Tuesday

Back to school after holiday.

My friend Aidan gave me a pretty cool minion made of loom bands.

And I got straight back in to trading my Match Attax cards, even managing to shift some of my water damaged ones from holiday.

It was back to our clubs as well, i'd certainly missed netball.

And I was raring to go at gymnastics.

But all this activity had left us rather tired which wasn't conducive to finishing off our homework.

Nope we both went into meltdown.

Yeah, tears, hissy fits the lot. 

Wednesday

I think Dad took pity on my homework plight and sorted me out a fantastic A3 graphic to form the basis of my five pillars of Islam, all I had to do was the writing on it (the hard bit).

Team Kennet was fun this week, I was in Abi's group.

And I was in the 'competition group' with my friends.

When we leftfirework night was in full swing, they were lighting up the sky all over the place on the drive home!

Thursday

Today was a big day for our household.  I bought home my first musical instrument to practice.....a viola:

Our poor ears are in for quite an assault I think.

Friday

Well, despite our trials and tribulations regarding this weeks homework, we both got picked by our class teachers to show it off in assembly.

Yeah, my science project teddy parachute....

....and my five pillars of Islam poster earned us both a heap of housepoints and the adoration of the whole assembly.

Well done Dad, this had to be a first.

After school we had a netball match against our sporting nemesis, Falkland.  We were really up for it and it. It has to be said we gave rhem a masterclass, as you can probably guess from the 12-1 scoreline.  We were super pleased.

While this was going on Dad got collared to help put up three big gazbo's and I helped Mt Jones build the bonfire, both for the school fireworks event later on.  It wss great fun, especially smashing up a chest of draws into more burnable chunks.

And after a few arguments and a few threats that we wouldn’t be going to the fireworks at all we managed to get to school.

The fire i'd helped build was roaring away and lively and warm to huddle around:

The fireworks themselves were brilliant, plenty of ooh's and ahh's to be had.

Running about with our mates was great, we even managed a game of football in the dark on the field!

Saturday

We were up pretty early so we could take Mum to London to see the poppies at the tower.

We drove most of the way and parked up by a green, there were squirrels all over the place, we loved them, but couldn't get very near to them.

We got on the tube and made our way accross London, it was quite a lot of stops but we didn't have to change lines.

We passed the time giving me silly pony tails and bunches.

We also blatted through all of Dad's emergency food and drink supplies that he had in his backpack which was very reckless.

By half past eight we were at the Tower, it was already pretty busy. But we got a good view:

Yeah, we did:

It really was an impressive sight, and quite amazing when each poppy represented a lost life.......

We carried on down to the river and overheard someone say that Tower Bridge was going to open soon.

None of us had seen it open before so we thougt we'd hang about.

The reason it was opening was for the Queens Barge, Gloriana to go through:

Sadly the queen wasn't on it, just a load of old people.

But they were very wavy so good on them.

We carried on walking along the river.

Everone else was going the other way towards the Poppies.

We ended up at a place called Borough Market.

It was like Disneyland for hungry people.  There were. Bakery stalls, curry stalls, burger stalls, cup cakes, pretty much anything you could think of.

We bought ourselves some truly massive cookies for later.

And then joined the queue for the most popular looking stall that was selling breakfast baugettes.  The smell was incredible from the sausages and the bacon. 

The chaps workng there were great fun too.

And the one serving was very impressed when I asked for a chorizo in mine, he doesn't realis he's talking to the chorizo king obviously.

It was lovely too.

We carried on along the Thames and stumbled across a full size relica of Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hinde ship which looked pretty cool.

We found a Paddington bear statue (we can't wait to see the new film):

Then we walked past the Globe theatre:

There were a troupe of Morris dancers going performing outside.

Weird!

Next up the Tate Modern.

We went in to have a little look around, i'm not really convinced by modern art it has to be said, most of it was rubbish.

I quite liked it actually, although some of it was a bit daft there were things that I really liked.

But what we all agreed on was that stuff featuring boobies or willies was hilarious.

A bit further along the river was the Sourhbank skateboarding area that Dad wanted to see. It's recently been saved from redevelopment as a load of coffee shops:

It looked pretty rubbish by todays standards, but apparently it was all there was back in the dark ages (the 1980's).

That was us pretty much done for the day, so we got back on the tube and headed back to car.

We were home and slumped on the sofa by half past three.

We had a recharge before heading off out again.

