6th April Thursday

Bit of last minute birthday item shopping for Mum's birthday tomorrow.  I found these candles hilarious:

7th April Friday

Mum's birthday and the last day of term, how exciting.

So another load of presents for Mum, despite mothers day being only half an hour ago.

Ned made her an awesome cake:

But we didn't go out or anything as we were off to Cornwall in the morning!

8th April Saturday

Cornwall bound for our first trip of the year.  We set off at a decent time, just after 9 and expected to arrive at the beach just in time for a late lunch......we were wrong.  The traffic had other ideas, with the M5 being closed at Exeter and a big football match going on at a stadium there, things ground to a halt.

We decided we'd grab some lunch and see if it eased any:

We eat in all the best places.

Sadly the traffic hadn't got any better, so we had a rather fraught rest of journey, Dad taking it particularly badly.  We got to the caravan just after 6pm......a long day.  We did have the distraction of the Grand National to listen to on the radio.  We had put some bets on while using KFC wifi.  Ned's fell at the first fence, Mum's put in a reasonable account of itself and mine was almost winning the entire race.....but couldn't quite finish the job off.

We were in time to sit down and watch the last in the series of Ant and Dec Saturday night Takeaway though.  The weather was fantastic though and we were treated to a typically fantastic Cornwall sunset.

9th April Sunday

It was pretty cloudy today so we decided we'd go to the Anne's Cottage outlet for a bit of shopping.

It's always Ned's annual splurge but I got in on the act too this time.

The weather improved by the evening.

Then what better way to round the day off then a barbecue (which I lit and loved tending to)

We sat up on our sea view balcony as the sun went down, albeit in coats:

10th April Monday

We a beach day, we played cricket, paddles, walked, explored, the surf was good and the sun was out:

11th April Tuesday

The tide times were conducive to some rock pool plundering over at Constantine Bay:

We amassed a mighty haul, these are only a few of the crabs we caught, we had to keep putting them back because Mum didn't like them attacking each other in overcrowded buckets:

So our top tip for a massive haul.....bacon, fresh bacon as well, not gone off left over bacon. Constantine Bay obviously has a crab community with very high standards. Ned's such a Bear Grylls he'll pick them up with his own bare hands:

We put them all back for someone else to come and catch again later.

The tide was really low so we clambered down onto the hidden beach and went for a lovely walk.  We were the only people down there and made the only footprints in the pristine sand.

We were able to walk all the way down to the water and around the reef and back up on to the main beach sand:

After lunch we went to Polzeath, time for an expensive ice cream:

We had a nice walk down to the sea, it was a pretty long way but once I got there I did a few soggy cartwheels:

12th April Wednesday

The day before Ned's birthday, Dad decided to be very brave and bake him a cake.  Brave on two counts, one, the unknown performance of a caravan oven (although Andy's mum certainly never struggles with her beautiful cakes) and secondly baking for Ned is a bit like taking Ronaldo on for a kick about.

It was a other lovely sunny day, it's nicer at Easter than it is in the so called summer holidays i'm sure of it.

Ned had been mulling over a longboard skateboard all week and he finally came to a decision today about buying one.  We'd seen hundreds over the week so at least he finally made his mind up.  Back to the Anne's Cottage outlet store it was then.....he picked the one he wanted that had a couple of small marks on the bottom of it.....and used this to get himself an extra discount from an already discounted skateboard.  He drives a hard bargain.

We ended the day with some more smores, we didn't even have to have the barbecue first this time:

13th April Thursday

Ned's thirteenth birthday!

A teenager, well he's been grumpy and annoying enough for ages anyway so we might as well make it official.

We started the day with pancakes, real ones, the thin, traditional variety with lemon and sugar at the request of the birthday boy himself.

He decided not to have his presents and cards straight away but keep it until after his chosen activity for the day, Karting!

We didn't go last year so we hadn't been for a while and excitement levels were high.

