Tuesday

We did the first performance of our christmas play today, it went very well.

I spent most of the day making things to sell on our friday afternoon charity bazaar.  Mrs Tichband kept a very close eye on the quality of our efforts ensuring only the best stuff would go on sale.

It was badge week at gymnastics, I passed my level 5 with ease.

We had the last week of netball club and after a good game or two we had sweets, crisps and squash, perfect way to round things out.

I decided it was high time to get stuck into the Christmas books at bed time, I still really love the pop up nativity book.

Wednesday

Mum and Dad came to my school play today. I started off full of enthusiasm for the singing and the actions.  

Once i'd delivered my line though (in a beautiful, non hurried, loud, clear voice) I lost a little focus.  Still, they all loved it.  I had a bit of a wobble at the end though, as we made our way back to class I broke ranks to give Mum a cuddle, I didn't want her to go.....

I had to make a christmas decoration for our classroom at home.  With Mums help I produced a really cool looking santa bauble.  Then it was Team Kennet.  My old school friend Maxim was there and I was really pleased to see him and catch up now he's moved schools.  He didn't want to know though, I was quite upset about it....

Thursday

After school dance club was based on Strictly Come Dancing this week.  I partnered Louise and took on the mantle of Suzanna and Kevin. We loved it, we danced pretty well too even if I do say so myself. It really was great fun.  Once we were finished Ella and I noticed a poster had gone up with a list of competitive sports events for the new year.  There was tag rugby, ten pin bowling, dodgeball and goodness knows what else.  It just so happened Miss Langdon walked through (she looks after all the sports events at school) and we asked to be put down for everything!

Mum and Dad were going out so Auntie Trish was babysitting, excellent!

Just as they were leaving the Roundtable Santa came round the road.  

Playing carols, wishing everyone merry christmas and rewarding a bit of change in the collection bucket with some sweets!

Sounds like a great deal to us.

Auntie Christine came round too, we played Monopoly and Jenga.  

What a cool time.

Friday

It was finally the day of our christmas bazaar.  We decided as a school that we would donate all our profits to charity and that we wanted to do it on aid of the typhoon in the Phillipines.  Each class had it's own stall to sell what they had made.  Ours had chocolates, truffles and some tree decorations.  I was heavily involved in our pricing structure and took on the first sales stint. We got off to a good start and I made sure I put enough packets of chocolates and truffles aside to give one to Mum, Dad and Ellis.  Dad got there just after i'd finished my stint which was good timing.  I took him round, we had a drink and perused what was left on the stalls, which quite honestly wasn't much by now!  As the afternoon drew to a close there were only a few items left on our stall and we were desperate ro sell out completely and shut up shop.  Dad stepped in and after being offered a good deal he cleared all the remaining stock in one go.  We were thrilled, we'd sold all of our stuff!

Back to swimming this week, we got our results....I hadn't passed again.  I failed on two things I had previously passed on, so I know next term I can do the business.

Saturday

Swimming trip to the Oasis, we took Andy along too.

It was even weirder than usual in Swindon though, there was no one about.

Indeed, the pool was pretty much deserted, maybe everyone else was Christmas shopping or something?

Who cares, it was brilliant, no queues for the slides and the wave machine seemed to on every couplle of minutes.

We went home for lunch and a game of Monopoly.

In the evening we went out in the car 'Grizzy' spotting.

We found some really good ones too, but our favourite again was the one on Bury's Bank Road near the Greenham common gate and car park.

Then it was home for the Strictly semi finals.

No one was quite as good as Ned and Louise though.....

Sunday

We had a late breakfast, or an early lunch.

I think you'll find it's called brunch!

Whatever, it was lovely, sausages, bacon, black pudding, hash browns, beans, toast, mushrooms, eggs the lot!

After seeing that lot off we understandably had to have a very lazy slouching session.

Until it was time to go to the theatre that was.

Indeed, a new one for us too, the Watermill to see Pinocchio.

It was certainly a small theatre.

A really old building too, we loved exploring it before we went in and took our seats.

I was totally enthralled by the show, the actors were so close!

Yeah, it was pretty good it has to be said.

Especially the second half which was much funnier and smothered the crowd in bubbles!  I couldn't believe his norse was really growing everytime he told a lie, how on earth did that happen?

We tried to explain it to her, but it really was a lost cause....

