Well, we've had a sneaky week away as you may have noticed by last weeks non-update!

We have indeed, but before we get on to that we had a pretty action packed week beforehand.  We started off on Tuesday with a day with Auntie Christine and Darcey.

We had a trip to the Discovery centre in the morning which we loved before heading back and having a splash in Darceys paddling pool.

We loved that too, even though it was a rather small Darcey sized pool!

Wednesday we went to Mr Gilhams sports club at school.  We had a great day, I won the player of the day award and got my pick of DVD for the afternoon session.

And I had my frined Lilly to play with too so I was rather pleased as well.

Thursday we went to Dragon club for the first time in a while.  We scootered in.

Even me, all the way as well!

We made planet paintings using a marble, which seemingly ruined both of our outfits with some rather permanent blue paint.

Good job we were wearing some of our old stuff as all the posh stuff was washed and ready for holiday eh?

Dad picked us up and we headed down to Victoria Park for a bit.

We went out on the boating lake in a padle boat, we'd never done that before so we were dead excited, just me, Ned and the open water.

Ellis' legs were a bit short so I did all the pedalling, I made a good job of it too.

And shortly after Dad remarked that last time I was in a paddle boat my hat fell in the water....my hat...fell in the water!

It took some skilled driving by me to enable us to pick it up, all soggy and yucky.  Still, it soon dried out.

We had an ice cream before playing on the park until Mum came out of work to meet us.

Friday I rode my bike to Dragon club, again, all the way.

I stuck to the scooter again.

We had another lovely day there, particularly the rounders match.

Which was great until I got smacked on the arm by the ball.  Still, I won the super dragon award for the day which more than made up for it.

I also had a particularly persistant female admirer who endured a pretty lengthy game of kiss chase to try and catch me.....no such luck!

Once we were home it was time to pack the car and pick up Mum from work before heading off to Cornwall for the week...yay!

Yay indeed, a whole week in the caravan, we couldn't wait.

Andy came down for the weekend too and John and Sarah were already going to be there.  As if all this wasn't exciting enough we had the Olympics starting too, brilliant.

The journey down was lovely actually, we had a nice tea from the Pasty Shop in town, a great sunset to watch and the Olympic opening ceremony on the radio. 

We really wanted to see it as well though, so it was lucky we made good time and got there in time to see a good portion of it.  Made it a pretty late night, but it's only once every four years isn't it?

In fact, we got there so quick that it was still quite light when we arrived.

So saturday morning, the freedom of the campsite at our disposal:

After a brief scare when the Tesco delivery was almost claimed by John and Sarah in the other caravan we headed for the beach. 

We are both totally loving the beach at the moment, we can't get enough.

Rock pools, surfing, swimming, whatever, we love it all.

Todays highlight however had to be Dad smacking himself in the nose with my surfboard though.  Even though it obviously hurt quite a lot, it looked totally hilarious!

We were introduced to a game called Danish Longball by John, I loved it.

There was also a real life nature documentary unfolding out the back of the caravan when a bird of prey plucked another bird from the sky and proceeded to enjoy his meal right there on the grass.

We went out for a bit of a walk on Sunday morning, to keep Mum sweet mainly.

Yeah, we looped round to Constantine beach, had a brief paddle in the rockpools before heading off back through the sand dunes.

We hadn't been that way before do it  was a bit of an adventure, through the Golf Course and up a really narrow track before popping out on familiar territory by the shops.

We had earned a nice luch, so we sat out by the caravan on our picnic blanket in the sunshine.

We headed for the beach in the afternoon, there was a potentially huge blunder when we realised no one had bothered bringing any of our beach toys, spades or anything. just surf boards.

We made do though, after a surf session we dug out big enough holes by hand to bury each other in the sand.

We had a few laps of the campsite on the bikes as we'd obvioulsy not used enough energy during the day.

We also said goodbye to Andy as he had to head home after the weekend.

