Blimey, we've got some catching up to do again.
Yes, we have, lets get on with it!
So going back to Tuesday before half term we had some top notch drama before Mr Gilhams after school club started when a small fire broke out in the fuse box in the schoool hall. It was ace, we had to go outside and then the fire brigade turned up. It was all dealt with very quickly though and we still managed to get half of our sports session in.
We had a good old go on the Wii after tea, we hadn't played Just Dance for ages and i'm starting to finally give twinkle toes Dad a run for his money.
Well, all my audition practice for the school play failed to pay off, as once again I have been given the part of.........Narrator. AGAIN! This must be the third year running? Anyway, having seen the final script I think i've done alright, I get the best comedy lines I reckon and a lot less work than the bigger parts.
After school we went to the petshop to get Poppy a new bed as we've decided she deserves a little bit more luxury in her old age.
Dad reckoned she wouldn't sleep on it. He was wrong, she loved it!
Thursday was the last day of term, yay! And while I was at dancing....
Dad and I went to the park for a bit, lovely!
With it being so close to Halloween, we danced to thriller, it was cool doing all the zombie moves.
We kept on moving and grooving with another round of Just Dance on the Wii.
Before we helped Dad make a start in his lovely big tub of celebrations he'd had as a birthday present.
Mum was off with us Friday.
We played Monopoly, and no one had to pay the crying fine.
And we went to the little shop to buy pretty much most of their stock.
When Dad came home we gave him his birthday presents (yes, we know it was early but we were going on holiday and didn't want to take them with us).
The presents were okay I suppose.....a new sleeping bag for porkers, an Ipod of his own so he doesn't have to steal mine anymore and some frankly far too trendy trainers for a man of his age:
Her didn't get time to sit around enjoying his presents for long though, I still had swimming lessons to go to.
And I had my Team Kennet. We got our running vests and club t-shirts this week, how exciting!
We had to get up seriously early on saturday morning.
We did, apparently it was 1 am?
We were off on our holidays, this time to Spain.
We drove down to Bristol Airport and arrived in the city centre during club closing time, there were a lot of drunk people about which was quite an eye opener.
When we got parked up and got out of the car it was freezing cold and still dark, it was a good job we were headed for sunnier climes.
This one was a serious group outing too, there was us four, Andy, Alan, Hayley, Trish, Slim, Trace, Ben, Rach, Kimi and Marney all going on the same plane (with Chris, Ian, Owen, Laura and Darcey following on a later flight).
We were soon on our way, it was still dark when we took off, but out of the window we could see the sun starting to come up, it was brilliant.
The flight itself was great fun, we all sat together and there was a lot of sillyness to keep us amused.
It didn't take long to get to Spain and we were soon landing.
The excitement kept coming with the fastest minibus ride of all time to the hire car depot.
The driver kept shouting 'Rapido' and 'Ferrnando Alonso' in between bouts of manic laughter.
We soon had our wheels, a Mercedes Vito no less. It was considerably nicer than Andys Focus, and infinitley better than Kimi and Marney's Tata.....the less said about that the better I think.
We were soon at the villa, everyone was relieved that it really did exist and I think pretty pleased with what we found.
The pools were lovely, there was a tennis court, pool table, table tennis table, dartboard, piano's, disco room....plenty of scope for fun!
After we'd had a dip it was a quick mercy dash to the supermarket to pick up some provisions.
By the time we got back Slim and Andy had sampled the beer and the party pretty much started from there!
By the time the Flacks arrived we were well and truly on holiday:
It was along day though, we needed a bit of a siesta up on our balcony:
There was singing, dancing and merry-making late into the night..
I'm sure the video proof will surface eventually, we did a good job of helping Uncle Slim run the bar and he made sure our drinks were tastefully decorated with various cocktail adornments.
We spent the end of the evening back on the terrace stargazing with Mum.
With so many people around, this was going to be a different sort of holiday and as such we didn't do a whole lot really.
No, we just enjoyed everyones company, there was certainly never a dull moment thats for sure!
Having an indoor pool as well as an outdoor pool was certainly a very cool thing:
Of course Sunday was the big day, Dads actual birthday, 40 years old!