Monday

Our christmas carol concert at the methodist church was cancelled due to impending weather armageddon.  Well, it was supposed to be heavy rain.  We had to do it in the hall at school instead.  The rain failed to materialise of course, so we were deprived of the best part of the whole carol concert, the walk into town and back!

We also heard that our bazaar last week raised over £700, thats pretty impressive I think?

We did our christmas dance after school, it was great fun.

And then once Ellis had gone to bed I watched a programmed called Battlefield Britain on BBC4, it was a real blood and guts account of the Romans taking on Boudicca.  Right up my alley!

Tuesday

I got up really early so I could get Dad involved in our advent calendar guessing.  Also this has the added bonus of me knowing what's in Ned's before he opens it!  Dad's rubbish at guessing to be honest.

After school netball is still going well.  We played 2 games and won both of them before bad light stopped play at half four, earlier than usual.

Andy came round to tinker with the heating system at home as it still wasn't quite right.

He stayed for tea as well which we loved of course, decent pudding!

Wednesday

It was a lovely sunny winters afternoon after school so we suggested an after school bike ride.

We headed out accross the fields behind the school, it was really rather pleasant.

It obviously helped us work up an appetite, we ate stacks for tea!

Which I needed to burn off at Team Kennet afterwards.

Did you know that the telly has channels that just play music videos? Why did no one tell me about that before?  We are loving it! 

We're particularly enjoying the total ridiculousness of that Jason Derulo song Trumpets at the moment.

It's inspired a lot of copycat dancing too.

Yeah, the music channels have overtaken CBBC this week thats for sure!

Dad came and ordered me back to bed at 1am, I was quite comfy on the sofa having got up and put the telly on to watch more music videos.  I really did think it was nearly getting up time.

Thursday

After school dance club was proper ace this week, we had two glow sticks each and danced to Ellie Gouldings Fire.  We loved it.

It was really good to be able to see them doing it, gave me an idea of how ours must have looked earlier in the week.

Friday

Friday again!

And it was my mufti day.  I'd gone to bed with tight platts so my hair was beautifully curly and I chose my best clobber to wear, I do love mufti day.

I had no swimming! We had to wait for the plumber to come round to see to our leaky upstairs toilet that had flooded the bathroom that morning.

We used the time wisely though and decided we should write our Christmas cards.

Mum was going out on her christmas do(she looked lovely when she left) so we managed to convince dad to play our board game Clear Round with us.

He was totally useless at it!  I wasn't though, I won by a mile.

Saturday

I had a trip to the hairdressers for a trim in the morning.

Dad and I went to the bike shop while they were in there.

We had a few bits to see to in town before we went back to Sainsburys to do a christmas shop for the food bank collection.

We love doing a food bank shop even if we don't sometimes have the best grasp of non perishable foods.

We saw Darcey in there too, obviously that was brilliant.

Once we were done in Sainsburys it was the main event of the day, The choosing of this years christmas tree.

We had our customary dance with Santa of course:

The choice was a little disappointing at the top end of the sizes it has to be said, there were no real cieling scrapers, unless you went for one fit for a shopping centre or something.

Mum was pleased that we didn't spend too long deliberating, we found a good one early on which I kept hold of while the boys insisted on trying to find a better one.....they soon gave in.

We had to help Dad carry it so it was obviously pretty sizeable:

We shoved it up the middle of the car and bought it home even though we have perfectly good roof bars to use for such eventualities.

There was more fun to be had though, it was my infant school fete in the afternoon.

And I was just excited about it as Ellis was, even though i'm a junior now.  What better way is there to get loads of sweets so easily?

The face painting was a hit as usual:

The best game had to be the one being run by Neaves mum, you got 5 ping pong balls for 20p and had to bounce them off the table to land in a glass jar.  Whatever was in the jar any of the balls landed in was your prize!    I managed to amass a right haul!
We got to buy our reindeer food, and didn't win anything on the raffle so that was pretty much business as normal.
And then there was the visit to see Santa.  I was the biggest in the queue by a bit of a margin.  I don't care, I still  love all this stuff.  
He remembered where we lived and everything, we obviously asked for a whole load of stuff we'd not ever mentioned before.

