Tuesday
We had a trip to St Johns church for a carol service rehearsal.
I reckon this was my first trip to a church, the stained glass windows were pretty epic it has to be said. 
We were back to school in time for the last netball club session of the year.  I look forward to this, netball and a buffet.  Proper buffet too, Kit kat's, crisps, santa lollies and a big chocolate Santa to take home.
After tea we took charge of making the pigs in blankets for christmas dinner.  
Because we are pork enthusiasts, we hand twisted full size chipolata's into cocktail sausages size, cut them and then wrapped them in bacon.
We packed them neatly back into the sausage packet and shoved them in the freezer, ready for the big day.

Wednesday
I was poorly today, headachey, temperature and all that.  So it was a day snuggled up on the sofa with Mum for me.
Yeah, lucky you Ellis, I still had to go to the carol concert.  Actually it was pretty enjoyable.  Us year 6's all had a line to deliver, I did mine very well without the need to read it off a slip of paper like most.  As usual though, the musical pieces left a bit to be desired...ahem.
Then the second sporting highlight of the season, the Team Kennet Christmas session, this years theme, Irish Christmas.  Well, we left it a bit late to sort out anything proper for fancy dress, but another one of Auntie Trish's hats was a good compromise, being unquestionably christmassy, and also a nice emerald green colour:

The sweet dash relay race was the highlight of my athletics year.  And as Dad remarked later, I didn't treat it as a half hearted jog eithether, still full bore.  The sweets were either balanced on a cone, tossed into the air or held as high as possible by a coach, they loved it as much as we all did I think.  I also managed to trade away a few dodgy bounties I didn't much fancy, result!

I was pretty surprised when I was announced as third place in the boys for my hat:

Still, the prize was brilliant, a little santa medal and a selection box, I was made up.

Thursday
School bazaar, fudge day!
And fortunatley I was feeling a lot better and went back to school.
Once we'd worked out a soloution for a packaging problem and got it on sale the fudge sold out in seconds.
Dad also got told by one of our teaching asssistants, Mrs Jezzard that i'd been brilliant making the fudge in a tidy organized and safe matter and getting my team to all join in.  He was very impressed.
It was really busy in there, loads of hustle and bustle and excitement.  You could see the real hit products were the edible ones.....I managed to snag the last two candy canes on a stall.  Then I noticed Daniel loking a bit down in the dumps.  It turns out he'd lost his money and couldn't buy anything.  I didn't have any money left, but I gave him a candy cane....he was very pleased. 
I spent the last part of the afternoon trying to sell the remaining cards we had left on the stall to maximise our revenue.
Then when there was no one left to sell through we headed home.

And fired up the computer for some Cool Maths Games action.

And a lot of cuddling on the sofa, I still wasn't 100%

Friday
The last day of term had arrived.
It was party day, such as that was....
Yeah, I think we had a biscuit as well as our usual packed lunch.
We had some crisps, some biscuits and some sweets so fared a little better.
Anyway, there was a chance for some more disco action so that was good.
And an early finish to the day.
As the doors opened and I ventured out into the playground, I realised that I was actually the first one out of the whole school.  I quickly decided that i'd be the first one off the premises and threw my bag at Dad as I sprinted along the path and out of the school gates, my arms held aloft as I crossed the line like i'd won the 100 metres at the Olympics.  I then had to shuffle back to Dad in the playground to get my bag back and wait for Ellis.
I wasn't far behind, and I had also been re-united with both of my school shoes which was a result after one of them had been missing for a week or so.

Then we loaded the car up as quickly as we could.

Gathered up anything we thought we might want.

Went to the toilet.

And went to pick Mum up from work.

Then Andy from his house and headed for Cornwall.

Yes, another trip down West.  After last years stay at the golf club lodge we thought we'd go again.

But this time we also got Kimi and Marny and Abi and Faye along too.

This was no August afternoon, so there was hardly any traffic about and we were there and in the lodge by 6.

And there was pizza and dough balls on the table by 6:20.

Then it was on to a hide and seek session.