We were soon kitted up and out on the track, we loved it.  I had a good tussle with Ned and Dad out on track but none of us could catch Mum:

We went back to the caravan and Ned opened his cards and presents:

That hat he's wearing was actually my birthday card for him, it was well cool.

Before we headed off for lunch, pizza with a sea view, very nice too!

We sat in the dunes and had an ice cream for pudding:

Here he is, birthday boy with ice cream and longboard in hand:

We had a go with his new frisbee, which was great but the wind had got up a bit which made it a bit more difficult than it might have been.  

Next up was his birthday cake, decorated by my good self:

It wasn't a bad effort it must be said:

Although the filling was difficult to please everyone.  I didn't want jam, Ned didn't want butter cream!

It was a lovely sunny evening and approaching high tide, what better than to dig myself a personal tub for one fed by seawater:

Ned went out surfing, he's proper keen:

I think he should remember he's only 13??

Happy Birthday Ned, you annoying git.

14th April Friday

After a week of full on surf, the sea was finally flat enough to have a cack at Dads kayak.  Well Dad and I did anyway:

In all honesty it was a bit choppy but we had a good go at it and got on very well! We're looking forward to some summer flat spells with it.

We had a low tide wander about:

We undertook some pretty extensive sand excavation duties and managed to create a dam almost half way across the beach and diverted a torrent of water. 

15th April Saturday

It was our last day so we packed up and headed out to Padstow.  We were going to play crazy golf, but its been flattened and is now a building site for a cafe.  We took a walk instead along to the beach:

We had never been along his way before, it was really nice and there were loads of cute dogs out for a walk.

The beach itself was lovely and the further we walked the more we got it to ourselves.  

We made our way back to town for some lunch and then headed off home. At least the drive home didn't take as long as the trip down.

Just as well, Ned got to unwrap his main birthday present when we got in...a new mountainbike!

16th April Sunday

Easter Sunday, time to search the house for hden chocolates! 

It was nice to be at home for it for once:

We rode to Alan and Hayley's and Nate's for lunch which was all very nice.  It was nice to get out on the bikes and it was nice to see them.  Still no sign of Nate's little brother though...

26th March Sunday

Mothers day today, we like to make a small fuss of her, get her a sprinkling of gifts and take her to the seaside or something.  Lepe today, and it was a lovely sunny day for it

We had a lovely long walk up the beach and had to rescue Ned's football from the sea with a borrowed fishing net.....

The only downer of the whole day was the cafe being shut by the time we got back, thus denying us of an ice cream!

28th march Tuesday

One of mum's mothers day presents, the 1000 piece jigsaw got underway:

31st March Friday

Neds birthday present got delivered today...a boxed bike.  Mum totally nailed hiding it, in the garage, pretty much in full view but beautifully concealed.

1st April Saturday

A sleepover at Sasha's today, mum did my hair before I went:

2nd April

Sasha's birthday party at KD today, mum came along as a helper too which was nice.  It was great fun.

And after a brief interruption, we're back!  Please bear with me while I try to get the gaps filled and get up to date.  Here comes the first instalment, going way back to early March: 


7th Tuesday

Gymnastics is ace at the moment, we're concentrating on the bars, my favourite apparatus!

Having said that, it's pretty hard physically and I notice it the next day thats for sure.

11th Saturday

Ned is well and truly into the school football season, he's playing Saturday mornings and everything.  At least I didnt have to go and watch and could slouch about the house instead. Much better.

We went round to see Abi and Faye in the evening, and their super cute hamster that I'm getting increasingly brave with.

12th Sunday

A day  trip shopping in Reading, we hadn't been here for ages and soon realise why...it was a bit of a dump it must be said.  I did however find myself a nice new rucksack (Hype, pink camo).

14th Tuesday

Nates birthday, he's 2 already.....can you believe it?

15th Wednesday

Parents evening for me, and another very positive outcome.  I'm doing very well still by all accounts, but I have managed to retain my urrrrmmmm, 'character' ha ha.