Sunday

Our first job was to get the tree organised:

It was pretty much plain sailing this year, we're like a well oiled christmas machine.
Aside from a small squabble about who was cutting the net off it all went very well.
We left it to settle while we ate lunch and then set about decorating it in earnest.
The decorations box came down and well and truly ransacked.
It was all going so well until we discovered the fairy lights didn't really work.
No spare bulbs could be located either, so it was a quick trip to Homebase for a new set.
Excellent, that meant we could get a set of much more impressive LED ones, more lights, more 'disco' settings.
Once Dad had finally finished putting them on the rest of us could really get busy.
It obviously looked brilliant once we'd finished.

More Christmas excitement needed?  Of course!
We took a trip to the Newbury Christmas market and met up with Abi and Faye.
We were super excited, having already been with the Aunties.
The big wheel was first on the agenda:

It was realy cool with Abi and Faye being in the next car for us to wave at and generally have fun with as we went round (at extremely high speed it must be said).

It was also very nearly dark so everything had started to glow and twinkle down below:

The helter skelter was pretty good again of course.

There were some seasonal donkeys:

There was a board game stand we had a play on, the grown ups loved hanging about for us:

As the whole thing was vaguely german theme we had a bratwurst for tea, well half of one anyway, they were pretty big.
And so was the barbecue they were cooking them over!
We bumped into Ella and her family which was cool.
And then we had some hot doughnuts before heading off home.
I had candy floss instead, shame I managed to get my hair all sticky wearing the empty bag as a hat!

Monday

We did Strictly come dancing at dance club after school.  I partnered up with William, we had a great time, he was a brilliant dance partner and really went for it.  The grown ups watching were in stitches.
We were obviously feeling very theatrical, so while Mum and Dad were doing rubbish grown ups stuff in the kitchen we put a show together for them.
Indeed we did, I did some ballet.
And I performed a glow stick dance routine in the dark.
It was rather spectacular even though we do say so ourselves!

Tuesday

It was anti bullying week this week.  My teacher said i'd made some very valuable contributions to coass discussions and had given some really good answers.

No netball after school due to an away match for the team (which they won by a massive margin apparently).  So instead I had to shuffle Ellis backwards and forwards to gymnastics with Dad which is something I usually detest.  This week though we went to Sainsbury's and immersed ourselves in the Christmas novelties, chocolates, decorations, foodstuffs and drinks now so prominently on display.

Wednesday

In our science project, off the back of the great fire of London we were doing burning experiments at school.  How cool.  We had to take two identical items in, burn one, keep the pther for observation.  Mum and I decided a pair of slightly too small socks would be a good idea and should burn very nicely indeed.  The other kids had bought in all sorts of things from yoghurt pots to glass jars.  Mr Jones added them all (safely) to the bonfire and tried to burn them, we had to wait until the next day to see our results once the fire had cooled down......

Thursday

Well, there were no prizes for guessing what had happebed to my sock in the inferno! Disappeared without trace of course, unlike the now very charred looking glass jars.

It was quiz day for me, I might have been just a little bit nervous but certainly didn't let on.  It was at St Gabriels school which was a new one on me.  I got dropped off and Mum, Dad and Ellis had to clear off as there were no spe tators allowed.  I didn't mind, Mrs Tichband looked after us.  There were over 20 teams in the room so it was pretty major stuff.  We did pretty well I reckon, I knew when the Second World War finished and easily recognised Winston Churchill in the picture round amongst other things we were asked.  I wasn't so good on Football questions though it has to be said.

While all this was going on we had a quick trip to the retail park, exciting huh?

Back at the quiz, the buffet was out, biscuits and crisps!!! Being a girls school, there were only girls toilets to use, quite a weird one that was!  In the end we came 7th, so bot too bad overall. It was also a rather enjoyable evening in the end, glad I didn't get all nervous beforehand.

Friday

This weeks spelling test.....with zero revision....8 out of 10!  Arguably my most impressive result yet.

I did infant link again in golden time, it's great fun hanging out with the little ones.  

Swimming day again, and on the way we were at the metcy of Dad's Ipod in the car.

So it could have been anything we'd have to endure.....

But it was quite a revelation as it turns out.  A piece of music by some old bloke called Brian Eno entitled 'An Ending (Ascent)' came on.  It certainly wasn't Dads usual style, no singing, no noisy bits, just music.  I really got into it and declared that I could 'quite happily listen to it at my wedding'

I thought it was pretty rubbish myself, as was the next one that came up on his shuffle, Elvis Presleys live version of 'Suspicious Minds'

Yeah, that was rubbish.  But the next one was universally liked....

