Tuesday

Ned's birthday celebrations stared a day early with a trip to Pizza Hut.  Sadly Anne had a horse riding fall and was in a lot of pain so she couldnt make it.  Nate did though, along with Alan and Hayley of course:

We really enjoyed it, Ned shared a cookie dough with Hayley and was well pleased as she didnt each of it as Mum usually does when they share one:

I loved taking Nate for a walk around the salad bar.  It was quite a late night in the end.

Wednesday

So today was Neds actual birthday, 12 years old!

He was up early for a present and a cuddle up with Mum and Dad in bed before Dad went to work.

He wasn't exactly thrilled that for the first time ever he had to go to school.  The Easter holidays have been really early this year which has rather ruined it for him.

I think he had a pretty good day at school all the same but couldn't wait to get home and get on with the main event, his presents!

He had some genuinely good stuff too, especially the Now 93 cd I want to borrow.

Dad and I sloped off to add the finishing touches to his birthday cake, well, I say cake but we decided against a cake this year.  His baking is so good it would be like making Mary Berry a birthday cake.  We stuck to what we know best, a chocolate brownie cut into 12 pieces floated on a mxture of whipped cream, ice cream, crushed oreo's, maltesers and chocolate sauce...

Once we'd made ourselves feel quite sick we thought a trip to the pub was an appropriate way to celebrate a 12 year olds birthday.  To be fair we wanted to have a kick about with Neds new champions league football but it rained so hard we had to take refuge indoors. We had a game of pool:

And a game of darts:

Thursday

Well we've been making the most of the start of the light evenings by going down the park after tea.  Mum and I played with the velcro ball catcher hand attachment thingys.  We loved it but Ned had to get us involved in his football.  Obviously we weren't up to his Premier League standards so that didn't end well.

Friday

Ned went off to one of his mates for a sleepover so we had a most pleasant evening.  We walked up to the Sainsbury's for some Tic Tacs while Dad's homemade lasagne bubbled away in the oven.  I thought id give it another go for tea and it was actually pretty nice.....

Saturday

We had a lazy one today.  Didn't get out of bed that early and then after lunch we went for a walk around The Chase.  Ned had come home from his sleep over but spent the entire day asleep on the sofa, no doubt sleeping off the affects of the £30 midnight feast binge.

The chase was very muddy indeed, 

I was safer taking the high ground:

It was a lovely walk:

We had to wake sleeping beauty up to go roller skating.

We picked Abi up and took her with is this week and met up with Kimi and Marney when we got there.  As usual I got put into a really hard race, in with Ned this time....at least he won.

Sunday

A day trip to London.  We left quite early and got parked up (for free on a Sunday which appealed to Ned).  We got on the underground and headed east.  Our destination was Westminster, so of course the pavements were rammed with tourists taking pictures of Big Ben, having said that it did look rather good in the morning sunshine.

We made our way over the bridge to the Sea Life centre aquarium, a freebie on our Merlin passes.

It was really good too, the glass floor over the sharks on the way in was epic but the highlight had to be the octopus talk and feeding.  It was so cool, we never knew an octopus was so playful and clever.

The rays were great fun as they always are:

And the shark tank really was impressive.

We had a picnic for lunch and debated our afternoon activities.

We settled on the Shrek Adventure, right next to the aquarium and again, covered by the Merlin passes.  It was a weird one for sure, a bit of a pantomime almost, with proper actors filling the roles.  We ended up as a group on an adventure with a story linked between lots of rooms and characters. The highlights were the 4d bus ride which was utterly superb, the maze of mirrors and the surprise in the dungeon.

There were plenty of photo oppurtunities once we'd saved the day and escaped:

And even photo with the main man himself:

We loved it, were absolutely captivated by it and thought it was really clever.

We caught the underground back to the car, I love the underground.  You could see from one end of the train all the way through the carriages to the other end.  The join between carriages was really cool in the way it moved and if you looked out if the window in the dark bits you could see big old sparks lighting up the underside of the trains:

We were home in plenty of time to watch Britains Got Talent on catchup.