Monday then, it was a bit cloudy so we thought we'd give the beach a miss and head out on a bike ride instead.

Yeah, we went to Wadebridge, got Mum and Dad a bike to ride form the hire shop and headed out on the Camel trail, destination Padstow!

Ned rode his own bike but i had a thing called a tag along attached to the back of Dad's.  It was a quite brilliant idea as if I didn't fancy pedalling I could put my feet up and let Dad do all the work.  I didn't do much of that though, in fact a lot of the time I asked Dad to stop pedalling so I could drive us along from the back!

I loved it, I had the luxury of my own bike of course and I was putting in sprint bursts all over the place.  There were loads of people riding along the trail so I had plenty of targets.  Best of all though was that we were all together having a bike ride, we were so excited that Mum had a bike for the day.

 We loved riding along the estuary and the six and a half miles to Padstow soon passed. Time to lock up the bikes and head into town for a spot of lunch by the harbourside:

Notice the differnece between Ned and I? There he is, all greasy sausage roll and fizzy coke.  And then there's me, freshly made sandwich, a portion of cucumber and a bottle of water: 

We had a bit of  a wander round, I failed to win a massive cuddly toy on a charity lucky dip stall, much to Dad's relief.  I think he was a bit worried about getting it back to Wadebridge by bike.

The ride back was every bit as pleasant. The tide had pretty much come in so the estuary was much more alive with boats.

When we arrived back at the hire shop both Ellis and myself were sad we weren't going any further we'd loved it so much.

We handed the hired bikes back and had a quick trip into town for a little retail therapy.

Before we headed back to the caravan to watch the original version of Charlie and the Chocolate factory on DVD which we loved.

We had a shopping outing to a big surf shop on Tuesday morning, we're getting quite into picking our own stuff these days so it wasn't quite as dull as it might sound.

It was of course beach time after that, we had a full family surf for the first time ever which was really good.

There were also plenty of land based activities, more Danish longball sand burying and tunneling.

I was really into being in the water, and while Mum and Ellis went back up to the caravan I convinced Dad to stay in the sea with me a bit longer.  I did a load more surfing before ditching the board for some actual swimming and even some body surfing.

On the way back Mum and I stopped off at the outside shower to clean our feet off when I burst intoa few dance moves moves.  Another lady spotted me and asked if I did ballet lessons!

Things were a bit grey on Wednesday morning so we stayed in for a slumpy morning watching the Olympics and playing tri-ominoes.  Like dominoes, but needlessly more complicated.

We also had a few hands of Uno before heading out the youth hostel for lunch, outside in the glorious sunshine overlooking the sea.

We hit the beach once again in the afternoon, it started off all very nice but it did start to rain a bit...we didn't care, it just gave us more room as the wimps cleared off!

We made a shelter out of surf boards and toughed it out until it cleared.

We eventually headed back to the caravan for a game of Yahtzee and to watch Team GB win it's first Gold medal at the Olympics.

After careful studying of the tide table, Thursday morning was deemed the optimum time to vosot Bedruthan steps.

Fortunatley the weather obliged too and we made our way down the many steps to the beach:

It was great, we had it pretty much to ourselves and soon got creative:

Here's a few Moshi Monsters I did:

It really was lovely down there, we had the rock pools all to ourselves:

I was inspired by the olympics to indulge in a spot of fishing net javelin:

It looked there had been a giant dog on the beach:

Wetsuit catalogue pose:

Fortunatley, the wind didn't change....

A couple of gratuitous close ups:

We even had the forethought to bring some luch down with us and found a lovely sheltered shelf of sand up in the rocks for our picnic spot.

We had a game of boules all around and up and down the campsite in the afternoon.

Before heading down the beach for a surfing session, we really were dead keen to get surfing again.

The tide was really high and the waves were pretty wild, people were getting picked up and shot onto the beach all over the place, it was wild!  I loved it, declaring conditions as 'Wicked' and 'Awesome' amongst other things.