System of A Down's 'Toxicity'

So I was well and truly charged up for swimming and it showed, I put in a decent showing this week for once.

I had film night at school, and even though I had already seen Monsters University I was dead excited to go. 

I can't wait until i'm at juniors next year and to go to these cool things as well.  I didn't mind tonight though, as we were off to Abi and Fayes for the evening.  We had an indoor picnic, pleayed with their toys and watched a DVD.  
I came round once the film night had finished and got stuck into a game called Pit with the grown ups (pretty good, involved lots of shouting) and another game called Jungle Speed.  I was pretty good at it, which is more than can be said for Dad who was downright embarrassing he was so bad at it.

Saturday
Bit of a lie in asfter last nights late night.
Mum did a good job on Dad getting him to do pancakes for breakfast, I supervised and made sure they were mixed (folded actually) to prefection.
Then we got in the car and headed to the Cotswold Wildlife park.
We hadn't been to a zoo for ages and it was such a lovely sunny day we were proper excited about it.
We got into a bit of photography:

I really loved the birds, especially the penguins.

The park was obviously still a bit attraction too, I swang myself really well:

And the slide was rather good after it's refit:

I was coming out of the bottom at such a rate i'd drawn quite a crowd.

The goats were in need of some petting:

I really love the goats, chasing them about and fussing them, in fact, i'd like one as a pet:

The baby Rhino (only 4 months old) was seeriously cute too:

But the real stars of the day were the Lemur's in their free range walkthrough:

They were enjoying the sunshine, all sat around with their arms out to warm their little fluffy tummies!

The Lions were in their house, enjoying some massive lumps of meat for their lunch.

The new Giraffe house was open and had a gallery at their eye level which was rather good too.

It was weird watching them eat their hay so close up!

We were even allowed to have lunch in the Cafe rather than the more usual frozen picnic huddled outside somewhere.

Sunday

Advent!  I'd been asking about when this was going to come around for weeks so I certainly wasn't going to miss this one.

Unlike me, who missed the early excitment due to my lie in.

Yeah, by the time Ned had surfaced i'd already opened the penguin tray, my where's wally and traditional advent calendars!

Next on the agenda was a day with Auntie Christine, Auntie Trish and Darcey.

We were well excited about this one.

Yup, Mum and Dad were going off shopping orsomething, sounds well boring, glad we missed out on that one.

Yeah, we had a much better time.  We visited the Christmas Market in Victoria Park.

The helter skelter and the big wheel were brilliant:

It was the fastest big wheel we'd ever been on thats for sure and it was great fun rocking it at the top with Auntie Trish, Dad would have been terrified!

And I loved going on a little roundabout with Darcey.

We headed over to the park afterwards of a play:

Before we headed home for some baking (lolipop cake with expert style decoration to transform them into little snowmen on a stick!  
They really were pretty impressive, even if I do say so myself..
When I got home I managed to finish my Skylanders Giants game!  It's only taken nearly a year.  Still, it's just in time for Christmas and hopefully i'll get the new installment.

Monday
The theme of after school dance club this week was 'Glow in the dark' We did two dances wearing glow stick bracelets with the curtains pulled in the hall.  It was great fun and must have looked pretty impressive.
I had to spend ages cleaning my trainers that i'd worn for football.  They were totally caked in mud....I was not happy about this at all......

Tuesday

We had a maths test today, how does 20 out of 20 sound? Pretty cool eh? Only two of us in the whole class managed it.

I learned to make a cats cradle and didn't end up tangled in a massive knot. There was sadly a lack of real cats though.

Wednesday

I came home with a letter asking if I could represent the school in a quiz competition next week. I was pretty impressed as they've only picked two from our class.  My mates were pretty impressed.  Dad reminded me just how often I get picked for cool stuff at school (as a method for preventing me from whingeing when i'm overlooked in the future no doubt).

I finally returned to Team Kennet this week, it's been ages since i've been. It was kike i'd never been away though.

Thursday

We've been rather sleepy in the mornings:

Dad reckons we look like we are in the film 'Trainspotting' whatever that is?

