Tuesday

Second day of Sats tests, todays was on reading comprehension.  It was all about Panda's so I felt right at home and I reckon I did very well.

I couldn't really be bothered to go to gymnastics after i'd spent a good hour or so down the park straight from school but Dad made me go anyway.  Actually, don't tell him but I'm glad I went and really enjoyed it.

Wednesday

Sats day three and it was maths papers 1 and 2.

I was quite calm about the whole thing as was really pleased that I solved a shape puzzle that none of my froends seememd to get.  Dad didnt either when I tried it on him at home.

Thursday

Last day of Sats, the hardest maths paper.  I was pretty quiet when I got home after this one, so draw your own conclusions.

As a reqrd for my efforts over the week I got to choose tea.  I devastated Ned by not wanting Pizza Hut and instead plumping for........Fish and Chips!

Hmmmm it was delicious too,even if the portion was so massive I had no chance of finishing it.

In a very rare occurence Ned stayed downstairs long enough to play a board game with us...probably because he couldnt haul his bloated self upstairs after his deep fried battered mars bar he had from the chippy.

We played Flamme Rouge, and it was really good fun.  Until Dad won which wasn'ti ideal.

Friday

As a reward for out efforts doing Sats we had a full year group trip to Goldwell Park for the day.  The weather was glorious so it really couldnt have been better.  The boys spent the majority of the day playng football, yawn.  We did have a really fun game of rounders and also made a constant train of people going down the big tube slide and then running round the climbing frame to join the back of the queue again.

I had a quiet few hours once I was home before film night at school.  The Greatest Showman, singalong version, as a slumber party!  Yep thats right.  It was a good night but I could have dne without some of the annoying singing.

Saturday

Well there was a royal wedding on, so Dad sloped off out on his bike and I took to the garden so Mum could watch it in peace:

I've really been enjoying the weather weve been having for ages now, so much time outside makes me very happy.

Lily Yeomans party in the afternoon, a Nerf party at that, never been to one of those before.  It looked great when we got there, inflatable walls and cars dotted around the grounds and a big white van full of Nerf guns and bullets.  The man doing the party was really good fun and took great delight in writing our names on our water bottles incorrectly.  There were a load of organised games to play but the bullets were much harder than ours at home with a hard plastic tip, so they hurt a bit more.

There was a barbecue running, plenty of fun and laughter and some really nice chocoalte cake. We rounded proceedings off with a pinata in a tree, only two people took a swipe at it before it's head seperated from it's body and it fell to the ground to be ravaged for the sweets within.  I made off with the donkeys body which made a rather splendid hat:

No sooner had I finished there we were off to Joels first birthday party:

We can't believe he's one already.  As usual he was on great form, he's sucha happy little fella.

Happy birthday Joel!

Sunday

Well it's been sunny for ages but the outdoor pool in Northcroft still isn't open.  We fancied an open air swim to trekked off to Cheltenham instead.  It was reasonably busy but we found a nice spot for our blanket and fed our faces with picnic before getting changed and getting i the water.  It was a perfect temperature and you were allowed to dive in so thats a double thumbs up! There was also a rather mad 1950's pre health and safety era slide which was interesting too.

We rounded out the day with an ice cream and a lovely lay out in the sunshine:

Monday

We had a school trip to Bayer's new office in Reading to learn about DNA. We had to take samples of our cheeks and basically spit them into a test tube to perform some anyalysis.  Not sure what conclusions we drew but we did learn that all humans share 99.9% genetically identical.

Lily came round after school and there was an incident of spider induvced hysteria in my room.  Ned tried to help out by trapping it in a glass with a bit of paper underneath......but it broke free again so we summoned Dad to come and bail us out!  Thanks for trying though Ned.

Tuesday
The nice weather is continuing so it was Gymnastics with the big old doors open this week.  Means Mum and Dad can peer in and see what I'm up to in there though.

