It's half term week.
The rubbishest of all the school holidays really, too cold, too wet and too dark and lacking in the excitement of the Christmas break too.
So it's good job we can still have a great week off at this time of year.
We spent Monday with Auntie Christine and Darcey which was lovely.
When we got home we'd had a new carpet fitted...apparently  we have to be really carfeul with our drinks and food now....I wonder who will 'christen' the carpet first?
Anyway, it's so 'luxurious' that the doors won't fit any more and need to be skimmed off. 
In the meantime we have thoroughly enjoyed having no doors to impede our inter-room progress.
Especially as this has coincided with us removing one of the sofas, all bar it's cushions which we've really enjoyed arranging as various obstacles.
Tuesday was Dragon club.
We scootered there in the morning with Mum.
We had a great day, there were some of our old friends there and I spent the day playing X-Box with Marcus as well as a game of football out on the field.
I made some lovely jewellery, played on the adventure playground and loved playing just dance.  It's better on the X Box as you don't even need to wave the controller about, it just recognises your body movements.  This suited my style a lot better.
Even though it was school holidays Ellis still had gymnastics club.  It wasn't a total disaster for me though as we sneaked off to Sainsbury's and I bought another Skylander with some of my Christmas money (thanks Laura).
I had a great time at gymnastics, no name calling and the parents were allowed into the gym to watch the last 15 minutes.  This gave me a great opportunity to enjoy a sneaky cuddle with Dad and Ned.  This weeks highlight had to be learning to do a forward roll on a balance beam...albeit a special low one, with a little help.
Wednesday saw a return to Auntie Christines.
Indeed it did, we went to Darceys nursery for the morning.  We did plenty of drawing and making and best of all cornflour and water (that Auntie Christine had never seen before).
This was followed by a surprise trip to Pizza Hut, brilliant!
I lost the spaghetti eating contest to Darcey by quite a margin.
Team Kennet was moved to Wednesday night for the holiday week and instead of having all the events going on we had team relay races, with a variety of obstacles thrown in for good measure.  It was done like a proper competition with all the team scores noted down.  Our team did really well and finished in second place overall on the night.
Mum was off Thursday, so it was a lounge around kind of morning.
That was until the new sofa's and telly table were delivered,  I know, amazing scenes eh?
And another restriction on food and drink no doubt....
I was exceptionally excited about the new sofas for some reason and made sure I was first to get a sit on them.
We had a trip to the park for a bit until Dad got home from work.
And then we went to the Cinema to see Wreck It Ralph.
We loved it of course, we really love the cinema.
By the time we got out it was way past tea time so we had to make do with a McDonalds...shame!
We spent the last day of the week at Dragon Club again.  There was only 5 of us there, so it was pretty quiet.
Suited me fine, more X-Box time.
And in the afternoon we made the nicest rice crispy cakes ever.
Which had to be very delicately packed in Dads rucksack as he came to get us on his bike straight from work.
Yes, we decided we wanted to scooter all the way home as well.
Dad was very sceptical but we made it easily.  
It was really rather pleasant actually.
And as a special treat when we got home we had hot chocolate, squirty cream and marshmallows to accompany our rice crispy cakes, which survived the journey home intact.
In the evening we got to pester Andy, Owen and Alan....yay.
But we were packed off to bed pretty sharpish...boo.
We had a trip to ruddy Ikea again on Saturday.
But it was a good trip for three reasons, firstly we got some proper storage units for the conservatory to help tidy up our toys (meaning my room can be decorated), secondly we got some curtains to match my new duvet and thirdly we didn't eat any of their meatballs.
And there was also the face painter in the children's area:

We also got to go to Toys R Us so I could spend some vouchers I had still left from Christmas (spent very wisely on a Barbie dog playground).
We had an easy afternoon before Auntie Trish came round to babysit on Saturday night.
We hadn't seen her for what seemed like ages so we were well excited about her coming over.
We watched some cool stuff on telly and then dropped off.
Sunday then, weird scenes at home.....tidying up.  
Not a common activity in our house, but once the racking was up (no detectable bad language from Dad either) we were quite keen to make use of it.
We sorted loads of things out that we have grown out of to take to the charity shop as well.  We really got into it actually.
But fortunately normality kicked in again later in the afternoon and we made a flying visit to the retail park for a few items of clothing for us kids.
And a new pair of trainers for me..again. I can't help it if I keep wearing them out with all my sporting activities.
We rounded off the weekend playing Just Dance 4, there are some really good songs on it.
But sadly, Dad can still beat us all....