Monday
Back to school then, only just in Ned's case as he left it very late ndeed to get up.

We had a check up at the dentist after school, so some proper good brushing required before we left.

Everything was in good order though so thats a relief.

We had a quick turnaround to get tea eaten and get Ned back to the Waterside centre in time for his kayaking course.  We just about made it and went down to Victoria Park for a bit before going back to the canal to see how he was getting on.  He did okay actually but it looked hard work going back upstream.  

The best bit was when he fell in to the canal trying to get out of his boat!

And in a very timely manner, here's the Cornwall video:

Cornwall Easter 16 from Part Time on Vimeo.

Tuesday

Mum off with us today as the holidays continue.  We didnt have the car though as it was in having its broken spring repaired.  We didn't get up to much.

Wednesday

Mum was off working from home, so we got to veg out in front of the telly without getting aany hassle at all.  

Auntie Christine took pity on us and took us to the cinema to see Zotopolis.  We loved it, it was brilliant.

Afterwards we went and did a little bit of shopping for Mum's birthday, Ned was a bit difficult to please as he didn't agree with many of our ideas......

Thursday

Mums birthday had arrived.  We gave her cards early on but had to wait until after work to give her the presents.

We spent the day at dragon club.  Tom was back so that was good.  We did loads of cool stuff, the best being making Oreo milkshakes in the blender with proper ice cream.

Once we were home we gave Mum her gifts, she loved them all of course.  Then we put the candles in her cake (not as many as she actually should have done):

The it was off to the Hatchet for a very good value meal...lovely stuff.

Friday

Another day at Dragon club, cool!

More milkshake making too.  Mum and Dad arrived far too early than we'd have liked to collect us so we sent them off down the town to kill some time.

Saturday

We had a trip out with the Halfords today, to Monkey world.  It poured it down as we arrived in the carpark which wasnt the best of starts to the day.

It soon stopped though and we had a great day put:

With plenty of laughs, and digestive biscuits:

The Lemurs were brilliant, once they actually showed up:

We had a few orher visitors going by referring to them as Llama's on purpose....lol

It wasn't the camping trip that we had hoped for (due to the weather) but it was a lot of fun!

We had a visit from Nate (and Hayley and Alan) in the evening to give mum her birthday stuff.  Nate was on great form, plenty of crawling around and his seemngly favourite trick of flopping down face first onto a pillow.

Sunday

It was a Nothing much day today, that suits us fine now and again.

Monday

Bit of an out of character excursion for us today, Chessington with Mum as we had an inset day, and fresh new Merlin passes.

We had a great day even though it did tip it down pretty much all day.  We went on plenty of rides, the highlight being me going othe Dragons Fury, one I thought was way too scary last time we went.  I loved it and would go on it again no problem.  It's a shame i'm stilljust a bit too short for Rameses Revenge....

Wednesday

It was our last indoor athletics Team Kennet session of the year, as such it was also the winter season presentation evening.  As usual I sat through a lot of awards being presented, clapping appreciatively.  This time was different though.  Cheryl stood up and told everyone that she had a special award this season, to a little lady who had very nervously asked if she could compete at the sportshall lwague matches despite being well under age for the youngest category.  She added that in the six years she had been overseeing the sportshall teams she hadn't had anyone more determined or tried as hard.  She was talking about me!

I won the 2016 Rising star award:

I was so pleased, I could barely contain myself and might have given into involuntary jumping up and down.  Even Ned was very congratulatory!

Thursday

Last day of term at school, standard stuff, watched half a film, did some colouring.....

It was my last climbing session in the evening, there was only two of us this week:

This meant we got to do loads of climbing.  It also meant that I got to hold loads of 'top rope falls' which is pretty cool in climbing terms.