Wednesday
So Ned had a day at Palmer Park doing athletics, obviously I'm not usually interested in Ned, but he happened to mention that Marley from Millie Inbetween (it's on CBBC) was also competing.  He had a chat with him and everything, which even I have to admit is pretty cool.  He cam home red from the sun, well it could have been the sun or it might have just been his embarrassment at getting put in for the 1500 metres and struggling a bit....

Thursday
Lily came round for tea, and after we'd been to the park and you-tubed for a bit we gave the trampoline it's spring clean and got bouncing.  I had forgotten just how much I love the trampoline!

Friday
More trampolining today, working on getting my front flips nailed.

Sasha came for tea before we went to Friday club.

Saturday
Quadkids day today, we'd been looking forward to this one for a while and I was raring to go.  We found the team gazebo, and I tried to consume my entire days packed lunch in about 20 minutes while Mum got stuck in and 'helped' organise the team admin and delegated chair fetching duties. 

My first event was vortex, and for reasons best know to myself (I was scared of going over the line and getting a no throw) I decided to forgo my usual run up and just wang it from standing.  Which was okay, but didn't go anywhere near as far as my usual 'out of competition' throws.  Mum and Dad were seriously unimpressed.
Next up, the sprint, which I did good at, not sure what the times say but it felt fast to me.

We certainly enjoyed our day, just hanging out with each other, the occasional bit of sport thrown in here and there.
Standing long jump went pretty well out in the middle of the field away from the spectators prying eyes.
I put in a strong performance in the 600m, I'm not a distance runner at all, but kept towards the front of the main pack and had a strong sprint finish.
So that was it, all done for the day, all we had to do was wait for the results to be tallied up.
We gathered round to watch Falkland win everything again, but we had a most pleasant surprise when the year 5 & 6 John Rankin team were called out at third place in the overall!
This meant a proper presented medal and everything, I think it's fair to say we were overjoyed. 
We also got some feedback to say we were a lovely bunch of polite and nice kids from the helpers and officials.....
We've been coming to quad kids since Ned was in year 3 and one or both of us has been competing every year since, this was the last one.  What a great event to have been a part of.

Sunday
We had Nate and Joel and Andy around for lunch on Sunday.  We don't need an excuse really but seeing as we're all off on holiday together soon we had a few things to go through.
It was great fun on the trampoline with Alan and Nate, lunch was a n inconvenience really as we had a great day playing in the garden, making camps and draping blankets.
Ned and I even had a well mannered waterfight!
In the evening we had a quick burst of pre SATS revision before all agreeing that if it wasn't in my brain by now it was too late anyway so sacked it off in favour of the Crystal Maze.

Monday
So its SATS week, there's a breakfast club at school because of it.  It was brilliant, especially as i'm eating like a horse at the moment.  The test itself seemed to go okay (SPAG - spelling, punctuation and Grammer).
We got to parade our quadkids medals in assembly too which was brilliant.
Once I was home I got back on the trampoline and landed a number of good quality front flips one after the other.  This caused enough of a stir for Ned to descend from his bedroom for a go too......that's twice in two days we'd done something together without having a row.

Wednesday
Balls club after school, we did rounders and a good number of the younger ones had great difficulty in the concept of not running people out.....oh dear.  Poor old Mr Swan was struggling a bit and ultimatley gave up on explaining.

Friday
Well we recently had the photographer in to school, as well as the standard class photo, we had a whole year photo.....and one for each of the sports teams we've been involved in.  So I had a right envelope full, of course I wanted to order all of them.  Apparently this was going to total £60.........
Quad kids training continued after school, seemed to go okay if not brilliantly.
Friday club in the evening too, not a bad way to start the long weekend.

Saturday
A slow start to the day today, nice lay in to begin with.  Then a message from Lola to see if I wanted to go out with them to a Park in Basingstoke...of course I did.
We had a lovely time in the sunshine, had an ice cream, went on a pedalo:

We were home late afternoon, so i went out into the garden to practice my hand springs which are coming along quite nicely.
It was uncle Slims party in the evening, he has reached the grand old age of 60!  It was at his favourite pub, The Catherine Wheel which was a new one for us.  Mum and I obviously looked splendid:

We loved the old photos of the birthday boy dotted about and the chocolates on the tables:

There were so many familiar faces out it was brilliant to catch up with everyone and we even got a family picture taken:

We stayed out really rather late, enjoying and excellent buffet before I had a lovely hug with the birthday boy and we left them to it.