17th Friday

In recognition of my school efforts, we all enjoyed the benefits of a trip to Pizza hut.  Lovely, it's becoming a far rarer treat these days it has to be said.

18th Saturday

Nates birthday party today, Ned made an fantastic looking cake that I decorated using some precision cut stencils and a healthy portion of icing sugar. 

 We had a lovely time at his party for the afternoon and really enjoyed playing with him.

19th Sunday

First theme park trip of the year to Paultons Park.
There was a whole new Dinosaur themed area this time, it was brilliant and I really loved it:

The live Dinosaur was particularly engaging:

As was usual with our only season cold day trips to Paultons, the queues were minimal so we got on a lot of rides, a lot of times!

Even though were getting all grown up and big, we still pretty much loved the Peppa Pig bit, especially George's dinosaur ride which is always a favourite.

We even got on quite well, in short bursts anyway:

Well, there hasn't been much action here for a few weeks has there?  Sorry about that, lets see if we can get things up to date with a bit of an edited highlights type of update, i'll try to keep things as brief as possible......

26th January Thursday

Lilly came round after school, we played, we laughed, we had tea and best of all, her doggie bailey cam round with her mum to collect her.....Bailey is sooo cute.

27th Friday

It was our class assembly today, Mum came along, brilliant.  We were so up for it and I performed my many duties very well by all accounts.  The planet rap went down a storm.
After school football was a very cold affair.
In the evening we settled down to watch Alvin and the Chipmunks Roadchip.  Dad was on popcorn duty, but he let himself down a bit this time...it was burnt.....he blamed the hob.

28th Saturday

I went round Sasha's for the day, great fun and good to indulge in our favourite things, hair, make up, fashion designing and working out details of our play which is still in production.
In the evening we were Nate sitting, i'd been buzzing with excitement for ages about this one.  He only cried for a little bit when Alan and Hayley left and we soon got stuck in to the Duplo with him:

29th Sunday

Last Sportshall match of the season.

I had a stinking headcold, so didn't do quite as well as I normally would do.  Still, we did our best and enjoyed the competition, I put in a very strong performance in my running events though, which is something of a rarity.  We didn't finish particularly high up in the overall though....

1st February Wednesday
We are now a two car family, due to Dad's impending workplace move.  It's all very exciting:

2nd Thursday
Ned has got to choose his option subjects for his GCSE's very soon so Andy looked after me while everyone else went up the school for a load of boring talking and wandering about.  We had a much better time with the Lego.  When the others got back there was a brilliant wildlife programme on where monkeys were climbing up a tower and jumping off into small ornamental ponds...it was brilliant, they were proper daredevils.

3rd Friday
School Disco night, bit of a style change for me this time.  Out go my usual (some would say over the top) dress/shoes/makeup combo and in with dark ripped jeans and a hoodie. 

4th Saturday
We have a new favourite outsourced meal....KFC!  We both love popcorn chicken, it's nice to finally not argue about this one small thing at least.  So we enjoyed this very feast in a retail park in Swindon before visiting the Swindon Museum of computing...oh the glamour!
Although the museum was in a pretty tired looking arcade of shops it was actually really brilliant.  There were loads of vintage computers from when Mum and Dad were our age, Commodore 64's, Spectrums and BBC Micro's.  They even still worked....although loading games from something called a cassette was a right pain in the neck.  The more modern Atari ST had something called a floppy disk drive which was a marginal improvement:

There was another room full of consoles that to could play on, everything from Atari's through Nintendo and Mega drive and the original Xbox.  I loved Q-Bert on the Atari and played it for ages.

It has to be said though that my very most favourite thing was the mechanical typewriter:

It was just brilliant the way the pressed keys invoked the hammer to strike the ink ribbon, I loved the mechanism of it.  There was also a load of mechanical adding machines that were fascinating.  After we left I declared the place awesome.