We had a chef bloke come in to cook us a meal for the evening.
I didn't like it much bit the grown ups seemed to.
We had a lovely evening though, sat outside on the terrace wating the hillsides twinkle with the lights of distant villages.
We were pretty tired it has to be said, I forced myself to stay awake until the birthday cake appeared:
I wish I hadn't bothered really, it was spoiled by a load of fruit lurking within it!
Anyway, happy birthday Dad!
The next day we had a trip to the nearest beach at Fuengirola. It wasn't all that really.
The sandcastles were pretty impressive though:
As were the statues:
There was a bloke trying to take a nice picture of this one, every time his camera shutter clicked, I seemed to just pop up and ruin his shot!
The best thing though was the 'Scenic Land Train tour' Not because of the fantastic sights on offer, but because of our crazy bunch of friends.
We decided the whole town needed livening up, the best way we could come up with was to issue a loud, friendly 'Hola' and a big wave to everyone we went past.
I think we made a big impact on the town that day, we cheered everyone up thats for sure.
We had a quick play on the park:
Then headed back to the villa to fill the others in on our exploits.
Tuesday was a very, very wet day indeed.
Our initial plan to go to Alhambra was quickly dropped in favour of a trip to Gibraltar instead.
Did we mention it was wet?
It was a decent drive there, we quite enjoy watching the scenery roll by and laughing at foreign signs that sound a bit rude to us. You know the sort of thing.
I had a lovely long kip instead to catch up a bit.
We parked up, still on the Spanish side and made our way to the border control.
It's weird, but apparently Great Britain own Gibraltar, even though it's in Spain. To get in we needed passports and everything.
As soon as we were through Mum had the amazingly good sense to book us all a private tour around the rock in a minibus taxi.
It was really good fun too, the driver lady told us loads of facts and history which was all really ace stuff about the militay and what have you.
Our first stop was supposed to be a lovely viewpoint out over the point where the Atlantic meets the Med, but it was so grim we couldn't really see anything much.
Except the building opposite the had a roof garden with some truly massive rocks on it...we wondered how they got there?
Our second stop was at St Micheals cave. As the minibus came to a stop, we noticed we were not alone.
No, we most certainly were not.....there were loads of apes, circling, looking for mischief.
I was totally in my element, I loved them, they were cute and very cheeky indeed. One walked right behind me giving me a little tap on the shoulder as he went. I was thrilled.
I wasn't, I was a bit more nervous of them in fact.
They were much more interested in our minibus anyway. They removed the taxi sign, prised the wipers into the up position and their finale was to remove a good length of rubber sealing strip from the roof.
The driver was pretty angry about this, she'd only had the minibus a couple of weeks, it was pretty much brand new!
They got a whack with the rubber strip for efforts once she'd prized it back off them.
Anyway, after this hilarity we headed undergound into the caves, at least it was dry in there!
They really were very impressive though, well lit, good for exploring!
When we got out and went in the cafe, there were little eyes peering through the window:
And all the fridges in the cafe had to have special monkey proof latches to stop them from wandering in to help themselves!
We carried on up through the clouds for our next stop, a long cave with loads of little alcoves where cannons were stationed. It was really cool.
And very dark in places.
After that it was back upwards again, still in the murky greyness. I'm sure on a clear day the views would have been really amazing.
Never mind, we made the best of it.
We were particulalry relieved that we had done the trip by Taxi when we saw the steps you would have to climb to get to the top......they were steep and even though we couldn't see the bottom through the clouds, it looked a long way down.
It would have been hard work for Andy with me on his shoulders thats for sure.
This last stop was also the main Ape hangout spot. There were loads of them around.
Once again they seemed drawn to the taxi and wanted to take themselves some souvenirs. It was still hilarious to watch.
We wound our way back down the hill and got dropped off in the main street to make our own way back and find some lunch.
It's a pity we didn't ask our guide to recommend somewhere to eat, we ended up in what must have been the worst pub in Gibraltar I reckon.
At least there was entertainment though, with the Basil Fawlty/Manuel-esque set up between the woman behind the bar and the cook!