Yeah, to rollerskating at Northcroft.

We've been trying to fit this one in for ages, I was seriously excited and couldn't wait.

I was a bit more nervous, having never done any before:

It must be said, I did spend a fair amount of time on the floor.

I did a lot better of course, then our friends Lola and Tegan turned up:

They were really good at it, and so was their Dad!

They gave is both a few tips and we were soon zooming around with even more confidence.

The hockey sticks and balls certainly seemed to help as well.

We ended up joining in the games, a version of musical chairs....

....and even some races (the lolly prize was the clincher).

It was so nice to skate on the perfectly smooth, flat floor and I can't wait to have another go soon.

Sunday

After a decent lie in....

.....and an early morning evaluation of our bumps and bruises from rollerskating we were off to watch banger racing with the Halfords!

The first few races were a bit tame, but apparently it was juniors and hot rods which meant no crashing.  

The first banger race however was quite something.

Noisy, smelly and totally crazy.

We didn't know which part of the track to watch, there were seemingly too many cars to be sensible.

It was okay though, half of them seemed to be smashed up and stuck in the wall after the first lap.

We lapped it up:

We couldn't believe some of the cars could keep going with the levels of damage they were sustaining.

We came home, caught up on Strictly, had a bath and went to bed.

I fell asleep on the sofa and Dad almost did himself a mischief carrying me to bed.  He hasn't done that for a good few years.  Apparently my eyes opened and I was talking to him but I can't remember anything about it all.

Monday

After school dance was a lot of fun today, we got to put a short freestyle sction into our routines.  I decided the funky chicken was an appropriate move to throw down.  The rest of my friends agreed as we were all doing it!

Holiday Video! 
This was done pretty rapidly by ourstandards. We've had to buy a new waterproof video camera as the old one turned out to not be quite so waterproof anymore. 
It goes to show that you get what you pay for in general, the quality is pretty poor, especially the sound. But anyway, here we go, our holiday video edit:
 

Tuesday

I managed to aquire a single Match Attax card at school. By the end of the day, due to shrewd trades and swapsies I had 10! Dad reckons I could win the apprentice easily.

We ordered some last minute holiday essentials at the weekend which arrived today.

Yeah, flip flops, new hat:

I also got myself a cool new umbrella after I decided a Peppa Pig just wasn't becoming of a junior.  Hopefully I won't need it on holiday....

Wednesday

Holiday? Did someone say holiday? I was approaching fever pitch.

Team Kennet was cool, we got to stand up and acknowledge a round of applause for coming second at last weekends competition.

Thursday

I came home with the Egyptian headress I had made as part of our topic this term, I was really pleased with it:

It was of course the last day of term, but we still had rugby practice.  This soon dissolved though as the school team were also playing a football matchwe wanted to watch and shout encouragement.

Dad whisked us quickly into town for haircuts.

And then when Mum had finished work we had a quick blast around town to get me a new Halloween costume.

We had our last proper good feed before holiday....sausages!

And a massive, enormous, gigantic pile of mash!
Dad's birthday was going to be while we were away, we'd got him a present too big to take with us so we made the executive decision to let him have it early. 
We'd got him a diabolo, and quite amazingly he could do it, even a lame little jump trick too!

We then attempted an early night as we were going to have to leave very early indeed in the morning.....

Friday

It was certainly an early start.

In fact it was barely even Friday at all when we got out of bed, got dressed and headed over to Kimi and Marny's house to wait for Andy.

We headed for Gatwick airport, there wasn't much on the roads and we were soon there, despite Dad missing the junction on the motorway.

We dropped the car off and headed into the terminal, no annoying bus ride this time, bonus!

We got checked in easily enough, and had time for a McDonalds breakfast before we boarded the plane and took off at 5:35am.

It was still dark outside so we didn't see much out of the window.

But there was a heck of a lot of Minecraft going on, including other random kids on the plane who popped up in our worlds and then came down the cabin for a chat.

I had a rather nice kip, snuggled up with Dad.

We landed soon enough at Arrecife airport, Lanzarote, which was a shame really as the Ipad still had plenty of charge and there was still plenty of Minecraft left to play.

Ned spotted the car seats appear on the outsize baggage carousel and we got our other luggage quickly.

Next stop, pick up the hire car.  After the debacle of the shockingly uncool pope mobile last year, Dad and I had picked something a bit less lame this year.  The website offered an Astra 'Sportstourer' which sounded a lot better.