I gained my NICASA level 1 foundation climber award:

Friday

It was good friday, so no work, no school, may as well go to Cornwall!

Trouble is it seemed a few people had the same idea.....the journey took a while....

Having said that, we made the best of it, with the radio one request weeken blaring, the windows down, spotting interesting rubbish on the central reservation and marvelling at a man at the wheel of his van drinking both a Costa coffee and a can of Red Bull at the same time!

We stopped off for lunch to break the trip up which was very decadent by our standards.

We finally arrived at a sun soaked Treyarnon Bay at about 4pm.  

We had booked a different caravan this time, down in the bottom field.  A new one, proper posh with three bedrooms and everything.  I loved it, I could have my own bedroom....Ned wasn't so keen on being alone though.

The view from the windows was amazing though, out to sea and right up the beach too.

We made the most of the evening and went for a walk with Andy who was down with his family and the lovely Connie:

It was a lovely sunset of course:

Saturday

We sent Dad off to collect our Tesco order and had a nice lie in.

The weather wasn't great so we watched my Paddington DVD.  We love that film, I think Andy enjoyed the end of it as he turned up for a visit .  In the afternoon we took a trip to Anne's cottage for a spend up.  Well, everyone else did, there was nothing for me though. Still, that makes a change!

It brightened up by the time we got back so it was out for a surf session.  Our first of the year, it was pretty chilly in the water it has to be said but it was lovely to be back in the waves after the winter.
Next up a nice evening stroll.  The wind was getting up a bit and there was loads of foam forming at the waters edge on the beach:

I always manage to do it, let the sea go over the top of my wellies:

Sunday

Apparently it was pretty stormy overnight?  Must have slept through that then.  
It was the most exciting day of Neds year, Easter Sunday.  He'd been up for hours by the time I surfaced apparently....... The hunt was on!

Caravans are great for this sort of thing, so many hiding places:

It was a plentiful haul it has to be said.

So that was breakfast sorted......

In a noteable first, Dad cooked a roast in the caravan:

And very nice it was too, even if he did cheat and sent us to Gary's shop for frozen yorkshire puddings.

We went out Walking with Connie again in the afternoon and spent sone time on the beach:

Monday

We took a voyage into the unknown today with a trip to Newquay.  We never go to Newquay even though Mum and Dad secretly love it there.

We spotted a fancy new Barnecutt Bakery on the way in and stopped to pick up some lunch provisions.  As we drove on into town Dad spotted a promising looking carpark at the back of a branch of Aldi of all places.  OIt had great views out to sea, by the harbour where the surfing waves really did look great:

Nice as this was, it soon became clear the real purpose of our trip was shopping again.

Once again everyone else got loads of stuff, and I couldn't find anything.....having said that we did have a good wander around and the rude stuff in the rock shop was really very funny!

We headed back to the caravan but had missed Andy leaving for home after his weekend break.

We had an evening board games session and watched some bloke ride a motorbike round and round on a wall for a bit on telly.

Tuesday

Basketball and skateboarding at St Merryn today:

I'm still struggling to get the basketball high enough to score, even with help:

Our trip was cut a little short by the onset of a rather fierce rain shower....we retreated back to base for lunch.

Once lunch was done and the rain stopped we ventured out down the beach, a surveying mission to find out the best places to set up camp in August when everyones down.  The beach had changed a lot and many of the pools we used to base ourselves around have gone, filled with smooth sand.  It's amazing how much it changes year on year but it keeps things frsh and interesting.
We mooched about in the caves:

We got wet wellies again, especially Ned who got a right soaking and fell into a rather agressive low rock formation whilst running from the surging tide.

By the end of the day it had brightened up beautifully and we were treated to yet another lovely cornish sunset:

We spent the last of the evening playing a rather spirited game of Dobble.....a flavour of which should be hinted at in the video down the page...

Wednesday

We got wetsuited up and hit the surf first thing, it was prety wild but great fun.
The sunshine continued so we hit the beach with the blanket and everything:

We dug, we played boules, we played frisbee and football.  Just like the summer but with less people around.

