Tuesday
We had our school panto trip to the Anvil in Basingstoke, so this meant a dead exciting coach trip! We got to eat our packed lunches at the theatre befrore we went in to see the show as well.
The show itself was dead exciting, Aladdin, with a burst of real fire every time the Ghini appeared, I was well impressed.

Wednesday
We had our school Christmas dinner, me and my mates sat with Miss Burger, a teaching assistant from one of the year six classes, she was great fun and really interesting.  We discussed at great lengths what would and would not be acceptable dining behaviour if we were guests of the queen!  I lapped all this up.
We had our School Christmas Disco, quite honestly it was a bit of a let down as none of the boys would dance with us girls.  Apparently this is quite normal?  Bit rubbish if you ask me, we need more lads like Ned in out year obviously.
After school we hassled Dad to help us make our food for the class parties the following day amd set up a sandwich production line:

 
Then it was the last Team Kennet session of the year, which can only mean one thing, sweet races!
And a dubious fancy dress theme, this year, Scottish Christmas:

I managed a decent haul in my bag by the end of the night, and overflowing with Christmas spirit I even let Ellis have one.

Thursday
Class party day, yay!
Indeed, our sandwiches went down very well.
We had a bit of a disco competition at ours, I won best dancer award and was proper chuffed.
We played Musical statues and I loved that at ours.
Then it was after school dance club, with our special Christmas themed dance which was very well recieved by the watching parents and siblings.

Friday
The last day of term at long last!
We had our end of term assembly, when I saw Mum was there I knew I was in line for one of our special awards.  I was so pleased to see her there as i'd felt a bit iffy and delicate first thing at home.  Anyway, my award was for Science, for generally being a clever clogs in the subject.  I had to go stage to collect my certificate and take a bow. After that the teachers sang the 12 days of Christmas, they managed to re-write a line about the amount of lost property and hrew a massive bundle of uncliamed jumpers and what have you into us kids all sat on the floor.

Other than that it was the usual slack morning and then early finish.

But this year, Mum came to pick us up, we were so excited about that, not that we don't like Dad or anything.....
So we got home and started up the 'build it yourself' bubble machine that I got on our steam train trip, it was brilliant:

Then we had a Wii session, we're really loving the Wii at the moment.
It's brilliant now Ellis is a bit older and can actually be bothered to play properly.
Once Dad was home and we'd finished our game we were off to Cornwall for the weekend.
Indeed we were, we both filled the couple of hours in the car by writing stories.
Yeah, thats right, even me!
We read them out when we stopped at Exeter services to stop for a bite to eat.
Yeah, i've discovered Costa's Cheese and Ham toasted sandwiches.....deeeeeelish!
We got to Cornwall quite early really, although it was dark and totally lashing it down with rain.
As the caravan park is closed for the winter we had to seek alternative accomodation at the Trevose Golf Club.  Mum and I were sent off through the foul weather to sort the keys out while Dad and Ellis sat snug in the car.
We were staying in one of the telly tubby houses, but we were initially sad that ours wasn't one of the grass roofed ones at the front.
This soon gave way once we were inside though, it was lovely.
So after a rampant room exploring and bed choosing session we were tucked up in bed.
We decided to go in together rather than have a room each.

Saturday
Well the rain had stopped and the sun was out, of course it was, this is Cornwall after all.
And once we'd sorted out our advent calendars which ahd made the trip down with us:

It was time for a proper game of hide and seek.
There were so many places to hide it was brilliant, there were utility rooms, cupboards, wardrobes and all sorts of nooks and crannies.
It was a whole family event, although Dad in particular had a bit of trouble using some of the hiding places that we were.
We then had a voluntary shower all of our own accord.
Ned even washed my hair for me!
We had a brief slump with the telly:

Before we were out for a walk.  We got to explore the place a bit outside now it was dry and light.
The views out over the golf course to the sea beyond were lovely.
And the houses were very interesting, I loved walking over the grassy roofed ones on the way out.

We made our way down the narrow trail thorugh the dunes to Constantine:

It was lovely down there, barely anyone about, not like summer thats for sure.
We loved walking along the sand, we found a witches finger (seaweed stump) and rather randomly a lemon (an actual whole lemon).
I found a rather snazzy pair of sunglasses that I decided made me look like a rock star:

 

And of course, we had to get our wellies full of water by going in too deep:

We made our way around to Treyarnon, which by comparison was a lot busier, but still very quiet.
The sea foam getting blown up was really cool, we almost convinced ourselves it was Christmas snow!

We headed back via the campsite, which was totally deserted. 
Yeah, it was really weird being so quiet and empty.
We made our way back for lunch  and then all settled down to watch our Arthur Christmas DVD.
Which we loved.
We then had a couple of games of sleeping queens before heading into Padstow to see the Christmas lights.
The biggest and possibly most impressive of which weren't actually switched on while we were there.
We didn't mind, we wandered about a bit and noticed that every pub in town was full of people dressed up as Santa's Elves.

We headed back and enjoyed a full on christmas dinner with all the trimmings, santa plates and seasonal candle holder and best of all, crackers:

The fortune telling fish was a big hit of course.

But even better than that was the mystery number calculator cards....mind blowing!  I loved them so much and made sure I kept them safe to take to school in the new year.

We rounded the day out watching the Strictly Come Dancing final.......

Sunday

Our last day, it had come too soon and none of us wanted to go home.

Nope, we had a leisurly breakfast and enjoyed laughing at the golfers struggling on the approach to the 18th green....some of them were not having a good time by the looks of it!

We packed up our things and made our way back to the club house to return our key.

We made sure we told the ladies on reception how nice the house had been and all what we had been doing and wished them a Merry Christmas.

We made our way to Anne's Cottage Surf Shop to see what we could get ourselves.

Yeah, I was forced into trying jeans on.....but I got into it in the end.

As we were leaving the chaninging rooms we saw two of the instructors from my Gymnastics club!

They were pretty surprised to see me it has to be said, we had a nice chat.

Lunchtime was calling so we finally all agreed on going to the Pickwick Inn, in keeping with the usual sequence of events it was of course raining and miserable when we got there.  It's always the same, even in the summer.

It was lovely in there, all decorated for Christmas with warm fires burning.  But where we usually sit in the family room had a great big christmas tree there!

We had a nice feed and then could have quite happily dozed off.

But we had to go.....

As we made our way back to the car a Christmas miracle took place, it was bright and sunny, we got to finally see the view out over the Camel Estuary and Padstow for once.

Indeed we did.

Monday

Mum was off with us, we had a lazy morning, just hanging about and playing Wii.

When Dad got home I decided to do a cart wheel into the Christmas tree....this didn't go down too well.  A quick blast with the hoover sorted it out through.

It was cinema time!  

We battled through the wind and rain to see Frozen.

We pulled up all the arm rests in the cinema and managed to all cuddle up together, how lovely.

The film was fantastic, I loved it, I hid my head in Dad during the scary bits and sobbed with Mum at the sad and happy bits.

And I forgot all about the packet of Minstrels until about ten minutes from the end of the film.

We walked up through town to get some McDonalds and happened to bump into Auntie Christine.

It was like proper Christmas once we'd seen her and dragged her along for a bit!

Mum and her diappeared pretty sharpish to their Christmas Quiz though, and we had to keep Dad company.

So here we are, the day before Christmas eve.

I'm in two minds about it all.  I am of course looking forward to the big day, but I also don't want it to get here in other ways.  I love the build up, the preparations, the anticipation, seeing all our family and friends so much that I don't want it to be over......

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......