saw plenty of people sun bathing, swimming, running, bike riding and playing football.

The station was right in the city centre, a big square with a load of students protesting in the middle about government cuts or something.  They looked they were having a pretty good time though:

We got tickets for the scenic bus tour, upstairs and open air of course:

There was an audio commentary as well, I was well happy to get plugged in and hear about all the buildings and the sights:

Especially this one, Gaudi's Sagrada Família:

I'm sure it will be even more impressive when it's finished, although I quite liked the cranes myself.  It took me nearly all week to learn how to say it mind you.

We vosited Parc Guell, there were all sorts of weird and wonderful things to see:

There certainly was, everywhere you looked there was another weird bit, a mosaic tucked away or something else:

I continued my quest for artifacts of course, numerous stones were aquired and best of all a large lump of wood:

There were lots of trinkets and jewellery for sale, so Mum and I were in our element:

There was the longest bench in the world to sit on:

And photo's to be posed for with the lizard lady by the gates:

We got back on the bus to see more of the city, but I decided i'd seen enough and had a lovely kip instead:

The following day we headed to the hills, to Montserrat.

Or Monster-rat I decided to call it.

It was a big old mountain and even though dad wanted to drive up on the twisty hairpin bends we plumped for the train.

It did get pretty close to the edge during the climb upwards but it was brilliant:

We got out at the top to find pretty much an entire village complete with cafe's, shops and museums to explore.

As well as a lovely view out accross the countryside:

There was also a good oppurtunity for a quick cuddle:

Then we happened to notice a 'funicular' railway that went even higher up the mountain, of course, we had to go on it.

It was really weird and really steep but we were soon at the proper top of the mountain:

You could see for miles and miles, we loved it:

But best of all was this mountain cat that came to say hello to us:

She was lovely and really enjoyed me making a fuss of her, I couldn't believe there was a cat so high up!

On the next days agenda was a trip to the water park.

It was totally brilliant and we pretty much had the place to ourselves all day.

Eventually I waterparked myself out and crashed out on a lovely shady sunlounger:

But I certainly had my fill, I went on loads of slides, even some which were pretty big and scary.

I most certainly did not crash out and went on slide after slide after slide until the grown ups said we had to leave...boo!! There should be a video appearing very soon (if not at the bottom of this post).

All too soon it was our last full day, so we headed back to Barcelona on the train again.

It was a great journey again, especially when the singer turned up in the carriage with his special bag that played his backing music through a speaker. 

We headed down Las Ramblas for a bit, it was pretty cool actually, there were pet stalls that we loved to look at:

We got to put our herb recognition skills to good use:

And we loved the street entertainers:

Even though it was a little bit wet:

We had dinner on the waterfront before making our way to the cable car station.

They went really high accross the harbour and up into the foothills of the mountain on the other side of the city:

It was pretty high up, but I think we liked it:

It took us over to the Olympic park, so we had a wander up the hill and stumbled accross the diving pool, where some people were being filmed jumping from the low board.

I fancied a go myself, but from the high one of course.  Then it was on to the athletics stadium, I really wanted to have a run around the track but I was told this wasn't allowed:

We headed back to the villa, this time the entertainment on the train was a guiter player.  He was pretty good as well.

After dinner I was allowed a few early birthday presents as we would be travelling home on my real birthday:

And that was it, we had a great time, especially in our pool, we loved just jumping in for a dip when ever we felt like it.

Yeah, it was lovely that and we really made use of it, wish we had one at home.....



So A big thanks to Kimi and Marny for playing with us and Andy, Ben and Rach for their company for the week.

We left Spain early in the morning and were at home by mid afternoon, so seeing as it was my official birthday I got some more presents to open before:

Den and Gail turned up for a visit which was nice. and after that it was a celebratory trip to Pizza Hut before finally to bed after a very long day.  The day that I turned 4!  Yes, thats 4, although Dad says I might be 3 again if we go somewhere that 4 year olds have to pay. 

 As is always the case in our family, birthday celebrations seem to drag on for days, so it was Ellis' birthday picnic trip on Saturday:

It was a great effort actually, especially trying to light the Minnie mouse number 4 candle in quite a strong cross wind though.  I should also mention the bunch of Pink flowers Dad got for me to make up for my Pizza Hut balloon getting popped in marks and Spencer.  They were the first flowers i'd ever had of my own and Ned and I loved chopping the bottom of the stalks off and arranging them in the vase.

Auntie Chritine came to see us in the evening, sadly there was no Darcey though.  Still, she had plenty of lovely pictures and stories of what Darcey had been up to.

Even if some of them took some believeing.....

Sunday bought about a team split, Dad and I went to BMX racing....

While Mum and I satyed at home.  We had  a trip to the park and saw grandad and Anne, Rach and Kimi and then later on Hayley and Alan, all interspersed with frequent phone calls from Ned, seeking re-assurance from us no doubt.

Well, it was the first time i'd gone without my full support crew, even though I had my new friend Charlie (my main competitor) for company:

I was pretty rubbish in my heats but once again turned it on for the final for the category win once again. Having said that, Dad had offered me an ice cream if I won:

I couldn't wait to get home and see Ellis.

Even if we were scrapping within half an hour...ha ha!

Back to nursery on Monday then, It was lovely to see my friends though.

Yeah, school wasn't too bad and I couldn't wait to tell everyone about our holiday of course.

Yeat another birthday related visit on Monday night from Auntie Trish was lovely as well.