We dropped in on the Outlet Village on the way home, it was pretty rubbish until we found the Lindor shop.....with a pick and mix section....ohhh lovely,. Outlet village Lindor shop

5th Sunday
I went Jess' party in the morning, it was at Claires accessories in Basingstoke, how cool was that!  It was great fun, and I came back with a lovely purple/blue accent to my hair and some earrings for pierced ears....even though I don't have any piercings....yet!
A drastic change of activity in the afternoon when I changed the rear light cluster on the car pretty much singlehandedly:

It had had a small hole in the old one for months so it was well overdue a repair, even though our temporary repair had held up well.

7th Tuesday
I made a subtle alteration to Mum's sandwiches, daubing I 'heart' U in butter:

10th Friday
It was the last day of term today, how excellent is that?

11th Saturday
First day of the holidays and we marked it with a total slouch day, neither Ned nor I got dressed all day!

12th Sunday
After a couple of false starts due to swimming Gala's taking place we finally made it to Guildford swimming pool....diving boards!
We too Andy along for the ride and he was dead keen to get stuck in, he did very well too!
So did I, when I finally jumped from the 5 metre platform.  Quite the milestone for me, I was very pleased with myself indeed.

13th Monday
Day off today with Mum and Darcey.  We played with my toys and because it was a nice day, went to Victoria Park for a play:

14th Tuesday
A day with Auntie Christine and Darcey, we went to 4 Kingdoms.  It was so awesome, we saw a sheep give birth to a lamb, it was so cute!

15th Wednesday
We went out for the day with Laura, Darcey, Jack Bailey from school, his younger bother and even Ned came along.  We went to Rock Up climbing centre and it was brilliant fun!

16th Thursday
The action kept on coming with a day trip with Anne and Mike to London Zoo.  We might have squabbled a little bit, maybe.....

17th Friday
A day off with Mum, we had a nice morning getting a few bits together and painting our nails.  I painted Mum's pink, proper pink.  It was most out of character for her.
The very most exciting thing though had to be out Butlins trip.  Id been excited to bursting point for weeks about this one.  When Alan and Hayley booked themselves in with Nate I went several notches higher on the excitement scale as you can imagine!  Later in the week Finlay and Millie also declared themselves on board and booked a room too, we were all going to be in the same hotel, how cool is that?
We took the small car just for the fun of it and because we didn't have much luggage (despite my best efforts during packing).  It was really nice and cosy in the back actually.  We were soon there and checked into the hotel, this year we were greeted by a towel crab: 

We dumped our bags off and got out to find the others who had been there since lunchtime and already  enjoyed the Mr Men show.....while we were stuck on the M3.
We hit the arcade obviously:

Before making our way back to the hotel, via the small donkeys out the back:

Oh, and a quick pit stop in the games room at the hotel of course:

There was time for a game of Celestia up in Alan and Hayley's room (Dad won AGAIN!), before we tucked ourselves into our bunk beds and both put our TV's on channel 4 to watch the last leg.  A bit adult in subject manner maybe, but we both found it hilarious so we were allowed to keep it on.

18th Saturday

Oh how Alan laughed when Mum said we were getting a balcony room, but it was well worth it as you can see here:

Breakfast in the morning sunshine, how lovely.
We were all a bit out of sync with the others to begin with, they had gone swimming early doors, so we took in a quick round of mini golf:

It was really good fun, gone are the days when it ends in a massive row (hopefully).  It was also a bit of a landmark event as Ned took the outright win.

Next up, a brief stint on the funfair:

We bumped into the others and because I was small enough I got to go with Nate on the little kids rides:

I loved it.

In the afternoon Ned did football and I just hung out, doing my own thing for a while which was pretty cool.
We all met up for an evening meal, all us kids sat on our own table which was fun.  Poor old Millie fell asleep before her dinner arrived:

We ventured into the arcade of course, I dropped a massive jackpot on one of the ticket machines and won hundreds of tickets!  I was soooooo pleased.