I though it was maybe a little bit too crazy and diverted my efforts into making a sea defence wall to hide behind out of sand.

We had an early morning trip down the beach on Friday to asses low tide conditions for a cave trip.  Things look good to begin with.

Until a massive wave came rushing up the gap and nearly swept us off our feet!

Me and Dad thought it was hilarious.

Mum and I weren't quite so amused!

So we headed for the relative calmer waters of the big low tide swimming pool instead.

It took a while to get us all up the rocks and down into the water but once we were all in we were loving it!

Especially when it started raining and all the lightweights cleared off, we had it all to ourselves.

We had a little trip out later on to Watergate Bay and then Fistral, just for a look around:

So then it was saturday, our last day.

Boooo!  Rubbish or what?

We certainly made the best of it though, the sun was out so down the beach we went again.

We got a great spot, our own little sandy cove with a big old pool left by the outgoing tide, perfect place to perfect my snorkelling technique:

We then headed over to the low tide pool again for some snorkelling.

And I paddled my surfboard all around it.

Before we took on one of the narrower gaps through the rocks which I was really pleased with myself about.

We headed back to our beach camp area and Dad and I got involved in a rather pointless competition to see who could place a sandcastle highest on the rocks behind us....I won of course!

So that was the end of a great week, no arguing, no telling off, no naughty steps...nothing.

Indeed, we all did very well this time around, weird huh?

And in one last brilliant twist we didn't have to go home via the pub for dinner and held out for a Macdonalds on the motorway services instead....brilliant.

Sunday was a very lazy day indeed, as you might expect.

Then today it was off to Auntie Christines...once she had remembered!

Last week of term!
Yay, we're on countdown to summer holidays and we can't wait.
Things were pretty hectic in the run up.
Especially as I wanted to make Mrs Douglas a cake.  Ever never gone in for end of term presents before this year but I figured Mrs Douglas was worth some effort.  I made the cake with Mum, she's a much better baker than Dad and it tunred out fantastically well.
Seeing as Ned was making cakes for teacher I thought I ought to get in on the act as well:

So here's my 3HD cake, freshly decorated by my good self:

And here's my smiley faced tribute to Miss Zimmerman's class:

It's not all been fun and games though, in fact, it was no games at all really as sports day was cancelled due to a waterlogged field. Such a shame, I was so looking forward to it as well. Mr Armstrong did rustle up a scaled down indoor affair in the hall which was really good but none of the parents could come along.  It was open class room on wednesday afternoon though and Dad managed to come along to that. I got to show him all my work, I think he was most impressed by my art actually even though there were a few stories that i'd written that were almost a whole page long (amazing for me)

We had a dancing lesson open to Mums and Dad's to celebrate the end of term too. I was so excited that Mum was going to come along.

I was excited as I cold watch Ellis' dancing instead of having to read!

Anyway, I loved having and audience and really played up to them.

We took our cakes in Thursday for last day of term.  I spent some time telling Mrs Douglas the various combinations of fractions she could divide the cake up into but she wasn't having any of it.....she said it was staying as one piece...all for her!  I think she liked the look of it.
Mis Zimmerman was very pleased with mine too. A good start to the last day of term all round then.
And it was only a half day as well.  Actually, I was pretty glad as we'd spent most of the week tidying up and clearing stuff away...booooring!
So Dad came to pick us up just after lunch, we said our goodbyes to all our friends.
And I had not one, but two cuddles from Mrs Douglas.  I also got a bookmark with a photo of me holding a real Olympic torch on it and a book as a present (A local torch bearer bought it into school for us to have a look at, cool or what eh?)
So we were free from school.....it was a nice enough day outside and it was only lunchtime....what to do?
What to do indeed...how about a trip to the BMX track?
Great idea Ned:

My poor little bike struggles with some of the bigger jumps you know.  Not that I mind a bit of scrabbling about in the dirt and dust of course.  I was pretty much unstoppable on the rest of the track though: 

I was most definatley stoppable.....with a puncture!  Dad was devastated as it was probably the first time he hadn't bought the pump and spare inner tube with us.  I wasn't bothered though, I just played a little Ipod and then stole his bike.  I was better on it than him anyway:

It had taken a while but we finally had our 'good school report treat'....a trip to Pizza Hut!