Hide and seek is epic in these lodges, there are so many hiding places.
We got together with everyone and decided this was all great fun.
I handed round some of my hand made fudge for everyone to try and we played a few games of Pit.
Which is always a nice, quiet affair.....CORNER!!!!

Saturday
After a lazy morning, looking out of the windows, watching the crazy lambs and a few hide and seek sessions we headed out for a walk.
Yeah, the reverse Constantine/Treyarnon loop.
The first part of course involved walking over the grassy roof of the single storey lodges.
Which also provided a great opurtunity to retrieve previously lost golf balls from the undergrowth.  I had a plan to collect loads of them and sell them to Andy, Nick and Ben.
The path down to the beach was pretty overgrown in places but it just added to the adventure of it all.
I think it must be the only time we've ever seen Constantine Bay with no one on the beach or in the sea:

We ventured right down the sea of course.

Maybe a little too far, I think we all got water over the top of our wellies.

We carried on round the headland to Treyarnon.
Gary's shop was shut.
But Dad had a sneaky packet of chocolate hob nobs that we shared out.
And then we carried on up the hill and through the campsite, which was of course, deserted.
Yeah, it's so weird with no one about.
Especially with lots of caravans having been taken away to be replaced with new ones.
We got back to the lodges and sorted out some lunch.
Then I went out for another golf ball forage.
Then it was slump in front of the telly time, watching Arthur Christmas, more for the adults than us kids I think.
We had a surprise visit from John, Sarah and Connie which was lovely.  

I force fed them fudge!

And I took Connie for a little walk up and down outside on her lead, she's so lovely.

As it started to get dark we got in the cars and drove to Treyarnon, Ben had bought a box of fireworks with him.

I don't think i've ever seen Dad quite so exciteable.

So there we were, in the pitch black of the beach letting off fireworks, brilliant.

There were quite a few too, we loved running them over to the launch zone.

Back to the lodge again for a brown food buffet.
And lots of puddings to sample.
I took some photo's:

More hide and seek.
And more Pit:

It turned into quite a late night (midnight), with Dad trying play crowd pleasers on his Ipod....


Sunday
I woke up feeling awful, temperature, headache, all that nonsense.
I woke up, eventualy at half past ten!
We didn't do much in the morning.Until we made our way to the clubhouse for lunch.
We had an amzaing table, right along the patio windows with views out accross the golf course and then the sea.
Shame I was too ill to appreciate it, or eat anything.
I had a spaghetti bolognese that even came with a little pot of parmesan.
I did manage a bit of Dad's sticky toffee pudding though.
Once lunch was done and dusted it was sadly time to head home, which I don't think anyone was that keen on.

Monday
We had a day arranged with Autntie Christine and  Darcey.
I really didn't want them catching anything off me and was quite worried about the whole thing.
We made gingerbread houses, with varying degrees of success:

Mine needed building as well as decorating.

Whereas mine was pre-fabricated and only need adornment:

We had a lovely day, thanks Auntie Christine and Darcey!
We went home via the Tesco photo counter to pick up a top secret gift we'd made for Mum...........

Tuesday

School Panto day, we had to ealk doen to the town of course.

I looked magnificent in my christmas pudding hat, thanks Auntie Trish.

The show was good fun, it wad Aladdin this year.

As usual, Billy bumpkin was hilarious.

And this years top songs were Pharell's Happy and All about the bass.

Dad picked us up from outside the Corn Exchange when it had finished and we had a mooch about in the Entertainer until Mum finished work.

When we got home we had a discussion about what I should offer up for our class stall at the upcoming christmas bazaar to raise the most money for charity.  After a bit of searching on the internet, mum and I arrived at the idea of making fudge, Chocolate fudge.  We had a quick blast round Tesco for ingredients and then set about getting it made.

I decided to write all my christmas cards......

The fudge making was dead easy.......and most importantly, dead delicious!

It was indeed truly epic, we loved it.

We poured it into a tray to set overnight so I could take it to school for taste testing.

I only managed to write 3 cards, and didn't even put them in envelopes.

Wednesday

I had a special assembly where we got to play our viola's in front of the school and a sprinkling of mums and dads.

I loved it, Mum also said us viola players sounded much better than the screechy violins!