We did some downhill skateboarding back up on the campsite and emerged unscathed:

Then in the afternoon we took Mum to Polzeath.  Ther rock climbing was top notch:

The sea was miles out though:

We had a lovely ice cream to round off our trip and tried out new bodyboards for size at Annes Cottage.....well there's birthdays coming up and we've both grown!!

Thursday

We woke to another glorious sunny morning and headed off to Constantine Bay.  We wandered to the dunes, it's so cool round there, with the stream and the impossibly steep slope:

We hung about for ages digging and dam building:

Scrabbling in the sand:

We eventually wandered back and stopped to take in the view:

Dad had optimistically bought the barbecue and ordered some meat to cook on it too.  We thought a lunchtime session was the best idea as it was pretty cool in the evenings.  I helped him get it lit:

The others were only interested once there was food on the table:

It was lovely to sit out on the deck, views out to sea, sun on our faces.

The real highlight was of course the Smores.  We got through a big old bag of marsh mallows, well, Ned did....

We let that lot go down, basking in the sunshine before we suited up for a rockpooling session.

We caught absoloutley nothing but it was a lovely afternoon:

We loved playing in the sea:

Even if we might have looked like mobsters from the deep:

We went off to play cricket for a bit while Mum and Dad started packing up to go home.

We roped mum and dad into playing for a bit after tea:

Which turned out to be a bit of a mistake as dad fell over onto the gravel road chasing the ball.  He made a bit of a mess of his leg.....

Friday

So it was that time to pack up the car and go home.  Not happy about that at all, I love it so much in Cornwall.  We packed up the car, popped up to see Biddy and Dave and then left.  We paid a visit to the new waterpark that we want to go to in the summer to see the lay of the land:

We decided it looked great fun, even on a grey old cold morning.  We'll certainly be booking this up for next time with the gang.

We went back to St Merryn for a fish and Chip lunch.....but the chippy as shut until tea time.  So we had to make do with a Barnecutt binge.  Cheese and ham toasted pannini, what, a revelation!  It was delish!  We got home. Lot quicker than we got down there thats for sure.

Saturday

So back home and back in action for an Athletics competition for team Kennet. It was at Down Grange in Basingstoke, a very pleasant facilty.  We only put the entry in late so long jump was full but I did get a place for the vortex throw and the 150 metre run.  Despite still being 8, I am appatently in the under 11 category for this season meaning I'd right up against some tough competition.  

We signed in and then went for some throwing practice with my very competent coaching team of Ned (throwing expert), Mum (technical advisor) and Dad (Psychology).  The first event was the Vortex so I was straight into action on the beautifully prepared infield.  The officials were really helpfull and we had some practice goes to get a feel for it.

I hit my stride immediately recording a throw of 18:46, which woukd remain as my best effort.  Good enough for fifth place!  I was very pleased with that indeed.....  

Then we had a long wait before my running event, we had a kick about, ate picnic, basked in the sunshine a bit.

Running, not my strong point but I gave it a good go:

I finished in a not that distant last place in my heat which wasn't too bad I suppose.

But it was a great day out, Ned was pretty gutted he didn't enter I think....

Auntie Trish for babysitting in the evening, briliant, we love it when she comes round.

We had a lovely night watching the last in the series of Saturday Night Takeaway and a late visit from Auntie Christine to round things off.

Sunday
We were 't up particulary early but did manage toget to Legoland before lunch time.  We had to queue up to get our brandnew Merlin passes, yes we've gone up a notch for thisyear (thanks to Auntie Christines additional club card points).

It was business as usual at Legoland, we still love Atlantis:

And we went on the viking river rapids without Mum and Dad three times:

We got soaked obviously!

Monday

In to our second week of holidays and it was time for Dragon Club.

We loved it, we didn't want to be picked up when it was home time either....