In reality we got this Cadillac thing, it was an automatic too!

Mum and Andy whinged about not having a pope mobile but Dad and I were happy with our choice, especially as it had a 'sport' button on the dashboard.

The drive to the villa was lovely, taking in the scenery, the sea and the sunshine.

Rather amazingly we went straight there and didn't get lost.

We were met at the villa in Playa Blanca by the manager bloke, Daniel. Lets not beat about the bush here, he was pretty crazy.

But did give us a thorough tour of the place and explained how everything worked which was nice.

But what we really wanted was for him to clear off so we could get in the pool!

We waved him off the premises when he had finished.

And then the mad scramble to get changed and get in was on!

And all this before midday!

My goodness the weather was hot it has to be said.

After we'd cooled down sufficiently it was time for one of the things I most look forward to on a foreign holiday....the supermarket trip!  I love seeing what we can get, the bread, the ice creams and best of all, as this was Spain, Chorizo!  The long day did catch up with me though...yawn!

Back at the villa we enjoyed a few games of air hockey and pool.

Before rounding things off with a dip in the hot tub, here I am living the dream:

Saturday
We needed a quiet one really after yesterdays long old day so we spent the vast majority of the day bobbing around in the pool, the hot tub, playing on the playground.
Pool, air hockey and.......MINECRAFT!
It was lovely to sit and eat outside on the terrace, it was pretty high up and you could see right out over the sea to Fuerteventura in the distance.
By late afternoon we felt like getting out a bit, so we headed in the direction of Marina Rubicon.
Andy went for a swim while we enjoyed a scramble over the rocks.
They really seem to go in for these rock pile sculptures things in the Canary Islands, I thought they were great:

In the marina itself there were loads of pretty big fish swimming about. so clearly visible, we thought they were brilliant.
We had a meal in a waterfront restaurant, all 9 of us around a big round table, it was great fun.
Topped off nicely when the waiter came to clear our tables, asking us if we wanted to go with him with a plateful of our leftovers....we wondered what on earth he was going on about.
But once we looked down into the water and saw a few thousand expectant, hungry looking fish we knew exactly what he was getting at!
They went mad for it, it was so cool, who knew fish liked pizza?

Sunday
Feeling fully recharged we decided a proper trip out was called for.
And with Andy getting twitchy we thought it best to take him to the beach at Papagayo.
It was in a nature reserve that you could only reach by driving along a pretty rough old unsurfaced road.  We made our way along it pretty cautiously, the locals however had other ideas and were overtaking left, right and Charlie! 
Eventually we arrived at the car park and made our way over the brow of the hill to be greeted with this:

It was pretty much perfect, warm, sunny, calm seas.
It got even better better, the sea wasn't even cold and best of all there were loads of fish to spot with our snorkel sets.
Especially on this side of the beach that no one else seemed that bothered about:

We even got Kimi and Marny in on the act, they loved it.
It really was epic!
We got creative in the sand of course, we made a big fish, a turtle and a roast chicken!
After lunch we took a drive up the mountains to a little village called Femes, it was lovely.
There were sleepy cats and lovely flowers, everything painted bright white.
But best of all was the view out over to Playa Blanca and the sea beyond:

Monday
Another trip out was called for, we were up and about early to visit Timanfaya National park.
It's an area that was completely covered in lave during a volcanic eruption back in the 1730's.
Driving there was certainly weird, the road dipped and climbed in a dead straigfht line through the weird, martian landscape for ages.
We arrived pretty much as it opened and made our way further up Timanfaya itself to the carpark at the top.  From there it was on to a coach for a tour around the area, it's the only way you can see it all.  Cars are not allowed and neither is walking to pretect the delicate landscape and vegetation that just about grows there.
The coach trip was like a roller coaster, up, down, round tight bends and through narrow gaps in the lava stacks.
Some of it was also perched pretty high up on the edge of a high mountain pass......exciting or what!
When we returned it was on to the proper good stuff.
Yeah, the visitor centre being on top of a still active volcano was pretty hot.  We didn't realise quite how hot until one of the park rangers handed us a handful of gravel from the floor.......it was shockingly warm, so warm in fact that I dropped it!
They also poured buckets of water into specail tubes that went into the ground....they heated up and BOOM!  A jet of steam flew high into the air:

They also pushed a bunch of old dried undergrowth into a 6 foot deep pit dug into the ground, after a few seconds.....WOOF!  It burst into flames from the heat of the ground alone:

As you can see, it was hot!
There was a restaurant up there too, but rather than use an oven they had what must be the worlds best barbecue pit to cook their chickens on:

The heat coming up from the ground was amazing, and the chicken looked lovely and juicy!

