Swimming continues relentlessly. 

 I was really going for it this week and gave it 100% all the way through.  No silly running accross the pool just to be first to the other side or anything.

I'm still going with school so details of what I get up to are understandably scarce.  I did let slip that there has been a small amount of changing room related shenannigans though, ha ha.

On the way Dad made a shocking discovery, there is a radio station playing nothing but Christmas songs, ALREADY!

I loved it and wouldn't let him turn it over.

Mum was working late, late, late, so it was tea without her.  I ended up rounding out my meal with a lovely ciabatta doused in tomato sauce with the Prodigy playing on the radio...I proclaimed this largely perfect, exceptt Mum not being there of course.

Continuing with the food theme I decided I wanted a proper school dinner on Thursday, i'd finally had enough of cheese sandwiches.  So instead i had a jacket potato with tuna, I love tuna.  I also had a chocolate rice crispy cake for pudding.

I kept it real and had a marmite sandwich of course.

The skateboarding is still going well.  Dad bought it for me to ride home after multi sports on Thursday and our sports teacher Mr Gilham was pretty impressed with my skills.  He offered to show us a trick and popped a lovely Ollie on the playground.  It was pretty good actually, but I told him that my Dad could do them too.

I had a school dinner again on Friday, same again, potato with tuna but this time it was cookie for afters.

We had a bit of a lie in on Saturday before heading off to Marlborough to buy advent calendars. 

Yes it's that time of year again.

We stopped by in the toy shop and then a really cool place that sold skateboards as well.  I also spotted a cafe selling lovely looking sausage rolls.

We also went to a few nice shops that sold sparkly pretty stuff, not including the bra and pants shop, we found the window equally hilarious and disturbing.  What I really liked were the christmas decorations and present bows.

We eventually picked our calendars, mine was a nice glittery affair.

And I had a last minute change of heart from my super massive one to a much more modest effort.  Dad was pleased on two counts I think, firstly it wasn't nearly quite so expensive and secondly he won't have to re-organise the house to accomodate it.

Once we'd achieved our initial objective it was time to realise a second ambition of the day and secure one of those lovely looking sausage rolls.....

I used some of my hard saved pocket money for a Hello Kitty football.

It was such a lovely sunny day we couldn't bring ourselves to drive past the Wash Common park without stopping off for a play.

I was pretty keen to try out my new ball as well!

Although I was more than happy to play basketball with it, my scoring record was brilliant.

And I made some rather splendid catches from my lofty position on Dad's shoulders, I still couldn't get it through the hoop though.  What I could do though was shimmy straight up to the top of the super high climbing frame with no trouble at all.

Once we were all played out we headed home and watched Gullivers Travels on DVD, we loved it.

We did indeed, it was really very funny. 

In the evening we went to the fireworks at the farm near where we used to live.  We parked at Andy's and had to walk all the way there.

It was a long way, but I managed ot pass the time giving Andy a full run down of Gullivers Travels.

We met up with Kimi and Marney when we got there, they'd come in their car by all accounts?

We got right to the front to get the best possible view of the fireworks, they were brilliant as well!

They were indeed, I loved them too, they were really beautiful.

Afterwards we had a couple of goes on the fair.

I was mad keen to go on the mixer, so Mum, Ned and myself were soon wedged in and flying round and round in circles.

We all did no handers and everything.

Next up was a trip on the dodgems, I went with Andy.

And I went with Dad while Mum did the decent Mum thing and held the coats.

It was total carnage of course, we had loads of great crashes.

Dad didn't even interfere with my driving this time either and let me bash and crash everyone.

I had another session on the skateboard Sunday morning, i'm desperate to learn to ollie:

The afternoon saw a trip to the theatre in Reading to see Horrible Histories with Alan and Hayley as well.

This meant the back seats had to come out in the car, I love the back seat, it's so cool.
We were pretty late getting tickets so we were up in the balcony.
I thought this was a particularly cool place to sit.
We really enjoyed the show, even if the adults weren't quite so keen.
I really enjoyed the half time ice cream as well, even though I thought it was time to go at the interval.
My school dinner experiment ended on Monday and it was back to good old cheese sandwiches!
I didn't manage to get my school project done over the weekend so tonight we had a standig long jump competition in the front room (my project was on accurate measurements). I secured first place and beat Mum and Dad!  I was mighty pleased about that.

Nothing particulalry exciting to report prior to our half term holiday I don't think.  Ooops, I mentioned our half term holiday didn't I?

I think it's probably safe to start talking about it again now, I think Mum and Dad have calmed down a bit.