Had a great day at school on Tuesday, what with it being pancake day and all we actually got to make pancakes.  I had them with lemon and sugar on and surprisingly they were really lovely.  I usually treat thin traditional style pancakes as a vessel for carrying ice cream and chocolate sauce in massive quantities.

Rugby club after school was once again a whole lot better. We made good progress and really enjoyed playing a proper game for the first time amongst ourselves.

My second week at gymnastics and I really enjoyed it again.  All except for a small incident when one of the other girls decided to be really quite nasty to me for no apparent reason.  Her best insult was 'poo poo head'

Well, she'll need to try harder than that to put me off, ha!

When we got home I gave Dad the pancake recipe we used at school (done up as a maths problem, Dad had to check my sums with a calculator, he needn't have bothered of course, they were all correct) and we made some pancakes.

I didn't like them.

Mum only had a couple, but Dad and I kept on making them and making them and making them.  We flipped them, we experimented to see how thin we could get them, how quick we could cook them but the best thing was that I managed to do one all on my own from start to finish.  It was also probably the best one we did as well, all golden and lovely looking.

No one called me a poo poo head at ballet on Wednesday which was nice.

I might have done, under my breath while we had to sit in the car and read.....grumble grumble grumble.  It must be said, I have lost a large chunk of my reading enthusiasm I had earlier in the school year.  But having said that, i'm doing a lot more of it on a regular basis during everyday life so I reckon it evens out nicely.

Thursdays are great, I mean it's almost Friday and I get a free run of the TV after school while Ned is at dancing class.

I on the other hand had a rubbish Thursday, when I managed to get myself a red card issued to me for a bit of rough and tumble.  Oh dear, Dad got told all about when he came to pick me up.  I was really down about it, and felt that i'd really let myself down.  It took quite a while before I cheered up.

One thing we do both like on Thursday though is hot school dinners.

The pizza's are lovely!

And the only thing better than a school dinner pizza?  Ciabatta bacon rolls and potato waffles for tea on a Friday night.

Yes indeed, our appetite for potato waffles mystifies Mum but remains as strong as ever.

We had a visit from Laura and Darcey after school as well, was a lovely surprise.

Even if I did get a bit worried that Darcey was going to trash all of my stuff!

Then it was off to team Kennet, we got there a bit early and I had a great time by joining in with a game of basketball with some older boys.  The athletics was good too of course.  I put in a few strong performances and impressed Dad with my speed and agility in the last relay race of the evening.  When we came out it was  dark, but a lovely starry night.  We decided that it should hurry up and be camping season.

The weekend then, and for what must be the first time since July last year it wasn't raining!

Amazing scenes.  It's always a bit of a double edged sword though, because a weekend morning is a marvelous thing to spend in your PJ's watching a little television. 

It really was too nice a day to squander though so we headed out.

After a bit of slouch and a leisurely breakfast though.

Our destination the Moors Valley country park.  Dad had planned the whole thing with meticulous precision even going so far as getting a postcode for a Marks and Spencer's nearby so we could have a luxury picnic for lunch.

He was however mortified to find out that the postcode he had punched into the sat-nav was merely a Marks and Spencer's 'Simply Food' shop attached to a Petrol station on a stretch of crappy dual carriageway.

I don't know what he was so worried about, they had the usual individual fingers of strong cheddar and lovely grapes for me.

And I had the added bonus of being able to indulge myself in the dubious delights of petrol station warm sausage rolls from a fresh bakery counter (which were not as nice as the ones from Gary's shop in Cornwall by the way).

Anyway, the country park turned out to be rather brilliant, even if Mum did have a small issue with the extortionate  price of car parking.

The main draw for us initially was of course the miniature steam railway:

We loved it, even though we don't look like it in this picture.  So Dad took another one:

Which was a little more convincing.

The train didn't got that far, along the side of the lake and past the picnic area.

But there were plenty of onlookers flanking the line, all keen to be waved at!

And a couple of decent tunnels to go through!