Sunday
I had a day with Mum as Dad went off bike racing which none of us were at all interested in.  We did a bit of gardening which was better than it sounds, so nice to be outside.
We did all reconvene mid afternoon and went to Abi and Fayes for a barbecue. It was fun playing in their garden and the cricket was good too, it did sort of morph into a stump battle but no one got seriously injured.
We also played Mario Kart on the Switch which was cool:

Monday
So it was pretty much the hottest day of the year and it's decided that we go on a Bike ride. What genius came up with that?  Still, we packed a picnic, loaded the car and drove to a village called Upton.  There was a nice park there with a lovely shady spot under the trees and best of all there was no one else there, despite it being a nice sunny bank holiday.  We set up the picnic blanket, put the radio on and munched our way through a decent picnic, interspersed with quick trips to the park apparatus and a few laps on the slightly tired pumptrack.

The mission was to ride to Didcot, about three miles away on a disused railway line:

It was a pleasant ride, despite Ned's best efforts to cut me up and be a nuisance the whole time of course.

Despite a bit of a wrong turn we made it easily and set about finding somewhere selling ice creams, ending up in Sainsbury's and having to buy two 3 packs of Solero's, meaning Dad and Ned got to double up.

We made our way back and collapsed in the shade while our butler loaded the bikes back onto the car:

No one felt much like cooking when we got home so it was a trip to the Spoons instead, no complaints from me on that front.

Wednesday

We had a quick 20 minute practice for our Rugby team at lunchtime, with our abundance of natural talent we surely don't need any more than that?
Balls club was back on this week, good job too, I missed it last week.
Rounding out a very sporty day I went down to City Playground with Mum and Dad for some Vortex throwing after tea.  Thought it would be a good idea to get the arm going again ahead of the Quad Kids trials coming up at school.  I did okay, okay enough to sack it off and play on the park instead.

Thursday

So it was our rugby 'tournament' after school today.  We took Elsa and Luca over with us which was fun and of course, a non stop 100mph conversation all the way there.  There were supposed to be 4 teams, but two of them didn't bother to show up which meant it was just us against Speenhamland.  After they took an early lead we fought back to win the game with a basketball type score after a good end to end sort of match. 

Friday

Quadkids trials started after school today.  We concentrated on vortex and I did okay but not my best......not enough practice on Wednesday night obviously.  It was seriously wet though and I came home soaked through.
I managed to prolong bedtime by sneaking on to the sofa in time for Gogglebox which really does make me laugh, despite some of the content being a bit on the dubious side.

Saturday

Had a nice lie in while Ned got soaked at football training.  Next up a shopping trip to Southampton which we managed to time to perfection as all the football supporters were leaving the various pubs rather noisily with a police escort.  A little unnerving if I'm honest.  The whole purpose of the trip was to get Ned some new school shoes, some shorts and some jeans.  Boring.  I did manage to get involved at the end though an buy three pairs of shorts and some leggings though which sweetened the deal a bit.

We went round Finlay and Millies in the evening, sadly Leo was on a sleepover which was a shame as I really wanted to catch up with him but we had a good night all the same.  We had an Indian takeaway and played some silly games, like wriggling on a chair and picking up an ever shrinking cereal box with your teeth without touching the floor....I've never seen so many grown ups crumple themselves into the floor!
It was a late night obviously....

Sunday

Sleeping today mostly.....but I did go to Liliy's for a bit.
Crystal Maze in the evening, rubbish contestants, again.

Monday

More Quadkids practice after school.  Long jump this week, and a bit of running....still not loving the running.

Then I got Mum to help me practice my lines for the year 6 leavers play auditions being held tomorrow......