I took my fudge to school, all chopped up into neat, equal sized pieces (thanks for the help mum).  This was the real masterstroke, I had enough pieces for everyone in the class to have a bit.  I handed it out to one half of the class, Miss Buxey did the other.  Everyone loved it, in fact they raved about it.  Miss Buxey liked the fact that i'd considered ease of manufacture for us at school too.  Job done, fudge was on the menu!

It was the first night of our christmas play, mum and dad came along.

And I went to Team Kennet, I went home withAbi afterwards, looking forward to playing some Minion Rush on the Ipad.

I was a bit nervous before the show it has to be said.  Once we got going though I loved it really enjoyed the singing and dancing, all dressed as a toy cat:

It was all quite exciting to do it in the evening rather than during the day like at the infants, even if we did have to play second fiddle to the year 4's this year.

Thursday

We'd had to take in as many old toilet roll tubes and general junk modelling stuff as we could find to make marble runs.  It was brilliant, although our group had some rather grand ideas of what we wanted to make, so we ran short on time to realise our vision.

After school rugby was brilliant this week, I scored loads of tries, so many that I actually lost count!

I had the second and final night of the school play.  I wasn't quitre so nervous this time round.  Andy and Ned came to pick me up as Mum and Dad had gone out.

Yeah, we had a cool evening, just chatting and getting extended bedtime stories!

Friday

More christmas festivities at school, it was christmas lunch day.

To which we were invited to wear our christmas jumpers.

And hats!  I loved lunch, especially sitting next to Dylan who wanted to eat all my veg for me, result!

We had crackers and everything.

In the afternoon we could choose what we wanted to do, there was a film in one classroom, and an art room set up.  But the choice was pretty easy for me, disco classroom.  Mrs Watkins had bought her Now 89 in and it was all going very well until the rude version of All abut that bass came on......

I did colouring in the art room, I love colouring.

Mum went out in the evening so we were home with Dad.

We fired up the Wii for a game of Wii Party.

But sadly the Wii died afer about 10 minutes.  We started again, but it died again after a similar sort of time, we didn't finish our game.

But I did accidentally manage to smack dad in the head with the remote during an over enthusiastic lunge.  I think it hurt him actually, it's actually the only time in my life I think i've ever offered a genuine, unprompted apology.

Saturday

An exciting day in prospect, it was finally Christmas Tree day.

Yeah, after weeks and weeks and weeks of waiting we made our way over to Yattendon.

The little dancing Father Christmas by the door seems to get smaller every year.....

We saw a rather fetcing owl, that apparently Uncle Alan has?

We had to go through the ususal charade of course, pick a perfectly decent tree then sift through several thousand others, discussing their relative merits.

We did all agree in the end though and went to get it bagged and the bottom lopped off.

By a pretty awesome looking chainsaw...vroom vroom!

We jammed it in the back of the car, up through the middle seat and headed to Waitrose for lunch items.

And to have some tasters of various prodcuts they had going on the baker counter.

Christmas cup cakes and some lovely chocolate doughnuts.

Neither of which were nice enough to tempt me away from my usual cheesecake.

We had a post lunch slump and minecraft session.  Ellis is playing it with me on the Xbox now, which is really cool.

Except for the odd squabble and difference of opinion.

Then it was time to get the tree in.

We got it wedged in the bucket pretty easily and snipped off it's sock.

Then once Dad had finished being the worlds most tedious man with the lights it was time to throw the entire contets of the decorations box at it!

Strangley enough, it looked pretty good, even if we do say so ourselves.

All that was left to do was top it off with Mum's nudie Cherub

And then Mum made Dad and I pose for a 'nice' photo of decorating the tree:

We didn't get to sit around enjoying our handiwork for long though, Roller skating time was rapidly approaching.

We hadn't been for a while so we were keen to get going.

I enjoyed another race win!

I didn't. 

I did enjoy a hockey knock about with Dad:

But I decided to get involved in the full game:

I think it's fair to say I was probably the worst skater on the pitch/court/whatever, but I certainly got involved.
Then we decided it was time we learnt a few tricks.  I decided i'd go for the squatted down one footed glide. After a few attempts that ended up on my bum, I nailed it:

I started doing jumps, and landed them safely.