The carriages also made a really brilliant place to leave a bag of rubbish, or so Dad seemed to think anyway.

He still claims it was unintentional......

As a rather splendid side order to this railway lark was a really rather brilliant playground.

And a woodland walk.

Yeah, a woodland walk sounds pretty standard doesn't it?  But this one had a series of one off play structure in a clearing every 5 to 10 minutes walk.

There were about ten of them in all I think and they were really brilliant.  We especially liked the wooden snake tunnels where you could climb into the snakes mouth and go all the way down to the furthest exit near his tail.

Which we obviously decided was his bum hole.

There was also a Go-Ape course in the tree tops.....this looks very promising as a birthday activity for me and a few friends.....i'm going to start applying the pressure to get this one sorted out I think.

We came home, watched You've been framed for a bit and then headed off out again to Kimi and Marney's place.

Abi and Faye were there too and we had a lovely night.

Yes, the catering that was laid on was top notch and Kimi seemed quite happy to watch me play computer games for ages and ages and ages.  Perfect.

We were all very well behaved, unlike the grown ups who sat around, feeding their faces and drinking booze.

It was of course....a very late night!

Which was fine as the only thing we had on the agenda was Ali's party at the gymnastics club that Ellis goes to.  Ali's been going for years and he's really pretty good at all that stuff.  The party was great fun and we got to loads of larking about.  The icing on the cake was that we got have McDonalds for the meal as well.

I had a leisurely picnic egg themed lunch with Mum and Dad before heading out to play in the garden in the sunshine.  That makes two whole days without rain, amazing.

After coming home from the party Ellis and I made an amazing army base out of sofa cushions with Nerf gun implacements all along the front.

It really was quite the fortress...but sadly no one had anywhere to sit.

Yeah, bit of a flaw in the plan that one.  It may have been why we were forced to go out for a ruddy walk I reckon!

So then, my first week at gymnastics club......I think I could claim that it went rather well:

It just so happened to be an assesment week, nothing like going in at the deep end eh?  I managed to get myself a level 8 proficency award on my first session.  I was really pleased about that it has to be said.  the coach came out afterwards and told Dad on two occasions that i'd done really well and we should keep a watch on my prgogress.  Anyway, the gym itself is really cool and there were even a coupel of girls from school that go (in year 2 though).
While all this was going on, it was rugby club again.  The standard of behaviour was much better this week and I enjoyed it all the more.  I think this may have had something to do with Mrs Douglas watching over us as well as our rugby coach.
Once rugby was done I had to rush to finish my school project on the journey of chocolate from bean to bar.  Even though i'd had almost two weeks to do it I like to make sure it's a fraught and panic riddled event.  It paid off though, I got 3 house points for it!
My projects are a lot more easy to complete so I have to make up my own...this week, glittery girl:

I though she looked lovely:

And once i'd finished so did the table cloth, and indeed, myself with my glittery chops:

Uncle Den came with Dad to pick me up from school on Thursday.  It was lovely to see him and I got him all to my self while Ned was still at school dancing away.
We had a great day at school on thursday, we did a bit of maths in the morning, then it was off to to the swimming pool and then in the afternoon we had a class disco as a reward for prolomged good bahviour.  The disco was good but would have been a lot better if anyone had bothered to do the catering sid eof things.  As usual, there was a talent show (popularity contest), and although Maxim and myself had by far the best act, we of course only came second.
This good run at school continued into Friday with cross country for golden time and some chocolate cake making!
Saturday, we had nothing to do really which was odd for us.
I did my Moshi Monsters 3D ball puzzle that I had for christmas.  It went okay, until I tried to titivate it one step too far and it kind of exploded all over the floor.  There followed floods of tears and general despondancy.
Mum and Dad helped put it back together again, before Ellis decided that an ideal form of retaliation to a minor disagreement between us was to give it a good old whack.
Yeah, well, there you go. 
I think as a punishment to both of us Mum and Dad made us go shopping to Kingston.
It all started off really well actually with lunch in a cool american diner place.
The milkshakes were awesome, Mums coke float was a bit weird though, I imagine it's an aquired taste.
It all went downhill after that though, with outburst of stropping and what have you.
It didn't go well.
We all came home empty handed!
Still, at least we got to play Rock Band with Owen on Saturday night.  I loved it, I had a bit of a sing to Beetlebum and Don't stop believeing as well as sharing drumming duties with Mum.
We popped round to see Sue on Sunday, she's had a bit of an operation recently apparently.  Not that you'd really know it to look at her.
Get well soon Sue.
After that it was Hugo's party, a disco at the school no less!  It was brilliant, well except for a bit of a fight, not that I was involved in it. 
When he got home we cracked the Cluedo out.
And I won!!!!!
Then it was monday of course.
So dancing for me.
And more muddy cross country for me.
After tea the Labyrinth game came out.
I won that too!