As we headed off we realised things had got seriously busy, there was queue a mile long for the coach trips.

That was nothing compared to the amount of people lined up in their hot cars waiting to be allowed into the park, there must have been hundreds.

I'm so glad we got our act together and went early.

We headed to a place called El Golfo for a lunch picnic stop.

Fortunatley it wasn't anything to do with golf itself.

Nah, it was a beach, with black sand that formed inside a partially sea eroded volcano. 

It also had a bright green lagoon at the back, rich in concentrated salt and algae apparently.

I wouldn't have wanted to swim in it, but it looked pretty cool:

We had a walk along the prom in the evening, looking for somewhere to eat.
I was delighted when we ended up in Burger King.
It did have a beautiful sea view in it's defence I suppose.
And the ice cream parlour we found on the wander back was lovely.
We sat on the sea wall, enjoying the last few rays of daylight.

Tuesday

Today was Dad's birthday, we gave him his cards and a small, easily transportable gift (socks) while he was still in bed and then let him cook us some bacon for breakfast.
It was waterpark day, and as it was only just down the road we got their nice and early!
It has to be said, it was one of the smaller ones we'd been to but it was still great fun.
The tipping bucket certainly had a decent capacity:

The ice creams were very acceptable:

And the lazy river was a good way to while away some time.

The main slides down the other end were good though, some with tubes to ride on, some with double tubes.
In total darkness with a screaming Mum, no thanks!
At several hundred miles an hour with Dad's additional bulk, yes please!
Watching Mum and Dad nearly kill themselves such was their speed of entry....LOLZ!
There was also one of those space bowl things which was rather cool too.

I had the most fun with Kimi and Marny on the smaller slides and climbing stuff though, we amused ourselves on that for ages!

Being Dad's birthday we thought we better take him out for tea:

It was a pretty cool place we ended up in, good music, nice sea view...

.....and a lovely little white doggie sat on a bar stool, we loved making a fuss of him.

The puddings were epic:

Yep, they certainly were:

We rounded out the evening by watching a man take his dog and his goat for a walk along the prom, yeah, I did actually say goat.
Collar, lead the lot!

Wednesday
Well the weather had turned marginally cooler and a little bit overcast so it was decided now would be a good time to tackle Montana Roja.
We'd been eyeing it up all week, watching the tine figures in the distance make their ascent.
It didn't take as long as we thought it would to make it to the top:

You could see the side on both sides of the peninsular from the top:

It was rather spectacular up there:

We could right over Play Blanca, as far as the Papagayo beaches one way and over to the Timanfaya lava fields the other:

As an old volcano, you could walk all the way aroud the rim:

But we cut down through the middle, through the crater where hundreds of people had spelt out there names using rocks.

I decided it was a good place for a bit of high altitude sprint training:

Although we set off in cooler, cloudier conditions, by the time we were back down it was another scorcher so the pool was certainly beckoning:

We decided that today would be a good day for Halloween to take place (we flew home on the real Halloween).

So we donned our outfits and got contained in a room while the sweets were hidden and the decorations were put out.
We were released into the villa and the grown ups had excelled themselves this year, there were sweets stashed everywhere you looked!

We had a great time:

And my idea of Donut Bobbing went doan a treat:

Mum certainly did very well managing to find some suitable ring donuts:

Thursday

Well it was our last full day.
Yep, what a shame.
We'd got rather used to it all.
After a bit of a breakfast meeting we discussed what everyone would most like to do.
The clear winner was a return trip to the beach at Papagayo.
It was as sunny as before but the sea was bit more wavey than last time.
So snorkelling wasn't quite as easy as it had been.
Although playing in the waves was just as good.