Yeah, we were a bit, ummm, lively on holiday.

A bit of a handfull perhaps?

Maybe a little trying on occasions maybe?

It's okay though, I think everyone has got over it and the strained vocal chords have settled back down again.

So then, we went on holiday for half term week and after much deliberation about where we should go we settled for Croyde in Devon where we usually go camping.

But this time we were staying in a lodge, or a 'modge' or indeed a 'splodge'

So as soon as my first ever Junior school disco was finished on Friday night we were off (the disco was brilliant by the way).

So it was very late when we finally arrived in Devon.  We'd invited Andy and Owen down for the weekend so they could catch a few waves but they'd been in the pub so long waiting for us that they appeared to have caught a rather severe bout of drunken-ness instead.

The lodge was lovely, and unlike the tent we didn't have to spend an hour setting it up in the dark. 

There was even a firendly local cat that I loved.  We didn't get time properly aquaint ourselves though as we were packed off to bed.

Next morning the weather was lovely and once the Tesco man had delivered our food and drink for the week, we got the wetsuits on and hit the beach:

Well, Ned did, I decided to go with my Peppa Pig sunsuit instead:

We had a good time on the beach, with digging, splashing, long jumping and all the usual other seaside stuff.
Which this time also included kite flying, or more accuratley trying to dive bomb people on the beach.  On one occasion that someone being me..thanks Owen. 
What with that and the aerial onslaught of the whistling bomb we were nervous wrecks by the time we retired back to the lodge.
The lodge was a great place for skateboarding:

And scooter riding (video at the end).
It was also a pretty good place to get your snuggle on:

Our two guests had to leave early on Sunday, which was a shame, we had loads of cool things left to eat and the sun was still out!
We went to the Big Sheep for the day, I was really excited about this one.
Yeah, me too, we took our seats just after we arrived for the duck show:

Only to find out we could actually participate and stand on the coolest gate that the sheep dog herded the ducks through:

There was a smart swing/roundabout type of thing, I had loads of goes, until it got too windy:

I got to feed a baby lamb, I was so excited, it had a super powerful suck though:

And while Ellis was doing that, Dad and I went to the Laser shooting thing.  It was brilliant, we got a gun and a sensor to wear on our heads and then headed out into the wilderness to shoot each other (and anyone else we found there too).  There was a huge area to explore, with parked up tanks, landed helicopter, look out posts, everything.  I totally loved it and could have spent days in there.

On a more sedate note there were ride on tractors:

One of those cool jumping pillow thingys:

Horse riding:

I LOVE horse riding:

Mums favourite was the piggy ride, shame she wasn't allowed to have a go on it:

It was pretty bumpy accross the field but great fun:

We stopped off at the pub for a meal on the way back in the evening, it was lovely too.  I had Garlic bread and chips.

And I had a monster spaghetti bolognese (which I finished off).

And in a major turn of events, no one spilt a drink over Mum.

Life in the lodge was very comfortable it has to be said, we had a lovely room each, a nice big telly to watch and a full range of cooking facilities so Dad could keep us fed and watered.

Here we are tucking into a delicious hot chocolate, well, I think it's a hot chocolate somewhere under all those marsh mallows:

We'd just got back from the swimming pool, it's only just accross the road in the main holiday park.  We love the pool there.

Even if Dad did accidentally 'slip' when he was getting sat down on the flume slide and chased down almost straight after me!

We went out for a walk in the sunshine.

I was desperate to go up in the dunes to see if we could look down on our lodge....we could:

As well as some extreme sand dune jumping:

My coolest picture ever I reckon?

We carried on, accross the beach and through the rockpools on the other side, Mum and I taking the most dangerous route I could possibly pick, before we headed back up to civilisation.

And an ice cream, with a view:

As if we hadn't done enough walking already, Dad insisted we carry on up to the top of baggy point at the far end of the beach.

I was pretty much up for it, it was cool when we got to the top:

We could see right over the beach to the road we come in on, the campsite, the swimming pool, everything.

The walk back down was pretty good too, except I had insisted on wearing my crocs which were pretty slippery on the mud and wet stone path:

The open fields at the bottom were much steeper than this picture makes them look, we steamed down in record time and it took Mum and Dad ages to catch up:

That evening we had a trip to the clubhouse on the main site, Mum and Dad wanted to play bingo for some reason?  Anyway, we didn't care about that as there was an arcade!
And a childrens entertainer and disco.  We had such a good night out it, silly games, dancing I loved it.
So did I, almost as much as the 2p falls machines in the arcades.  We did okay on them too, well I won a packet of parma violets that I managed to tip off...
....and I won a mouse keyring.  Dad reckons it only cost him about a fiver too!
We had a day trip to Ilfracoombe:

I went too:

We went to the aquarium, it looked quite small on the outside so we thought it might not be all that interesting....we were wrong.