After school sports club was cool on Tuesday, but it might be my last one!  I've been on the waiting list for gymnastics club for ages and a place has just became available.  I've got my trial lesson next week so i'll see how it goes.

Hopefully better than rugby did this week.  There was a lot of silly behaviour and we spent most of our time waiting for people to stop messing about and pay attention. It's mostly the year threes and I decided I was going to have a word with our teachers the next day to see if we could get something done about it as the rest of us really want to learn and get our team together for some competitions.

But today's main event was going round to see Millie, the new arrival.  She was so tiny and lovely.

She was, we were really rather taken with her it has to be said.

I was a bit jealous though, we got her a blanket like mine as a present.  First off it was pink, and secondly the back of it was lovely snuggly soft fleecy material.

Miss Langdon beat me to it regarding the rugby, she called us all together and pretty much read the riot act and promised that anyone not taking it seriously wouldn't be allowed to come in the future.  I hope it works out.

I get no such issues at ballet on Wednesdays thank goodness.  I'm really rather enjoying it at the moment actually.

I'm still enjoying school swimming.

And i'm still getting the hump as I can't go yet!

In light of the cold weather and that we decided to have school dinners on thursday...pizza day!

Yeah, they're lovely too.

I had to have a mega rush around friday night as it was team kennet and then film night at school.  I made it just in time to get to the food stall before picking the best seats in the house for the film, Paranorman.  

I got to have a quiet night with Mum and Dad all to myself!

I got to go swimming on Saturday morning...well, that was the plan anyway.  But when we got to the Coral Reef it looked suspiciously quiet in the car park.....

Yeah, it's closed until March for refurbishment!

So it was back on the motorway to Basingstoke pool instead.

I can't really remember going here before so it was all new to me.

I was a lot bigger than last time we went so I was well up for it.  The slides here are brilliant, two of them you use a tube to ride in, one of those you can go two at a time in as well!

I didn't much like the two man version, it had uphill sections in it, they were a bit noisy.

And as well as that they had the space bowl too.  I went off up the stairs for a go.  By the time i'd plopped out of the bottom, Mum had been watching everyone else coming down and after one actual rescue that the lifegaurd had to make from the splash pool she'd convinced herself i'd hate it and was rather on edge.  It was pretty clear by the momentary glimpse of my beaming face before I plunged into the pool however that I loved it!

Mum and I preferred to sit in the jacuzzi!

Next to the fun pool there was also a proper normal pool too.  

We had a go in there as well and really enjoyed doing handstands and doing actual proper swimming.

And I got to show off just how far i've come with my school lessons.  Dad has now declared me a better swimmer than him (easy) and also Mum (not so easy).

When we got home had some of Dad's speciality, luxury hot chocolates.

Topped off with squirty cream, Marsh Mallows and grated dark chocolate.

Max and Leo came round for tea.

And even more importantly they bought pudding with them too:

The finest selection of ice creams, cornets, flakes, sprinkles and sauces we'd ever seen!

We played on the Wii (which is in my room now..Skylanders ahoy) and the Ipods.

And Leo and I got the Lego out amongst other things:

And we stayed up so late you wouldn't believe us if we told you what the time was when we went to bed.

Or if you did, you'd probably tell us off.

So we were in no hurry to get up on Sunday morning.

But we did manage to get to Anne's in time for lunch on Sunday.

After lunch we went out on our scooters.

I'm loving my new one I got for Christmas.

And I want one just the same for my birthday, it's really cool.

We went for a walk round the estate and found some really good hills to bomb down on them too!

We both had really good days at school on Monday, Finished off with dancing for me.

And cross country for me.  I came home impossibly muddy.....