Jersey video, hot(ish) off the press/camera:

Right, here we go for part two then.....
Monday 15th April:
We still had an extra day of school holidays left, so it was round to Auntie Chrisitnes for extended birthday celebrations.  This involved more Skylanders figures and birthday cake at 10 am....brilliant.
We also had a bit of Easter business to attend to and painted some lovely Bunny figures too, great day!
Tuesday:
Back to school, neither of us were happy about that.
We both hate school.
Except we don't really, when it came down to it we both had a good first day back.
And I returned to gymnastics club after school, it was badge week too!  I passed my level 7 badge with ease.
While she was there Dad and I went to Sainsbury's, we perused....Skylanders figures and various curry sauces.
Shame you didn't spend a bit longer evaluating the curry sauce Ned, the one dad made for tea was red hot!
So hot infact that even I couldn't eat it.
We had to have a swiftly produced round of sandwiches instead, no great hardship.
Wednesday:
What with coming back off holiday, going back to school and gymnastics yesterday I was pretty much too tired for ballet....
Result, we got to slouch about watching telly and eat a proper meal before it was time for me to go to Team Kennet.  It was outside this week for the first time and even though it was seriously windy I loved it.  The proper track was lovely to run on, so much more space than the sports hall. I also loved throwing the proper Vortex bomb and the real, sandy long jump pit.
Thursday:
I have now managed to amass the grand total of 13 shells for instances of good behaviour at school!  The target was 10 for some sweeties as a reward. I was well chuffed with myself.
Mum had to work like proper late so we had to take the car to town for her to come home after we were in bed.
We took the bikes down with us, dropped off the car, gave her a kiss goodnight and rode home.
It was really windy so quite hard work at times.
But it was very enjoyable. We hadn't been on our bikes for ages.
Friday:
Back to swimming after a few weeks off that too, but it's not like I hadn't had plenty of practice on holiday.
Saturday:
The weather was lovely, warm and sunny so we made the best of it by doing a bit of gardening and then cleaning off the trampoline.
Yeah, we gave it a thorough cleaning for the summer season and have been bouncing on it pretty much every spare moment since.
Except for the times when we've been playing swingball.
Or having garden picnics.
It's been so good to be out in the garden again.
Kimi and marny came round in the evening, which is always cool.
And always a late night!
Sunday:
We had a nice lie in and then headed down to the Witterings.
A trip to the beach and a new wetsuit for me were the order of the day.  It's quite a relief to get a new wetsuit, the old one was so short in the body it was getting rather painful to wear.
Even though we'd just been on holiday it was lovely to get on the beach for a picnic:

Monday:
I get the hump now and again at school, being on the recieving end of name calling and getting excluded from games in the playground and what have you.  Today though I got three notes written by my class mates for helping out or being a good friend or whatever.  It's a new thing we've started doing recently, they get collected up over time and then given out.  It's made me feel much happier and Mum says I should keep them to look at next time i'm a bit down in the dumps.  I think I might do just that.
Aside from all that there's been more trampoling and more swingball.
Wednesday:
Team Kennet seemed super busy this weeken, the whole family came to drop me off.
We did indeed, we all wanted to check it out, very professional looking it all is too!
Thursday:
Ned's year came up to read with us in the afternoon at school.
I got to read to a little boy who couldn't really speak any English, I hope I managed to teach him a little.
And I got Ned's mate Ella, I love Ella, we had a great time and after school she told Dad I was a brilliant reader (better than Ned according Ella).
We went to Game when we picked Mum up from work so I could get another Skylander with a voucher I got for my birthday (thanks Sue).
Then it was a quick tea and a trip to the pumptrack for the boys while Mum and I stayed in and did our make up.  Mum loved it of course.....
The pump track was cool, we hadn't been for ages.  There were a few grown ups on mountain bikes over there when we arrived. They were encouraging me to improve my lap times that Dad was recording for me on his stopwatch.
Friday:
A trip to the tyre place for a new car tyre after school.
We love these sort of places, so much going on, so many questions to ask.
We also went to the carwash to give the car a bath afterwards.
If anything, we get even more excited in the carwash everytime we go.
We had to do most of our swimming in the big pool getting marked for our efforts.  I think I did okay?
I had film night at school, Madagascar 3.  I know i've seen it before but I was quite happy to see it again.
And while Ned was there, I took Mum and Dad on a walk to Wash Common park.  It was lovely except for when Dad tried to push me up the slide and just made me bash my nose really hard.  Oh, and it wasn't great when he pushed Mum so high on a swing she nearly fell off either.  He is daft sometimes.
Saturday:
We got rudely awoken Saturday morning so we could take dad for his birthday present MX day.
Yeah, it was quite a drive down to Sussex but we had a laugh on the way.
Dad got kitted up and then cleared off to do his riding and we got stuck into the picnic pretty much straight away.
Yeah, picnic, ball games, a sprinkling of homework, we had a pretty good day actually.
Except for me falling down a bank into a thick bunch of stinging nettles....ouch!
Dad was disappointingly slow as far as I could see.....
We dipped into Toys R Us on the way home, I spent a large chunk of birthday money on the Lego Police station i'd had my eye on for quite some time.
Then it was home in time for Britains Got Talent.
Sunday:
A day mostly at home, I built my police station:

And after a trip to town to pick up some vital bits (and a Costas lunch) it was back home to commence work on my dressing up character for book day later this week:

We also did some reading and a bit more homework, all very much standard for a Sunday I suppose.
Monday:
Our last cross country training session before tomorrows big race at the showground....how exciting!
And then after tea Max and Leo came around.  I love playing with Leo, he's well up for having fun and never sulks like my friends at school sometimes do.
Max and I went down the park for a bit, because we're cool.

Oh, now, where were we?
It's been a while, there's been Easter, A holiday and an extended period of internet issues but I think we're back on an even keel now and ready to get things up to date around here.
Right then, yes, lets synchronise calendars, and go back to:
Tuesday 26th March:
Yes, well it was still freeeeeeeeezing cold and horrible.  So much so that the Schools Cross Country competition was cancelled due to a few un-named schools crying off.  We were not happy about this, all our hard preparartion leading up to the big day to produce our peak results!  I still got to do rugby after school though, turns out it was our last session which is a shame.
I managed to acquire two more shells for good behaviour....I had a good day then!
Wednesday:
I managed another 4 shells today!  It was also our Easter assembly, Mum came along to watch.  Thing was, I was a few rows back behind some bigger kids and I wanted to make sure she could see me.  What was I to do?  Give them a shove and set off a chain reaction of kids toppling down a few little steps to give everyone a good clear view of ME of course!
Being wednesday of course it meant a good old rush around between ballet and team Kennet, which was to be our last indoor session of the season (after the weather was deemed too cold to venture outside I think).
Thursday:
Last day of term.....hooray!
You would have thought so wouldn't you?  But no, we still had to do literacy and numeracy.  Although we did have a really cool Easter Egg hunt.....resulting in my very own tub of mini-eggs!
No such nonsense for our class, we made easter baskets (to be filled with some very high quality confectionery later on) and then watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  I celebrated this fantastic day by dancing home, performing the loser dance towards the general direction of school!
Friday:
Good Friday bank holiday, cool, we're all off together.
The great bedroom clear up started....in preparation for decorating.  The Scalextric came out from under the bed....it would have been rude not to take it downstairs and set it up.
We love the Scalextric.
We do indeed.  We even managed to make our own track, which was okay until Dad came down, declared it 'boring' and re-did it to his liking.
We went to Homebase to get the paint for Ned's bedroom.
This was a pretty long drawn out affair, I had to fight my corner pretty hard to get the colours I actually wanted and would not back down!
We spent the rest of the day playing Cluedo and Labyrinth.
And then I had to go and sleep in Mum and Das bedroom due to my room being full of stinky wet paint and having no furniture.....oh great!
Saturday:
We went to Legoloand...it was brilliant!
But very, very cold indeed.  No water rides today thats for sure but it was certainly good to be back after the winter lay off.
Easter Sunday:
It was pretty low key this year, if you can call the massive excitement of the annual easter egg hunt low key!
We really love Easter' like really.
We turned the house upside down, finding chocolate goodness in the most unlikely places.
Auntie Trish ended up coming round for lunch at the last minute.
At our request, she's always welcome!
There was also more decorating done by the grown ups, my bedroom was coming along nicely actually, even if Dad still wasn't sure about my colours.
Another bank holiday on Monday, i've just realised it isn't really like us to spend a whole four days at home is it?
We did have something up our sleeve though.  In the meantime it was more decorating and a trip to Costas for lunch...yum!
Tuesday:
Dragon club day, carefully arranged to coincide with their trip to Pizza Hut for lunch, good organisation skills Mum!
So in amongst all the usual Dragon Club shenanigans we also had the excitement of a mini bus trip and buffet pizza frenzy, bonus!
I got dropped off at Ali's in the afternoon for a sleepover, my first one!  We made ourselves pizza for tea (double pizza day, yay). Then we had ice cream and watched a film before turning in for the night......not that we went to sleep in a hurry of course.
I had a Ned free evening, which was sort of nice in a quiet way.
Wednesday:
I went swimming with Ali the next morning, it was cool, but they were pretty strict at Canons club where we went.  Never the less it was great fun. When when I got home, My bedroom had been finished. This meant I could move out of mum and dads bedroom at long last, And as for my room it looked rather good in my colours.
I went to auntie Christines, it was so cool, we had a proper girls shopping outing and I got some lovely stuff, thanks very much auntie Christine!
Thursday:
Dragon club again, this time to coincide with a trip to the discovery centre in Thatcham.
Another example of Mum's fine scheduling skills.
It was a great trip, we played on the playground, we made lovely dragonfly's.
We also had a session of den building in the woods too.  My management potential was noted, apparently i got everyone on board by using well reasoned arguments rather than shouting and hollering. My den building skills also raised questions as to whether i'd done any of this sort of thing before in the scouts or something!
When Dad came to pick us up, we were all sat around the table having a hot chocolate (topped with marshmallows) and a biscuit or two, or three.
How very civilised on such a cold day to have been outside.
Friday:
I had my shopping trip with Auntie Christine, obviously this was awesome.
I got to spend a few hours at Auntie Christines and then went round to my friend Lilly's for the afternoon.  We wound each other up a little bit truth be told, but it was nice to see her, and her doggie!
Yeah, her dog is cool, manic, but very cool and even cute.
We took the car for a wash in the afternoon at the car wash.
The appeal of the car wash never seems to diminish for us!
Andy came round in the evening with my birthday presents a little early.  Skylanders and swingball, good skills Andy, thanks.
Then we had to have an early night, there was an early start on the cards Saturday morning.....
Saturday:
Indeed, it was a 5am departure for the ferry terminal in Poole to take us to Jersey.
We were pretty awake and on it considering the time and we were soon driving onboard the boat.
Dad was seemingly far more excited about this than any of us kids it has to be said.
As soon as we set sail we sorted ourselves out with some breakfast from the cafe on board and had a bracing walk up on deck as we took to the open seas.