Lovely lovely Pizza Hut, what a great way to finish the school year!
So with only actually being a Thursday we broke up on, we still had a friday to have without Mum and Dad....thank goodness for Auntie Christine eh?
Indeed, a lovely quiet day with her was just the job after out hectic week.
Even if I did have to go for a swimming lesson still in the afternoon.
Something realy weird happened on Saturday, the sun came out.
And it was nice and warm.
Unbelievable stuff this year eh?
We made the most of it by spending all day in the garden.
We did, Dad didn't take much convincing to get the new paddling pool out either.  He bought it during the driving rain and hose pipe ban at a reduced price so he was well smug about his purchase now!
We also got the water slide thing out too, as well as the water pistols.
It was a brilliant day.
Topped off with a trip to the local shop for a few sweets...perfect!
Sunday Mum had some business to attend to with Anne to do with Grandad, so Dad had us to himself all day.
His initail plan of going BMX racing fell through when I decided I didn't fancy it after all.
So we hit the pool again!  It was marginally warmer than yesterday so that was a welcome outcome.
Then the Laws came to the rescue with an invite to a barbecue at their place.
We had a quick detour via Decathlon in Reading where we tried out all the exercise machines,
Boxing stuff.
And had a game of table tennis.
Then it was more sports for the rest of the day at the Laws, I love going over there.
Yeah so do I, especially their rabbits and this time their cousins hamsters as well to coo over.  I want one!
Then today it was back to Auntie Christines.
But this time with Darcey too, more the merrier eh?
We made the most fantastic butterfly cakes ever (as verified by taste testers Mum and Dad).
I reckon it must have been the glitter icing, thanks for that Laura!



Well we have genuine exciting stuff to report this week.

We do indeed, how about we start off with the Olympic torch coming to Newbury!

Yeah, how about that?  We were allowed a day off school to go and see it which was obviously brilliant.

We didn't even have to go with boring old Mum and Dad either, no, instead went with Darcey, Laura, Auntie Trish and Auntie Christine.

The only slight downer was that we had to walk all the way to town from Auntie Christines, as we all know, I don't do walking.

I've never seen town so busy, it was mad!  There were people everywhere and we couldn't even get accross the market place!

We made the best of where we were though:

Caught a peek of the torch, waved some flags and generally got into the spirit of the whole thing.

After things had calmed down a bit we met up with Mum for a picnic lunch in the park.

Before I had to walk all the way back again.....boo and indeed hoo.

We had a great time and are now totally hyped for the Olympics coming up.

Yeah, thanks for taking us!

As if I hadn't done enough on my feet for one day it was dancing day as well.  Still, another lesson, another star sticker for me for a great piece of dancing I threw down.

And then in another milestone event it was my lasy parents evening of reception year.  A full half hour appointment it was as well.

Yeah, Ellis and I had a lovely time playing in the Reception playground, it seems like ages since I was there.

Anyway, it sounds like i'm doing really well and Mum and Dad were very pleased with my progress. 

We took Dad shopping again on Thursday, and again it went surprisingly well.

How could it not?  We're so helpful after all!

Friday, we packed up and headed west for a sneaky weekend in the caravan, a starter before the main event if you will later on in the 'summer'

Yeah, how exciting.  We had the usual late night to bed but we were soon tucked up in bed, getting charged up for a couple of days on the beach.

To add even more excitement, Finley was down as well, with Chris and Kate and Bailey the dog!

Oh we loved Bailey.