The sand was rather good for some sculpting work, here I am in mermaid mode:

We had a picnic on the beach before making our way back up to the ice cream hut at the top, perfect!
We had an afternoon around the pool before setting off for Dorada Beach for a banana boat ride.  I wasn't too sure about it all really, but as Dad had told me a while back, give it a try and if I don't like it, don't do it again!
I couldn't wait to have a go.
We put our names down and had to wait a while. Luckily some people were leaving the sunbeds they had paid for so said we might as well use them fo rthe rest of the day, lovely!
We had a swim, and noticed a pontoon floating about 100 metres offshore.  After a bit of discussion I decided I could swin to it, I really wanted to dive off it.  It was certainly the furthest i'd ever swum in open water but made it surprisingly easily.  Even Dad and Andy managed it.  I was the youngest one out there and was really proud of myself.  Sitting on it was so cool, there was a gap in the middle and you could see the fish swimming underneath and everything.  A couple of dives later and we made our way back to shore.
It still wasn't time to go out on the boat, me and Mum had a lovely time, laying on our sunbeds.
Eventually we got called over, got our bouyancy jackets on and then had to swim out to the banana boat which was moored about 10 metres out to sea.
It was great fun with our jackets on.
The man hooked up his jet ski and asked us to climb aboard, which was harder said than done for the grown ups.
Ned very kindly volunteered to sit at the front and I got Dad behind me for a reassuring cuddle:

We made our way slowly away from the beach:

And once we got into the open water he really opened it up.
It was FAST!!!!!
He was soon zig-zagging about so we jumped over his wake, water splashing everywhere and I loved it!
We went right over the Marina area, he put in a hard turn and the three people from another family that were sat on the back got pinged off into the sea.
How we managed to stay on is a mystery to me!
They re-mounted and we were off again.
The next time he took a sharp one we had no chance of staying on, we were over and in the sea too, it was brilliant.
We couldn't stop laughing as we bobbed about in the water and he circled round to pick us up again.
We did some more high speed turns and jumps before heading back towards the beach.
He slowed right down as we got closer to the shore, only to suddenly speed up and zoom off to the side up-ending the boat again.
And we were back in the sea to end our ride, it was so cool!
We headed back to the villa to enjoy the last of our pool time:

And enjoyed a bit of a jumping contest:

Before having a family hot tub session, complete with dad's ipod blaring some cool tunes out of Ned's speaker while everyone else was packing (good old Mum sneaked our packing in earlier):

Friday

So, it was going home day.  We had a visit from the still crazy Daniel and then set off for the airport.
Our flight was pretty much at midday, so we grabbed a quick bite to eat and then boarded the plane for the trip home.  I sat with Marny.
And I sat with Kimi, Minecraft o'clock!
And a spot the difference book for us girls, with a little Minecraft thrown in too.
The flight seemd to pass really quickly and we were soon landing, it felt cold and because the clocks had changed while we were away it got dark pretty early too.
The journey home took a while, what with it being friday night rush hour......

Saturday
Well, rather disappointingly Mum had to go to work!
How rubbish for her.
Well it was bright and sunny, even if it wasn't as warm as we'd been used to.
We decided a bike ride was in order so headed for Greenham Common.
We had a good old explore:

We gave a freindly doggie some loving, we looked at some very cute calves and enjoyed the aroma wafting from the premises of the English Provinder Company. 
As well as getting pretty wet and muddy in the process, very un-Lanzarote like!
Then went home for lunch and a quiet afternoon.
Until Hugo called for me and I went out for a bit.

Sunday

So Mum went to work AGAIN! 
Shocking.  Dad was on the ball though and had booked cinema tickets to see Planes 2.
We took the remnants of our Halloween sweets and made our way into town.
The film was most enjoyable it has to be said.
Then we went into town to see what was on offer at the food market.
Chorizo!  lovely, lovely Chorizo!

Oh yes it was delish.  We took two home for lunch with fresh baugette, perfect.
We slumped for the afternoon and ended up watching a film, Waterloo, about the battle which I loved.
Then it was homework time, mine had to be about forces.  So between Dad and I we came up with the idea of making a parachute for one of my little teddies.  Gravity, air resistance, perfect!  Supported by some words and a lovely diagram, spot on.
I had a load of stuff to do, even my maths was a chore this time....oh dear.
We ended up watching a third film of the day, which must be a record of some sort?
Yeah, the Simpsons Movie, it was really funny.

Monday
Dad went back to work today as well.
Yeah, so it was a day with Auntie Christine...
And Darcey! 
So after we'd had a massive cuddle session and got re-aquainted with each other after their recent holiday (they too had been to Lanzarote, the week before us) we went to.......you guessed it.......Four Kingdoms!
We had a great time then came home and made some cake and cookies which were of course delicious.