The open seas were a bit on the choppy side though.....I started to feel a bit iffy.  Dad and I headed  towards the outside deck.....we didn't quite make it that far, and sadly all my puke didn't quite make it into the sick bag either.  Oops, we had to use our best smiles as the cleaner appeared to do a little mopping up job.  We carried on outside for a bit of fresh air and to admire the frankly enormous wake the engines were making before heading back to our table to finish off the sweets. I was obviously feeling much better.

We had to stop at Guernsey first to let people off and let some on before we set sail again for the short final leg to Jersey.

We pulled into the harbour and in no time at all we had to go back to the car deck to get ready to drive off the boat.

After a short drive (through a really cool tunnel under a navy base) we were at our hotel.  We checked in but our room wasn't quite ready. 

This wasn't a problem though as we'd been given a pass for the swimmng pool complex and Dad had packed a small bag with the swimming stuff in it easily to hand.

What a result, we had a lovely meal in the pool cafe area (garlic bread and chips of course).

The pool itself looked brilliant and we couldn't wait to get lunch finished and get in there.

There were slides and hot tubs and rapids, but best of all there was also a massive outside area....and unlike the Coral Reef, the doors to it were open!

So within a few hours of leaving the freezing cold mainland we were swimming around in an outdoor swimming pool under sunny blue cloudless skies.  I couldn't have been happier!

I was when I saw just how lovely our room was.  In fact it was more than a room, apparently it was a suite, looked like a flat to me, a very nice one at that.  We were up on the fourth floor which meant we had lovely views out to sea and everything.

Of course, the cool stuff couldn't last all day, we had to go food shopping.

Yeah but the good news on that front was that there was a choice between Waitrose and Marks and Spencer, posh or what?  Our two favoured bread suppliers as well, I was made up!  The roads were pretty tiny on the way, much like Cornwall actually.

We had a spot of tea and then turned in after what had been quite a long day.

Sunday:

We had a lovely sleep in our bunk beds:

But we were pretty excited to get up as it was Mum's birthday. 

We'd been bursting with secrets for what felt like a lifetime!

Yes, we'd sorted out her cards, presents and cake way before we left.

We got he an Iphone.

Which we will want to play on, even though it won't have any cool games like our Ipods.

Some posh moisturiser that doesn't smell like cake.

And a new top.

Not bad considering we were away.