We really loved Bailey.  So much so we even borrowed him to take him for a walk.

We shared him really nicely and I reckon he had a lovely time:

Once we'd worn him out (well he only has little legs) we hit the beach.  The sun was out and it was just like summer.
Yeah, at last.  It was wetsuits on and climbing, diggging and splashing time for sure.
Weirdly, I also got seriously into my body boarding as well.  Like really into it.  I haven't been that bothered before but for some reason I couldn't get enough of it!.
We rounded the day off with a barbecue and a bout of Tom and Jerry cartoons.
Tom and Jerry...brilliant!  Can't believe we'd never seen it before.
Sunday then, more sunshine...better get back on the beach!
Yeah, I was chomping at the bit to get back in the sea again.  I was asking about tide times, wind conditions and all the rest of it.  I even suggested we take a packed lunch down with us so we could stay all day long.
I was happy with that arrangement, plenty of time to get into my climbing, I love climbing:

I made friends with another boy my age and we went off surfing together, I didn't even want Mum or Dad to come with me, we had a great time.

And then John put in a brief showing, he showed us some really cool climbing routes up the rocks with his extensive local knowledge.

We stayed on the beach all afternoon before heading back up to pack up and leave. 

Stopping off at the pub on the way home for a meal and a drink to tide us over on the journey home.

Cheers Andy and Owen, great fun as always chaps, can't wait until next time!

We didn't get home until pretty late at night so it was straight to bed when we arrived home.

Monday, we were all pretty sleepy....especially Mum.....

We had a day off school on Wednesday, which was good.

But it was for Grandads funeral, so that was bad.

We gave him a very fitting send off though, we had a sing song, heard some of his favourite music and heard some really funny stories about what he used to get up to as a little boy.

We've got a long way to go before we can live up to his level of mischief thats for sure.

But most of all we had a great big get together, there were so many people there there wasn't even enough seats for everyone inside the crematorium.

Seems like he was a really popular and well loved man, we sort of knew that anyway of course!

We went to the pub afterwards, there was food and drink.

And our cool cousins who even let us have a game of pool with them.

And I got to sit at the bar and have a lovely chat with Uncle Trevor.

It was also a bit of a novelty to have Mum with us on  a Wednesday to take me to dancing afterwards.

So, some of you may have heard that they've finally caught up with Dad and got him to work a bit longer during the day as of last week.  I think he was quite emotional about it all actually as it really hit home that we're growing up fast and don't really need him so much anymore.  Anyway, the upshot is he doesn't have time to go to Tesco on his own in the afternoons anymore.

No, he has to wait until we finish school so we can go with him.

It was our first trip on Thursday and it went suprisingly well actually.

We got everything on the list, and a few things that weren't (Moshi Monsters, ha ha)

I got my school report on Friday, it was a really good one too.  I appear to be doing really well at my reading, writing, Maths and creative stuff, i've made loads of new friends and apparently i'm a pleasure to have in class!

Our bike ride in the evening was rained off.  Not surprising at the moment of course, it has been raining rather a lot hasn't it?

So instead we all sat and watched the Little Mermaid together.

We had a quick trip into town on saturday morning, the Spider Man demo running on a 3D telly in John Lewis was pretty brilliant!

Then in the afternoon it was my school fete!  I was so excited and couldn't wait to go.

I was pretty up for it too, especially with the Olympic theme as well.

It's a shame it was quite so wet, but we still made the best of it and had a brilliant time.

Even if we didn't win any more jars of sweets on the childrens tombola.

Mum did a stint as a helper on that stall, we loved helping her out, giving out prizes and re-stocking the table.

But it was so popular we soon ran out of prizes and had to help her pack up.

Dad on the other hand had plenty to do on the bbq stall, flipping burgers for all he was worth!

He obviously developed a taste for it as he fired our barbecue up when he got home, even in the pouring rain!

We had a trip out on sunday, well, it had been a while!