It was brilliant, we had the place pretty much to ourselves and the young chap working there was well up for answering as many questions as I could throw at him, brilliant.  All the fish they had were local to Devon rivers, estuaries and the sea which made it all the more interesting.

We even got to see a weaver fish, who had stung Andy back in the summer in Cornwall.  We watched how they buried themsleves in the sand waiting for an unsuspecting foot to land on them.

They had spines all the way along their back but we learned that only the front few, which were coloured black, actually did the stinging.

Then it was onboard a boat for a trip up the coastline.  It was good, we made sure we sat up on the top, so it was bit blowy but a much better vantage point.

You could see all the way over to South Wales which we thought was pretty cool.  We chugged along the coastline and saw some really big cliffs...which had sheep half way up them, eating tuffets of grass, they must have been really hungry!

We also saw abandonned mine's from the olden days.

And a waterfall dropping into the sea.

But best of all I spotted a porpoise swimming along, I was really chuffed.

If I had known what a porpoise was, I may have seen it too?

On our last day we had another walk along the beach, this time right to the other end:

Rock pool exploration was once again on the agenda, but I took it to a whole new level of commitment this time:

We had an art session, drawing in the sand with sticks:

And that was pretty much that.

There's a few more photo's in the album here if you want to have a look:

Croyde 2011

Halloween was cancelled this year apparently?

When we were home we had Monday off too, with Dad.  No surprises then, it was trip to the pumptrack.

The bike riding was okay, the park next it was okay, but what was really brilliant was this cat who appeared.  He had a few laps of the track with me before a go on the climbing frame and then off through the woods for a bit.

Before he came back and had a nice lie down right on top of the first jump!  Pump track cat was pretty good fun actually!

Back to school on Wednesday then, boo.

I didn't mind, we had a visit from the fire brigade.  We got to sit up in the engine and have a look at all their stuff.

Once I was out of school I was straight back to practicing my new passion, skateboarding.  I love it, and i'm getting pretty good as well. 

Mr Jones made a bonfire for us at school on Friday, it was really good to watch.

As a warm up for tonights school firework display.  We gathered quite a gang of family and friends together to go, but sadly it was chucking it down with rain.

Yeah, it was brolly time for sure, which pleased me no end.

There was a lovely big fire to stand around, but it was a shame it was so dark and everyone was so well wrapped up you couldn't really recognise anyone.

The fireworks themselves were pretty good to a point, but by all accounts the three big finale ones were too soggy to light..shame.

We headed home for food, drink and sweets, leftover from the cancelled Halloween I think.

We had a rather unfortunate incident with my swimming hat, it ended up in the wash. It went all wrinkly and out of shape, there was no way I was going to get it on my head thats for sure.  Luckily Dad found this rather fetching pick hat and goggles set in the Tesco bargain bucket:

The weekend then, no plans...what were we going to do?

How about BMX racing?  Yeah, why not. 

Mum and I decided we'd rather go off down town and get me a haircut.

So we took Owen with us for a boys outing to the track.  I was dead excited on the way down and couldn't wait to get going.  Here I am looking cool, calm and collected in the pens before the first race:

As usual, I had to race up in the 8 year old category, so there was plenty of competition:

I came third in all three heats, Dad and Owen thought i'd done brilliantly but I was in all sorts of trouble, crying and everything.  I thought i'd done badly because everyone was getting so close to me.  They pointed out how well i'd done by pedalling hard and fighting for my results and I felt a little better about it all.  I just missed out in the final and came fourth, but everyone was still pleased, Dad reckons today was the first time i'd really raced and not just rode the track.  Having Owen along was really good too, we had plenty of fun and games and he had plenty of useful advice and opinions too.  It was also great during practice as I had him and Dad to race against.  I should also mention a young lad down there called Travis Wilson as well, he's only 8 but jumped the biggest double on the whole track, it was awesome.  Remember where you heard the name first when he's the next Maris Strombergs or Danny Hart.

By the time i'd havd my morning kip we didn't leave for town for ages.  We saw some nice girly things in some of the shops and then I had my hair done, cool.  Dad and Ned were back before we were so at least I didn't have to walk home as they came to pick us up.

We had a brief aborted trip to finally buy some curtains on Sunday morning.