She seemed pretty pleased with it anyway.

We had a quick game session after breakfast:

Once that was done and dusted we headed off out for an explore. 

We started out at Corbiere.

There were loads of gun bunkers left over from the German occupation, I loved exploring them:

Then we headed off towards the lighthouse, this meant an oppurtunity for loads of climbing as it was accross a rocky causeway, only accesible at low tide:

The lighthouse was pretty cool really I suppose:



But I spent the entire walk asking questions about the war.  I think Mum and Dad were pretty exhausted by my endless questions really, where's Uncle Alan when you need him?

All this sea air had made us pretty hungry so we set off for lunch overlooking St Ouens bay, the main surfing beach:

We had a walk on the beach aftewards, the waves weren't big enough for any surfing so we did loads of skimmers instead. 

And I got a welly-full of cold sea water after wading out a bit too far. It has to be said, this took the edge of it a bit for me and I got in a right tizzy.  I wanted to go back to the car...the other three wanted to keep walking....

Yeah, I did, it was really cool, there were loads of bunkers and towers and what have you all along the bay, I wanted to see them all!

I didn't, I wanted a nice warm pair of feet!

We struck a compromise, Dad took me back to the car...

While Mum and I carried on walking in the opposite direction with the arrangement that Dad drove the car up to pick us up...perfect!  We could investigate more military leftovers:

We made our way back to the hotel and presented Mum with her birthday cake:

Which we decide we would eat out on the balcony:

What else was there to do? Go for a swim of course.

Well, the pool was there and we didn't have to pay, would have been rude not to make the most of it!

Monday:

Hmmm, we had to go shopping....urrggghhh!

Yeah yeah Ned, I got some lovely new clobber though.

I suppose we did get a decent lunch out of it, here is a significant portion of my milkshake stuck to my nose:

And liberation square was pretty cool too:

Once we'd had lunch and wandered around town for a bit we decided that it was time to hire a four wheeler bike and go for a family spin up the prom.

Once Mum had worked out how to pay for parking with 'scratchcards' anyway.

The bike itself was dead cool, even if the steering was a little twitchy.

It was all going very well really, the sun was out, we'd made great progress up the path and had turned round to head back when Mum suggested ud two have a go on our own.

We didn't need asking twice!

Trouble was, we were having such a great time, we kind of forgot all about Mum and Dad and sort of left them behind, way behind.

We took the bike back to the hire depot and waited for them to catch up.

But it was quite a way and there was sign of them.  I decided we best head back towards them on foot.  We met them after about 20 minutes....

and they didn't look happy!

There was a fairly quiet drive back to the hotel it has to be said.

Ooops, never mind, it soon blew over......and we went swimming again!

And that evening we went to the main hotel bar to see what was going on, Kids Zone Live!

Oh yes, this was more like it, a bit of a disco and then an entertainer for somne fun and games.

I loved it, the bloke doing it was well cool too.

Tonights game was a boys versus girls dance off.

There wasn't enough boys so  couple of Dad's had to join in, fortunatley not our Dad though, the ones we actually got were pretty good dancers and really went for it ensuring a win for the boys!

Being such show offs though, we loved getting up on the stage and throwing down a few moves (video evidence to follow).

Tuesday:

With war question reaching almost saturation point it was a good job we visited the Jersey War tunnels I reckon.  It's an undergorund tunnel that the Germans built to use as a hospital during the war but now it houses exhibitions about the occupation of Jersey and what it was like for the people, it really was quite thought provoking.

And dark, and a bit cold.

And very, very noisy, with mocked up air raid shelters with sirens blaring and the sound of bombs dropping.  I didn't like it at all.

No, neither did I.

We were very relieved to get to the more upbeat section about the liberation of the island it has to be said.

We did have a lovely picnic out in the gardens though:

After lunch and a long nap in the car we made our way to Plemont beach.

This place was pretty cool, loads of rocks tro climb down...

Or you could just use the steps Ellis!

There was a really cool waterfall at the back:

You could get round behind it and everything, there were caves as well, we loved it.

We had to make the most of the beach though, the tide was coming in:

It was my turn to get a welly full of water today:

But I didn't have a massive whinge like Ellis.

Whatever Ned:

As the tide came closer and closer to the steps up, Ned got more and more worried so we had to take him back up.

I wasn't worried about the tide, I just wanted an ice cream from the cafe up the top!

Wednesday:

The weather was a bit grim today, we had a lazy morning and played some games.

But we couldn't hide indoors all day could we?

No, of course not, swimming pool it was then!