Yeah, we went to Milestones in Basingstoke, I just about managed to get there without spewing up.

It was really cool inside, all streets and that made to look like the olden days.

There were loads of lorries and things as well:

Here I am during a uncharacteristicly late lunch stop, shortly after stuffing a whole chocolate chip muffin into my mouth after being egged on by Dad:

And here I am in a weird bit tucked away in a corner that looks more like Willy Wonka's chocolate factory:

The queue for the war rationed sweet shop was pretty long, authentic no doubt!

The service inside was good though:

But we didn't think much of the things on offer in the toy shop:

And much preferred the musical offerings:

We came home and had a game of junior Monopoly.

It went well, until I started getting well beaten....I had a minor meltdown.

Minor???  Are you sure Ned?

That takes us right up to Monday, todays exciting news was the arrival of our Olympic tickets!

Now all we have to do is work out how to get to London early enough....

Right i'll kick off with a warning this week, if you buy a big gooey chocolate pudding from Tesco, you know sort of like a trifle in a big plastic tub type of thing...those white curls on top of it are not, I repeat not parmesan shavings.  Very disappointing for a cheese lover like me!

Yes Ellis, if you say so.

Well this weeks big news at school is that our class is getting mixed up with the other class before we go into year 1 after the summer holidays.  Only one of my proper girl friends seems to be in my class for next term.  I'm not too bothered about that, after all, i'll still have Charlie!  We've also found out that my teacher next year will be Miss Srickland!

And i've found out that i'll be getting Miss Walsh in place of my beloved Mrs Douglas.

In further massive news I went on my first sleep over on friday night at Abi and Faye's.

And while Ellis was away, Dad and I headed off out for a bike ride.

Poor old Mum was left on her own for the evening!

I'm sure she was okay, we went to a new place on the mountain bikes, Croft Woods in Swindon.  It was a proper bike trail, all around the woods.  There were rocks, berms, bridges and all sorts of stuff to ride.  We did two laps of the 5km loop and then tried the easy blue loop to finish the night off.  That turned out to be a mistake as I took a bad tumble and hurt my leg.  It was a long way back to the car and Dad didn't have a clue where to go. Good job I have a great sense of direction and got us back via the most direct route.  I also gave him a lesson on how to behave around the deer we spotted, by telling him not to kneel down as the knees produce the most scent on the human body which can scare mothers away from their young permanently.  Anyway, it was a great trip and i can't wait to go again.

I had no such dramas with Abi, we had a lovely time and I wasn't even that late asleep....really.

I was, we didn't get home until 10pm!

So it was lay in time on Saturday morning.

Yeah, we finally got going after lunch though.  Due to our late start we went swimming....to Northcroft!

Yeah, no usual trip to one of the exciting pools of Swindon or Bracknell this time.  Having said that, it was pretty good fun.

Yeah, we actually played with each other rather than just bombing down slides on our own.

On sunday we had a very civilised mid morning bacon sarnie brunch.

In readiness for the school fete that started at 12!

We were soooo excited about it, this level of excitment increased several fold when both Aunti Trish and Auntie Christine turned up (especially Auntie Trish with her bag full of 10p's she bought for each of us...thanks!)

It was really good, I won loads on the kids tombola, Dad won a coconut on the coconut shy and when we left Mum was heading up the leader board of the adults netball competition.

And what did I win?  Nothing.  I stil enjoyed myself though!

Here's our haul of winnings:

We managed to convince Auntie Trish to stay for tea as well, brilliant!

Yeah, we had a good afternoon out in the garden, I decided Poppy might need some snuggling material though as she is getting a bit old these days:

There were a few trampoline related injuries, but I think tiredness was the major contributor in all honesty:

Back to school on Monday of course and it was all change. 

The whole school seemed to go up a year for the day.

So I had a visit to year one.

And I had a visit to year 4!

We both rather enjoyed as well.