When we got home, mum had just got our pizzas out of the oven and was slicing them up....perfect!

Sunday

Panto day, Mum's pre-christmas highlight.

A nice drive back down to Bristol (should have gone to that hotel again if you ask me).

We settled on a pub for lunch and found a really cool one inside an old former 'Gentlemens Club' whatever that was.

It had a really high cieling with a glass dome in the middle that let the sunshine in.

The menu was thankfully not so fancy and we'd timed it to perfection as they were still just about serving breakfast.

Pancakes and syrup for me (breakfast menu).

Sauasge bap (breakfast menu) and chips (lunch menu) for me.  I was the only one who went for pudding as well, triple layer chocolate fudge cake and ice cream (dessert menu).

And then we set off to the theatre, the Hippodrome.  It was a cool old place, we did envy the people in boxes high up at the sides.

The main thing was of course Pudsey the dog!  He was seriously cute and looked very fluffy and cuddleable. 

He didn't perform the whole show.

No, but Ashleigh was there as well as Mr Bloom as well as the standard village idiot type.

It was all good fun, the highlight had to be the sausage pie making........

And the 3D film section in the middle:

Afterwards we had a quick visit to Tesco to sort out some chocolate for my school fudge making which very quickly escalalted into a full on row between me and Dad.
Mum was not impressed.
ooops.
Anyway, when we got home the christmas special of catchphrase was on.
It was hilarious, we were glad Warwick Davis won.

Monday

It was my last after school dance session today.  Cross Country club is starting on a Monday after Christmas so I had to make a choice between the two.  

We were allowed to work on our own routines and even play a few games.

Which I managed to win.  My prize?  Face decorations:

It's a difficult look to pull off.......

Tuesday

The Christmas events have started in school.  We went up to the church for something called Christmas crack'd.  It was cool, and I got to make Dad a mince pie.  It survived the trip home in my pocket okay.  We walked up and then back, with us members of the netball team in our kits.  It was a bit on the chilly side.  Once we were back at school we were straight on with our netball match.  I'd been made captain so I did the meet and greet with the team from Basildon school, showed them the toilets and what have you.

I took to the adventure playground with Lola, she was great fun.

The match went well, really well.  We won 5 - 0 and I had my best ever game according to our coaches.  Even Ella's big brother was singing my praises.

I made chocolate truffles with Mum after tea, we made a hell of a mess:

They were for my school project, to research what we might make and sell at the Christmas bazaar.  So as well as all the messy fun there was boring maths as well.

Wednesday

So being captain of the netball team wasn't all fun and games, I had to write the match report for the school newsletter.  Fortunately Miss Knowles lent a hand. 

Thursday

While I was freezing half to death playing rugby after school....

.....I was wrapped up in my duvet, on the sofa playing Minecraft on the Ipad with none of Ned's nonsense.  Brilliant.

We did hear that Ron, the old man who lived down the road that I befriended on our way to nursery a few years ago had passed away.  What a shame, he was a cool chap.

Friday

We had a dress rehearsal for our christmas play, it went rather well.  Just as well, we'll be doing ot for real next week.

After school we had a trip to Tesco with Dad.  I loved looking at the computer games and Ipads.

And I loved the christmas decorations, and after what felt like years of asking, I was finally allowed to buy my very own length of tinsel.  I was so thrilled with it.

And as Ellis had the princely sum of £1 spent on her for the tinsel, I too was allowed a quids worth of stuff.  I headed straight for the sweet aisle and found a deal on the refreshers chewy bars...12 for the price of 10....£1!  I was pretty chuffed with this deal.

He even let me have one of his 'free' bars, thanks Ned.

It was film night at school.

My first one!

And the first time I think that it was a film I hadn't pteviously seen, Elf!
Ned and Robert certainly loved it, I could them laughing there heads off at the other side of the hall.
Yeah, it was brilliant, we really enjoyed it.