Friday

Having been on a bit of a slow decline I finally gave in to whatever winter ailments are going round and had to have a day off school.  As luck would have it, Mum was having a day off anyway as the heating engineer was coming round to try and fix it.

Yeah, it's been off for a while now and although we've got qute adept at pre-empting our movements around the house and deploying an electric radiator to ensure our continued warmth, it would be nice if it was actually fixed.

They were here ages trying to fix it, until 10 at night!!!

The good thing about this was we got to have a late night.

We got to watch i'm a celebrity get me our of here which was totally hilarious.

Except for someone apparently called Matthew Wright.  He took a shower in a ladies bikini, leading me to state that he should in fact be known as 'Matthew Wrong'

Saturday

We were up bright(ish) and early in the morning, we had a train to catch!

We did indeed, not a rubbishy old diesel though, the steam engine Tangmere from Eastleigh to Waterloo in London.

Once we'd found the right station (not Chandlers Ford as Dad did initially the doughnut, good job we left early enough).

We were approaching fever pitch waiting on the platform, waiting to see the plume of steam rising into the sky before we could see the train itself.

We had lovely posh seats around our own table, the weather outside was bright and sunny, we were all set to watch the world roll by:

With the occasional distraction of the totally delish chocolate danish pastries we got to help ourselves to (we didn't go much on the tea or coffee though).

It's great riding a steam train on a proper railway, everybody on the platform stops to watch, as well as people out walking in the fields and workmen in their trackside depot's, it's like being famous for a bit!

As we got closer to London we stared to spot loads of famous landmarks like Battersea power station and the London Eye.

We arrived all too soon at Waterloo station, which was a first for us as we usually go into Paddington.

It was a bit of a culture shock boarding the underground after our serene trip into the capital.

It certainly was, but needs must, there was a Pizza Hut there with our lunch in it!

After we'd refuelled with Pizza we made our way East to visit 'The Monument' 

Which was erected as a memorial to the great fire of London in 1677.

On the back of my recent school project I was well keen on this.

Here we are at the bottom of it, we couldn't get the top in the picture as it was just too tall.

Indeed it was, at 61.5 metres high with 311 steps to climb it was indeed pretty high.

The stairs wound round and round and round and they were pretty narrow which made it interesting for the grown ups.

The view from the top was pretty good though and well worth the effort:

After taking in the sights we made our way back down to ground level.

And found where the fire began all those years ago:

So, history covered it was back on the tube to Regent street.

It was pretty busy, although the Hare Krishnas seemed to be enjoying themselves.

The Christmas lights were up and looking good too.

We finally made it to Hamleys.

It was pretty full on in there, Mum and I took to the girls department.

While Dad and I headed up to the more boyish bit:

The Scalextric was pretty cool, but not as good as the radio control car demo area.

We made our way up too, the V2 Hex Bugs were brilliant, as was the bloke making these cool balloons :

 

We certainly got plenty of ideas for our Christmas lists.

By this point we'd pretty much run out of time, especially with large chunks of the underground system  closed for maintenance so we headed back to Waterloo.

We got there a bit early so had time to get some supplies together for the trip home again.

We got back on the train and exchanged stories of our day with the couple sat adjacent to us and set off, through the darkness towards Eastleigh.

We were served sandwiches and scones, cream and jam pretty much as soon as we departed, lovley!

Once that was all done we also had a visit from Santa with a present for us.  

I got a cool donosaur that you had to build and electric circuit to make him move.

And I Got a build your own bubble machine, we were well chuffed with them!

Sadly though, just before we got as far as Basingstoke the train broke down.

Proper broke down too, so broke down that it couldn't be fixed.  There was a bit of a delay, I busied myself doing the Sudoku in mum's paper:

In fact it turned into quite a substantial delay as things were sorted out enough to allow a diesel to push us into Basingstoke station.

And if the culture shock of the underground wasn't enough this morning, getting onto a South West trains service to complete our journey certainly was.

It was full of drunk blokes who'd either been at the rugby or football in London.

Fortunatley we were pretty tired and slept through it.

So, not an ideal finish to the day, but hey ho, these things happen. I hope they get Tangmere sorted out nice and quick wothout Grandad to help them.

Sunday

A nice lay in session needed.

And then a trip over to Anne's for lunch, perfect!

Just the sort of day we needed.