We wandered around town a bit, bought some high quality souvenirs and then headed back towards Spain.
But get this, to get back we had to walk accross the runway for the airport. It was mad, just as we got accross the gates came down like a level crossing as a plane was going to land.
All the cars queued up either side and everything.
When we finally got back to the car we were all pretty much soaked through, but at least it wasn't cold as well.
We soon dried off though and had some proper children time back at the villa:
Wednesday, Halloween no less!
We'd taken care of our outfits and packed them in our hand luggage.
Mum had done the business bringing over some brilliant Halloween decorations that were up in our room when we woke up.
And even Dad had got on board with things this time around by booking us a trip to a chocolate factory in the nearby village of Mijas.
A real chocolate factory too, albeit a very, very small one.
It was brilliant pretty much straight away when we were given loads of samples to taste.
Before we were taken through to the working kitchen to make our own chocolate bars:
I decided that a very stringent system of ongoing ingredients testing was required to make sure only tip top ingredients were used in our bars:
There were loads of fillings to choose from, fudge, sweets, nuts, white chocolate, various fruits and even crushed up sugar cones.
We created our masterpieces (I had the genius idea of making just a plain bar) and then got to try some of the really posh expensive chocolates that they use. It was lovely and had so many different tastes. I also got to ask loads of questions about chocolate, where it comes from, it's by products and goodness knows what else. The lady answered all of them with great enthusiasm, i'm sure this will all come in very useful during my chocolate project next term.
We had to leave it to cool and be wrapped up before we could take it away so we headed off for lunch to this cool restaurant on the side of the mountian, the views were brilliant:
We had a lovely lunch and then went back to pick up our goodies which had all been wrapped in lovely coloured foil and in a named bag, which was good, because a lot of the grown ups had done dark chocolate and I certainly didn't wany any of that!
Once back at the villa we decided to slip into something a little more appropriate:
And then the main event, the super Halloween mega sweet hunt!
Everyone had really pulled out all the stops for us thats for sure. There were millions of sweets, pretty much everywhere we looked.
So a massive thank you to everyone who used up so much of their baggage allowances to bring us sweets, they were really appreciated.
Thursday was a lovely sunny day, we spent it at the villa, using the facilities.
We swam, we played tennis, we sat on sun loungers, we ate sweets.
But best of all we spent time just hanging out with everyone, chatting, larking about and just enjoying ourselves.
Then it was Friday, our last day.
We took another trip into Mijas as we'd decided it was such a nice place we'd show Owen around.
That, and donkey riding! We warmed up on this one first:
Before heading out on the real deal, we were so excited it was unbelievable:
We rode all round the town, through the traffic, up narrow lanes, all over the place:
All the other tourists stopped and gave us a wave as we made our way around, it was like being famous!
We also passed Auntie Christine and Uncle Ian as well as Ben, Rach, Kimi and Marney having a pony and trap ride, it was so cool.
Back at the villa we spent out last afternoon around the pool and in the sauna:
We managed to get a group photo too which was cool:
We also managed to squeeze in another mini disco bar session before it was time to turn in for the night.It was an early start to get back to the airport on Saturday.
But we were pretty good natured about it.
We were soon on our way, watching the sun come up over the sea.
And making sure that Ben and Rach were okay in their lovely Tata.....ahem.
We were soon back home and everyone went their separate ways, it was pretty sad really.
Never mind, there's always next time eh?
Thanks to everyone who came along, we had such a good time and I know Dad did too.
Being back at home seemed strangely lonely on Sunday, although it was nice to make a fuss over poppy.
We had to go food shopping of course.
Good, that meant we could have a proper dinner, a lovely roast. Poppy went beserk for some chicken.
We were still off school on Monday, Mum was on duty again....cool.
We had a lazy morning before heading into town for back to school haircuts. I really didn't want mine done, but it looks pretty cool now actually.
I did, of course I so love a haircut.
It was then on to the doctors for me. I had a bad ear. Diagnosed as an ear infection with a suspected cause being my massive amounts of swimming on holiday. The doctor also said that I must have been very brave as it must have been pretty painful. I don't like to cause a fuss though, you know how it is. One bottle of that iffy banana medicine for me.