Yeah, thanks Ellis, we'll have another shivering cold winter of meal times now because of you.

Still,  we watched the new(ish) Yogi bear film in the afternoon, we loved it.

I had my first swimming lesson on Tuesday, another oppurtunity for Dad to deal with my hair when he has to tuck it up into my lovely red swimming hat.  I don't whine as much as Ned did when he pulls my hair though.  I was dead keen and certainly made an impression on my teacher, with my super enthusiasm.  I really enjoyed it and can't wait to go again next week.
I'm still enjoying my school swimming lessons as well.  We think it's cool that we both go on the same day too.
Wednesday was my harvest festival assembly at school, mum came along but didn't get a very good view of my as I was rather obscured by the girl in front with her massive hair:

I loved it, all the singing and the actions.  I'd been practicing at home for long enough anyway.

Yeah she had been, all the same songs as I did when I did it too, I quite enjoyed joining in with her around the house actually.

I got to hang around the playground for ages after school on Thursday as Ned was at multisports.  This was made doubly cool by having my friend Neeve hanging about for ages too, we had a great time.

And I was earning another certificate at Multisports for being player of the day......for football of all things.

The weather was so nice after school on friday we went to the park, now we're both at school we both have friends down there to play with, Dad is completely redundant.

Yeah, except for getting the bikes out of the garage he may as well not bother.

On the way home we saw my boyfriend Charlie outside his house, now we know where he lives he's in real trouble! Ha ha ha.

Auntie Christine came round to look after us in the evening, I was a bit, ummm, tired and emotional it has to be said.

I wasn't, I loved it even if Laura did pop round for a visit with my beloved Darcey.

I finally got my wish on Saturday morning and we did.....NOTHING!  I sat about watching telly all morning, lovely.

I decided to venture out into the garden with Mum and Dad for a bit and do some digging but soon got tired of that and got the skateboard out instead.

We finally gave in and had a walk to the park in the late afternoon for a some sweets before heading home to watch Merlin, we love Merlin.

Had a shopping trip on Sunday, but it wasn't the usual dull fest.

We went to a shop called Decathlon in Reading, they had everything from bikes, to canoes to archery sets.

Yeah, and sledges, boxing stuff and exercise equipment too.

It was great fun mooching about in there.  We also went to Argos and got me a clock radio so I could see what the time is when I wake up.  I am so excited about it.

Then we headed off to the big toy shop in Windsor, there were loads of cool things we wanted father christmas to bring us.

We had a walk back through the park, playing in all the fallen leaves.

When we got home Mum sorted my clock radio out for me, it's so cool I can even get radio one on it.  I 've been listening to it loads, after school on Monday I went straight tom y room, put the radio on and got busy with my Lego and tonight I was listening to Zane Lowe when I went to bed, Dad was pleased about that I think.

We've both got really keen on our learning logs this last week or so.

Yep, even me, theres a house point for anyone who gives there's in on a monday for us juniors....although I doubt i'll ever get one with our usual weekend schedules.

My drawing and artwork is coming on in leaps and bounds too, i'm doing some really nice pictures and some of them are even on paper (and not on my arms, legs or tummy).

I read an entire book with Dad while Ellis was dancing on Wednesday, it had well over twenty pages as well.  This is a real first for me and I was pleased as punch.

I still love my dancing and keep breaking into routines or spins at every available oppurtunity, even during the most mundane moments.

We had to go out for a ruddy walk after tea thanks to Ellis.  Well, I say walk, I took my bike.

Yeah, and I took Dad's skateboard.  I love the skateboard but I found out it isn't quite so good up hills or accross acorn strewn paths under the trees.

I did drumming during my golden time at school on friday afternoon, with some cool bongos.  I loved it, in fact golden time is brilliant in Juniors with so much to choose from.

We had a bit of a surprise on Friday night after tea....

Yeah, how about some new bikes:

We were very pleased with them, mine was shiny.

And mine had gears, I was a little bit overcome for a short time but soon got out on it to give it a quick test.

I would rather like a basket on the front of mine for transporting my soft toys or my babies.  I'm sure i'll get on fitted soon enough, Dad will love that.

Owen, Alan and Andy came round later (get well soon Hayley).  A great oppurtunity to show of our new wheels and manage to get my cool light up helicopter that Slim and Trace got me from Brazil stuck on the roof...not a happy boy.

We had a very slow start to the weekend with a saturday morning lie in.

Followed by helping Dad make pancakes for breakfast...about time to, i've been asking for weeks!

I love the maple syrup but don't like the pancakes so I dip my toast in it!