Tuesday

I managed to claim the longest throw at netball this week. I'm not sure it will improve how I play the game at all but it is a cool accolade to have to my name.

I was well up for gymnastics this week, it was cool to see Sofia, we really enjoy each others company.  We have as much fun in the waiting room before we go in as we do in the gym itself.

Mum's friend at work, Sheila had knitted me a lovely cardy, in my current favourite colour, purple!

Wednesday

My parents evening.

So another week missing Team Kennet for me.....

I was confident it would go well this term and when Mum asked how I thought it would go I issued a double thumbs up without hesitation.  Turns out that I wasn't too wide of the mark either.  Mrs Jackson said i'm doing really well and have loads of enthusiasm.  Theres been no hint of any of last years more interesting  behaviour either.  She did say one thing I could inprove on was my listening though.

It was pretty cool going up to infants, hanging out in the library and building Lego.

Thursday

I've got enough stamps on my Go Kinetic card for ealking to school to entitle me to a free swim! Pretty good, shame it's only valid for Northcroft really.

Junior bake off is very much back on the telly.

We still love it.

We had a mercy dash to the retail park after tea, trying to find children in need merchandise for tomorrow.  

They'd sold our so we had to make do with looking at christmas stuff in Next instead.

Friday

So it was children in need day, hence we had to go to school in sporty clothes.  I had a spotty t-shirt so I was okay.  I decided I wasn't quite spotty enough though and added some more by adding stickers to my leggings.

I didn't have any spotty clobber, I have this problem every year, I had to improvise with a couple of hundred spooty sticky labels.  

After school my teacher called Dad over at collection time, this is normally a bad sign.....not this time though!  She told him that i'd made some really good choices, and she was most impressed with the fact that i'd owned up to losing some Golden Time, even though it wasn't noted on the chart.  I got it back again though.

I did infant link in  my golden time, we could only do it if we hadn't lost a single minute of our own Golden Time so it was a relief to be able to go thats for sure.  I loved it, we visited Luca's class.

After school there was a cake sale in the juniors.

Fortunatley Mum had tipped Dad off so he came with some money on him for once.

Swimming next, Eva was being really full on this week, she was hilarious.  I don't seem to be progressing very much at the moment really.

It's a great chance to get my maths homework done though.  One thing I don't have to do at home when I could be watching telly or something.

Saturday

We had a rather low key weekend on the cards.

We spent Saturday hanging about the house really.

We re-discovered Wii Party, it's so awesome, I cant't belueve we forgot about it.

We played it all afternoon pretty much.

Until it was time to go to the Infant School quiz night.

We took Auntie Christine, Auntie Trish, Laura and Andy along with us too.

It was pretty good fun actually, there were plenty of questions for us kids too and we were winning pretty much all the way through.

Until the last round where we dropped like a stone...oh dear, what a shame.

I really thougt we were going to win as well.

Sunday

Our annual trip to Windsor to scope out the toy department of Daniels to give us some ideas about what to ask Santa for.

We enjoyed the maze in the park on the way onto town and we also loved the new fountain:

It looked like someone had decided it would be fun to empty a couple of bottles of washng up liquid into it though.....it was very bubbly indeed!

On to Daniels then, It's still dead cool in there, the train still runs around the ceiling.

We stayed for lunch of course and then headed out into Some other shops to look at clothes and general christmas bits and bobs.

We had great fun riding up and down the lifts and escalators as Mum was in the fitting room trying on clothes.....

On the way home we realised Mum had in fact lost her phone...oops.  A quick phone call to the clothes shop later we found out that it had been handed in.

Monday

After school dance club was ace today, we danced to a pirate song and were allowed to throw in some of our own moves.  I managed to nail a pretty Much perfect cartwheel which drew gasps of appreciation from the watching parents.

While she was doing this I came home from school, switched the telly on and then switched it steaight off again to concentrate on my homework, all about Tudor musical instruments this week.

Once dancing was over we went straight to get Mum so we could go back to Windsor to get the phone back.

It was pretty cool actually, it was a lot less busy and dark enough to appreciate the christmas lights as well:

We got to the shop and just to make sure it was Mums phone before the man handed it over he asked. What was on her home screen....she pointed at us two and Dad...he thought that was very funny indeed and handed it over straight away.

We had to have a McDonalds for tea, what a shame!