Saturday

It was a lovely bright winters day so we took a bike ride into town.
Yeah, we had a few things we wanted to get, even if we didn't really need them.
Yeah like some more decorations from Wilko's, more tinsel for me!
We also had to get ourselves some christmas cards to give to our school friends, we quite enjoyed picking those, there were some really cute ones.
We also visited the new Schuh shop in town, it had such a lot of lovely, lovely shoes in it.  None of which I was allowed.

We'd got a bit peckish and decided a visit to Greggs was in order.  I love Greggs, especially the value for money.
We sat on a bench in town to eat it and watched the world go by.

We rode home just in time to go to the infant school fete.
I know neither of us go to the infants anymore, but it's a real highlight of the year for me.  The main reason being the sweets on the childrens tombola.  Imagine my disappointment when I got there and the prizes on offer were less than desirable, in fact, most of them weren't even edible!
Add to that the hall being pretty quiet and all of our favourite games not being present, we were a little down about it all.
There was a decorate your biscuit stall though:

Then we found all the best stuff tucked away in the classrooms out the back, the games and what have you.  Our favourite had to be a big grid you rolled coins onto.  If they landed in the middle of a square (without touching the boundary lines) you won what the square said, this ranged from a free go to 5 times the coin that landed on it's value.
Yeah, we loved it.
I also had my face painted by Miss Stephenson to a very high standard.
It was dinner club at home on Saturday night, so Andy, Ben and Rach, and nick , Carol, Abi and Faye came round.
I had a great time with the girls, we dressed up, we did make up, it was brilliant.
Even I sort of enjoyed their company....
it was a pretty late night though....yawn!

Sunday

We had a day with Auntie Christine while Mum and Dad went 'shopping'
Yeah, Auntie Trish was on board too, brilliant!
We went to see Get Santa at the cinema, we loved it.
After that we had a trawl of town to find a suitable lunch, neither Costa's in town had a bacon roll on offer so we ended up in Greggs.
An alien environment to Auntie Christine but I think she was quite taken with it!
In the afternoon Owen appeared and the Laura and Darcey so it was getting on to be quite a gathering.
Mum and Dad arrived back just in tim for a roast dinner...they must have smelt it!

Monday

We performed our play in front of the resto f the school, i'm enjoying wearing my cat costume.
I have to say, the show was very good!
After school it was dark week for dance class.
Yeah, get the glowsticks out!
I was one of the 'evil' characters of the piece (chosen because of our abilities to perform the splits and a cartwheel).
Us year six boys got to lead things from up on the stage.

Then it was our catch up session for I'm a celebrity.
Yeah the final was on late Sunday night so we missed it.
We loved watching them do their final challenges and Foggy getting crowned king of the jungle.

Tuesday

The was big disappointment when our Netball match cancelled at short notice.

And it was my last week at gymnastics this year.  The gym has shut early for Christmas so everything can be moved to our new building.  I'm Last week at gymnastics i'm really excited to see what it's going to be like.  It was also basge week and viewing week excitement overload or what?  I passed my bronze award for the floor discipline and Mum, Dad and Ned got to come in and watch the last 20 minutes or so of our session.

When we'd finished tea I called for a game of happy families, we've been playing it at breakfast club but under some pretty wafty, half baked rules.  I was keen to play properly for a change.

Wednesday

Well here's some shocking news, I got sent home poorly mid morning!  Yeah, not like me at all is it? I felt a bit pukey and a bit headachey.  Mum said I did look a bit pale too.  

I saw him during break time, sat on the poorly chair by the office so I knew he was on his way home.

I spent the afternoon snoozing, but rallied enough to have another few games of happy families in the evening, but Team Kennet was off the agenda.

Yeah, I gave it a miss too, I claimed I was going to do my homework but was very distracted and not very productive.

Thursday

I was still a bit under par, so had another day off school.  If i'm totally honest, having time off isn't all that great really, it's pretty boring in fact.
We set to work on our dance routines for the end of term Christmas show.  I loved it and got given a gold star for my endless ideas, well proud of that.  Even if it did end up getting stuck in my hair later on.