We eventually left the house after lunch, I was itching to get out on my new bike again:

So we had a trip to the park, a few laps of the little track down there provided a good oppurtunity to get to grips with it, even if I did crash into a tree and graze my shin on the pedal.

I had a few laps on mine too, but peferred to practice my monkey bars (which I can now do, a little bit anyway) and going down the twisty slide as backwards as I could.

It ended up a bit of a rush to get me to James (the new boy at school) party at Northcroft later in the afternoon.  I was pretty excited about it actually, he was having a football party! I had a great time and was even made captain for the match we played and got to pick my team.

I got dragged round town with Mum and Dad, we tried to find me a new winter coat but all the shops were rubbish and almost empty, Mum says it's because Park Way is opening soon?  Whatever, I rode round on Dad's shoulders which was great until I fell foul of a low doorway...WHACK!!!!!!

I also love writing my name, whenever possible and if there's no pen and paper to hand i''ll improvise with my breath and the car mirror:

Sunday we had a sneaky trip to Legoland.

Yeah, we were supposed to arrive a bit later than usual, get all the rides we like ticked off and then leave early.

We hadn't however banked on the Beavers day out.....the place was packed!

We couldn't even find a bench to eat our picnic on.

But armed with out insider knowledge we got on all our favourites (the Pirate boat, no hands all the way, the Big Dragon roller coaster, the cars and the boats).

But most of all Lego Rocket Racers game, which was closing at the end of the weekend to be replaced with something new for next year.  I'm pretty upset about this as it was probably my favourite thing in the whole place.  Still, we'll have to see what they replace it with I suppose....?

I had to be almost forced to do my Learning Log on Tuesday evening (weekly homework).  It was of course the day before it had to be in so the pressure was on. 

He isn't as keen as me on it thats for sure.

We've been playing jungle snap at home a lot lately, i'm brilliant at it and gave Dad a good hiding on more than one occasion.

I've been playing with loads of different children in my class lately, not just Luca and Neeve.  I love waltzing round the school saying hello to everyone, especially down at the juniors when we go to pick Ned up.

We finally did Olympics on Thursday at multi sports, which comprised of long jump (into the sandpit no less), hurdles and throwing the Nerf bomb thingy.   I loved it.

After tea we had to ready our submissions for Fridays cake sale:

We sort of cheated a bit and bought the fairy cakes, but the decoration was all our own work:

Friday was cake sale day of course, very exciting.

They were all out on the picnic tables in the junior playground under umbrellas to shield them from the lovely sunshine we've been having lately.

We got exactly the cakes we wanted, i'd seen some lovely looking brownies in the morning when we dropped ours off and made sure I had one of them.

And I wanted to buy one of our own cakes back.

By the time we thought about getting Mum one, they had all gone though, ooops.  Sorry Mum.

When we got home the car was all packed for camping, we picked Mum up from work, went to call for Andy and then headed West, to Croyde!

We didn't arrive until it was dark so putting up the tent was obviously fun and games.

We helped loads of course.

By the time everything was ready it was quite late but we didn't really fancy going to sleep very much.

Hmmm, we were a bit of a pain in the neck it has to be said.

When we got up on Saturday morning it was a lovely day, I couldn't wait for everyone else to get organised and get to the beach so I had a great time soaking myself with one of the water taps:

The beach was lovely, warm, sunny and not too crowded for the skim board, which i've really got the hang of now:

I did load of surfing with Mum, although she didn't really need to help me at all as I can launch myself now.  I still love to just run about in the water though:

There was digging of course:

Yeah loads of digging.  I was into making big holes:

And I was on more of a sand sculpture tip, I decided to this weeks school homework in the medium of sand.  We had to create a mythical creature, so here is my Crocodile-fish monster thingy:

Sunday was another lovely sunny morning, we had our breakfast sat outside, Andy missed out as he'd left for home early to go and watch the football or something:

We then had to pack everything away before we could go to the swimming pool.

My highlight of the weekend, I love the swimming pool.

Even I was fairly keen it has to be said.

I was all over it, every slide, every bubble pool every water jet, I even completed my first ever underwater forward roll and rode the flume slide alone.

Then we headed home, boo!

Dad assures us it was the last camping trip of the year, whether thats down to the onset of winter or our behaviour is open to specualtion though.

Weird scenes after school today, Mum came to pick us up...brilliant!

Yeah, Dad was working late or something?  Weird indeed.  Still, by the time Mum had walked all the way home she was feeling a little bit warm so we headed to the shop for an ice lolly.

Dad's worried a dangerous precident has been set now....