Yes indeed, swimming pool and the Flowrider for me and Dad.

I spent the whole afternoon pottering about in the pool, I loved it: 

Meanwhile Dad and I were outside having a Flowrider session.  Our instructor Mark was really cool and we got the hang of it pretty quickly:

He got us doing tricks and all sorts.  We only had to share it with another two boys so we got plenty of goes over the 4 and a bit hours!  It did get a bit cold while waiting though, but that was soon remedied by jumping in the nice warm pool for a bit.

In the evening we made another visit to the bar for the kids disco thingy again.  It was custard pie night! 

But I suddenly needed the toilet and so Mum had to come with me and missed the bloke getting the pie in the face...she wasn't happy she missed it.

Thursday:

We went to the Amaizin Adventure Park.  We'd been warned that it may not actually be that amazing which led to a lot of silly jokes on the way and indeed in the car park when we pulled up.

Yeah, first impressions maybe weren't that great, but I soon changed my mind when I saw this beast of a slide:

It was fantastic, I stayed on it for ages!

I was seduced by the pedal karts:

I did lap after lap after lap.  Ended up making a friend to race, we had a right old mega endurance race.  I reckon I did him....and it turned out his name was Ned too!

The jumping pillow was ace:

There were various carts dotted about the place:

And whoever would have though that chucking tennis balls at tin cans would be so much fun?

The tobbogan run was great fun:

It was borderline scary fast when you got to the bottom though:

It didn't stop me having loads of goes though!

We had the best tracctor and trailer ride we've ever had, doughnuts in a muddy field, high speed sprints and some really cool up and down mud mounds.  It was like a roller coaster.

A bit more pedal car action:

Some mini golf (I won of course):

And some weird bike contraptions:

As well as all this there were playgrounds, bunnies, ponies and of course an ice cream.

We had a great day out.

But we were soooooo tired there was no swimming or evening disco action....

Friday:

We took a trip out to the East coast, first stop, Gorey castle.  Mum loved the name of this one!

We had a good old explore and discussed the pro's and con's of attacking it or defending it before getting back in the car and heading onward up the coast to St Catherine's breakwater.

Which was just like a massive path out into the sea....it was really long!

We had to go right to the end of it of course:

There were some well smart disco podiums as well:

And the sand sculptures were really rather impressive:

We headed back to the refuge of the cafe for lunch, it was pretty windy out there!

After lunch we continued along the coast road to see what else we could find, but all we really wanted was to get back in the pool.

So we headed back to the hotel and had another dip!

We to the bar agin in the evening to enter the quiz night.....sadly we were the only ones in there except the barmen!  The quiz didn't happen.....we sat in the lobby playing sevens having a drink until the kids disco kicked off.

Afterwards there was a band on, but to be honest they were too loud for me.

Which was a shame as Me, Mum and Dad were quite enjoying it.

Saturday:

The big one, my birthday! Another consignment of smuggled presents to be taken care of.  I got some awesome Skylanders:

And a totally brilliant carry case for them all:

 I had my breakfast order granted (sausages/baps/tomato sauce) so things were going very well indeed. I also had the promise of another present waiting for me when I got home....this lead to quite a lot of speculation on my part.  It must have been too big to bring with us.....

So, there you go, i'm 9 years old!!!!!!

We had a bit of a cosy up while deciding our plan of action for the day:

A trip to the swimming pool was first on the agenda.

Great Idea Ned.

Then on to the cinema (with an air hockey/pool/pinball session thrown in) to see the Croods (which we all loved) and then, Pizza Hut!

We came back, suitably full, but not too full for some of Bob the Dog birthday cake:

And then it was all on the sofa for Britains Got Talent.  What a brilliant birthday.

Sunday:

Our last day....we were so sad.

We were indeed, there may even have been a few tears as well.

We softened the blow by checking out and then going for a swim....ha, another swim!  We were seriously going to miss this pool thats for sure.

Then it was time to get in the car and head back to the ferry terminal (stopping off at the Pasty shop on the way).

The crossing on the way back was really rather pleasant.  We played cards, we ate and drank, we Ipoded.

I wasn't sick!

We drove home in time for Ned to open his other present....

Yes, it was a big one too:

A stand up surf board no less.  I was over the moon.  I really wnated one for Christmas but i's much better now as it won't be long before I get to use it!

So thats the holiday update, it was brilliant, we had such a good time.

Yeah, we really did, we really appreciated this one, we're very lucky.

We have some video to follow of course,

and the rest of the catch up to do, but that will have to do for now....