Friday

It was my class assembly today so I decided I was well enough to return.  Miss Buxey was very pleased to have me back, even if I hadn't been there to learn my lines off pat. 
Mum came along which was cool, she was very impressed and learned plenty from us, it was about the golden age of Islam and how cool Baghdad used to be.
She came back to the classroom afterwards where I got to pose in front of my columns piece taking pride of place on the classroom wall

There was another reason I wanted to make sure I went back to school, we'd arranged for Robert to come round for tea and Nerf war and Xbox.

 

Saturday

Up nice and early and on the road to Bristol.

Yeah, to the @Bristol science museum.  I'd been there on a school trip and gave it a glowing recommendation....I hoped everyone else would like it!

We walked past the theatre on the way and Mum happened to notice that their panto had Pudsey the dog in it.....well, how could we resist?  

A brief detour into the box office and a ticket purchase made, we were soon at our destination.

It was brilliant, the first thing we got stuck into was a giant hamster wheel that powered some water pumping equipment. I couldn't get it going at first but eventually we had it going a good un, so good in fact that it splashed water all over a gaggle of people who were stood watching!

Then it was on to the parachute launcher:

This involved attaching a parachut to your rocket and then your rocket to a hoisting mechanism.

Once it reached the top it detatched itself and floated down.....great fun.

You could also get your hair done:

We went to a planetarium show which was pretty cool.

Even if Mum did think it was a bit boring.

Then we played with these light up ropes for a bit, I even platted some:

There were two floors of stuff to get involved in, it really was a toss up though as to what was best.  I couldn't decide between the Iron Fillings on a massive magnet:

Or the bubble making table:

I'm going with the bubbles, you could do some truly massive ones:

There was a food exhibit as well.

Yeah, there was a machine that gave you a taste test, between sweet, salty, bitter, sour and umami.

It was great fun.

But some of it was pretty revolting, and I never seemed to get sweet!!!

I also ground a bag of my own flour which I was most proud of.  Dad has suggested we make yourkshire pudding out of it.

We stayed in there for ages but eventually decided it was time to move on.

We had a walk down to the riverside where there were hundreds of skateboarders then back along the bank past a really cool drumming busker.

And a whole load of boring stalls that Mum and Ellis seemed to love.

We made our way back to the hotel that we'd booked for the night.

Which was good as I was desperate for a swim!!!

So we got checked in, approved the room, had a quick power-slump and then headed for the pool.

And unlike other hotels we were allowed in the hot tub, the sauna and the steam room!

Add to that a larger than normal hotel pool with a sprinkling of pool toys for us to use, jugs of cold squash dotted about to help yourself to and we were well happy!

Hunger obviously got us in the end and we had to get out and go hunting for a Pizza Hut.

Cribbs Causeway was only just up the road and the Christmas lights outside were lovely. we really enjoyed walking under them all.

Due to a slight mix up with our order we ended up with masses of pizza.

As well as masses of cutlery.

We struggled on bravely through it all though.......

Then got into our pj's and watched I'm a celebrity....perfect!

Sunday

We had a rather nice lie in before making our way down to breakfast.

And got a lovely table next to the log fire and the christmas tree.

It was pretty posh in there and the hash browns were amazing.

We retired to our room and had the last couple of chapters of the Awful Auntie book.

We loved this book!

The hotel had left out two letters we could send to Santa on the desk.  I decided it would be a good idea to fill this in.

I didn't, so Mum had mine the saddo.

Then it was back to the pool again.

The winter sun was streaming in through the big patio doors, it was almost like being on holiday again.

We stayed in for hours, well and truly wrinkled up!

In fact, Dad had to get out, get dressed, check us out and then come back.

All we had to do was hand in our Santa letters to reception as we left!

We set for home and had a nice snooze in the car.

We made it home in time to do a bit of homework before heading into town for the grand christmas lights switch on and procession.

Which turned out to be not that grand at all.

In fact, it was a bit rubbish this year.

Monday

Mrs Watkins bought her dog in for assembly, it was well cute!  It was a bit disappointing not to get a cuddle with him though....

After school dance was good, even if we didn't get to perform to the grown ups this week.....I have now found out that cross country club will start after christmas on a monday night, so dance will have to go!