19th Sunday

Well it had all gone far too quickly and today was our last day.  We started things of with a full group trip to the pool.  It was great fun splashing about with everyone and us older ones (Including Alan and Chrissy) finished off with a go on the space bowl. 
Next up, Pizza Buffet....went a bit overboard on this one...but it was lovely.
And then straight after that it was off to the Sam and Mark show:

We got really good seats, all together and after a bit of seat swapping we all got a good view of the proceedings.  The show was great fun and it was really cool to see them doing stuff from their Friday CBBC show.
Once that was done and dusted it was time to move on to the arcade.....there were a few more tickets to be won and then it was time to cash in!  I had amassed over 800....and I was thrilled.  I was however less than thrilled when I lost my ticket receipt almost immediately.  But I'd really rather not talk about it.  Ned showed his true colours as a mostly brilliant big brother by letting me spend some of his....one of those felt colouring pictures of some cute doggies and a sprinkling of Maoam sweets certainly helped to ease the crushing blow.
We went back to the room for a bit, did some packing and watched some TV while we waited for the fair to open at 7....in the dark!
We headed straight for the bumper cars, and being pretty much the only ones there we had no trouble getting a car each:

The chap running them had no problem letting us stay on for at least 5 goes before anyone else joined the queue.  He even turned a blind eye to our reckless bumping amongst ourselves, it was brilliant.
We went on all the other stuff too, and managed to eek it out as long as we could before being forced, against our will to get in the car and come home, we had school tomorrow I suppose.

We were gutted that Alan, Hayley and Nate were staying until Monday though..... 

22nd Wednesday
I've sort of decided to give up Athletics club.  No one is very happy about it.....except me.  So I was told I'd have to go on Mum and Dad's walk that they usually do while we're there.  We went up to the little Sainsbury's and bought some sweets....I'm quite happy with that arrangement!

25th Saturday
With my long standing interest in Bugsy Malone (due to Mr Percy in year 4) Mum saw that there was a production of it happening at the Hexagon so thought we ought to go along.  We got pretty good seats right at the front of the balcony and got ready for the show.  It was entirely children playing the parts and I got quite into it all.  I'm not sure Mum and Dad were quite as impressed with it as Ned and I were though.

26th Sunday
I had Sasha round for the day.  We did loads of hair and make up, plenty of fashion designing and then got dad to make us a big bowl of fresh popcorn for us to eat while we watched a film...perfect!

28th Tuesday
Another peak excitement day on my calendar, pancake day. I love pancakes.  Hmmmm.....
I managed 30 flips at the pancake event at school but that was just a warm up for the main even at home where Dad had mixed up a bucketful of batter.
Mum was first to give up after just two pancakes, leaving me to fight the girls corner.  I was outclassed by Dad and ultimately Ned of course.  I did a decent job at flipping even if I had an unorthodox style with regards to swirling the batter around a hot pan....

1st March Wednesday
I won the player of the day award at after school Rugby club. I was thrilled with that, it couldn't have come at a better time either......

2nd Thursday
........as we had the schools tag rugby tournament...oops, no sorry, scratch that, tag rugby 'festival'
As in not competitive.  So non-competitive that there was a referee and a score keeper for each game....with a clipboard and everything.  Anyway, we were in a pool with five other schools, Welford and Wickham, St Josephs (featuring my old nursery mate Eva), Robert Sandilands...and some others I can't remember.  Anyway, we were magnificent, we won every game convincingly and I even scored a good try!  Mr. Toal seemed extremely pleased with us.

4th Saturday
We took a walk into town after lunch to get Sasha a birthday present, and stock up on a couple of new TY's for myself of course....
We got home in plenty of time for a Saturday Night Takeaway TV snuggle up....I love that show.

5th Sunday
Nate came round for Sunday lunch, complete with Alan and Hayley and of course the bump!
Nate loved my cardboard box house I'd made, but really didn't like our tiny rubber lizard that sticks to the window!!!

Right, that's about it for now, hopefully stay on top of updates now, until next time....