Back to school on Tuesday, I was actually really keen to go back as I seem to be over my 'I don't like school' wobble. I was full of enthusiasm for my travels over the holidays and couldn't wait to show everyone my Donkey Themed Mijas Snow Globe......sadly I broke it before anyone could even see it in all it's glory. I was very sad about it indeed.
Mine survived intact fortunatley.
We noticed Poppy didn't seem to well on Wednesday.
No, she didn't get out of bed all day.
We decided to keep an eye on her.
But on Thursday she was still no better and we decided we ought to take her to the vets.
The vet didn't have good news for us i'm afraid. It looked like poor old Poppy was really quite unwell and we made the difficult decision to have her put to sleep.
We bid her a very tearful farewell before leaving Dad in with the vet to get the job done.
He said that it was all very peaceful, and she was purring away with her head pressed up against his hand at the end.
We sat in the car crying our eyes out and went home without her.
She was the coolest cat ever, but she was pretty old I suppose, we'll really miss her.
Then it was Friday, last day before the weekend!
Swimming lessons went well after all my practice in Spain. I wasn't shy about telling evryone just how good i'd been either.
We had the school firework party in the evening. Mr Jones had been busy most of the week collecting wood for the bonfire.
You could tell, he'd done a great job. It was soon alight and roaring hot.
We loved standing there in the warm.
We bought a load of glow sticks and then headed out onto the field for the fireworks.
After last years rather damp affair, this year was pretty spectacular actually.
Once they were finished we headed back to the fire, Mr Jones had moved the fence around it in a bit so we could still be lovely and warm.
We stood there for ages talking to Mr Jones and Miss Butt and by the time we turned round pretty much everyone had gone home.
We decided to hang around though and played on the adventure playground while Dad bought discount beer from the bar stall.
We did some baking saturday morning, small cake called coffee kisses from one of Dads new cookbooks.
We're quite a slick kitchen outfit these days you know.
They were lovely as well!
We had a trip to Marlborough for lunch and advent calendars. Yes Christmas is certainly coming....yippeee!!! We were even allowed to buy a few new christmas decorations too.
We got some proper lovely ones again of course. I also got a couple of packets of christmas cards for my school friends as well. I was well keen, I even wrote most of them when we got home.
More fireworks on saturday night, this time with Laura and Darcey as well at Henwick field.
We had sparklers on the way too...cool.
Darcey didn't seem to impressed:
Before the fireworks started we ha d alittle time on the fair, I decided I really wanted a go on the Waltzer which pleased Dad no end as he hadmn't been on one for years:
I loved it too and didn't stop laughing the whole time we were on it.
I decided that i'd try and win something instead:
And I did too, a cuddly snake no less!
Andy turned up fresh from football, just in time to see the fireworks as well.
If the school ones were good last night, these ones were mega.
They were, I was pretty much awestruck by them it has to be said.
Their bonfire on the other hand was a pretty wafty affair. It was made of palletts which meant it collapsed very quickly.
And the roped off area around it was massive, you couldn't even feel the heat. They should have got Mr Jones to sort it out for them.
After a couple of false starts and a few tears we got a go on the bumper cars too, we love the bumper cars.
We had a lazy Sunday morning.
And another lovely roast!
Before we were forced out of the house for a walk/bike ride for us kids.
Well, it really was a lovley sunny day. We headed for the newish sculptures down the road as we wanted to have a good look at them:
They were pretty cool as well:
After that we headed over to the city playground, a great place to learn to do monkey bars according to Ned. Although I decided I still needed a bit of help:
We were all over the non-slide slide thing:
Dad hated watching us on it, particulalry me, he thought I was going to fall off every time.
And then it was back to school again.
I've lost one of my school shoes...which is a little bit inconvenient......
And we're still missing the cat. I'm not allowed another one either apparently.
Anyway, thats about it for now, we've got about an hours worth of video to edit down and put together at some point in the future, so keep your eyes peeled for that!
I wouldn't hold your breath though, it might be a while!
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