Tuesday
Building work has started at school for my new classroom, proper exciting stuff. Our room is a bit small this year ith as to be said so hopefully it'll be finished soon.
I didn't fancy gymnastics this week, i'm putting it down to end of term burn out.
It was also my parents evening. It went very well by all accounts. My teacher was most impressed with my manners and said that I was doing really well with my work and with a bit more effort I could be doing really, really well.
She also mentioned that I seemed really tired, again, i'll put it down to end of term burnout. That and post Ufton Court exhaustion.
Wednesday
Our morning tardiness came to a head today as once again we failed to be ready for school despite repeated requests from mum.
Hmmmm, it wasn't great it has to be said. I didn't help matters by fooling Ellis into thinking we had ages left to get ready either.
Anyway, Mum was furious with us. Not a great start to the day.
Thursday
Last day of term, yay!
Dad was allowed to visit us in class in the afternoon. We'd made crumble with the apples from the tree in our playground to sell to the parents for charity, Dad assured me it was delicious. I didn't fancy it. I loved showing him round and showing him my work books, even if he did find my drawing of a Tudor person with their clothing labelled hilarious. I might have accidentally mis-spelt the word 'tights' as 'tits'
It was a lovely day so we hung around the playground afterwards to play, William and Liam hung around too and we had a brilliant game of hide and seek.
Meanwhile we were doing our halloween traditional thriller dance. Thankfully Dad passed by and I persuaded him to go home to fetch my scary mask and cape before we put on our weekly show. We really enjoyed the zombie moves.
In another weird turn of events we actually went food shopping as a family after mum had finished work.
And once Dad had lightened up a bit, we really rather enjoyed it.
Not as good as the Tesco man delivering it while we watch telly though really.
Friday
First day of our half term break due to an 'inset day'
Mum was off with us, which was fortunate as I had been up most of the night throwing up. A day on the sofa and lots of snuggles sorted me out though.
I cleared off to Alastairs and we headed for the park and the sweet shop too (thanks for the money Mum ). Robert and Jake also appeared during the day too.
In the evening I helped Andy get past the level he was stuck on playing Candy Crush.....
Saturday
Mum said I needed a haircut, I disagreed. Dad suggested we ride down the town on our bikes and both get a trim.....I agreed instantly. It was great, I got to chain my bike up using my super cool snake lock and everything. We were home and trimmed in no time at all, much quicker than if we'd taken the car I think.
In the afternoon we went to the races.
We hadn't been for ages, Auntie Chridtine (or should I actually say Uncle Ian) had sorted us out with tickets to the posh members enclosure, brilliant, we could get right along side the finishing post.
Anyway, the real business was of course the betting. I did very well, a winner and an each way came in for me.
I also bagged a good win, as did Dad.
Mum sadly won nothing, nada, zilch. We loved reminding her of that.
We headed back to Auntie Christines park and ride facility afterwards, fortunately she had some cake that she had made that needed eating and Darcey was there too, lovely end to the day.
Sunday
We celebrated Dads birthday a day early, so this involved bestowing him with our fantastic home made cards early doors and then heading off to the cinema to watch the film Planes.
Which we all loved, even the grown ups, who declared it much better than they thought it would be.
We headed off to Pizza Hut for lunch afterwards, where we bumped into Kimi and Marny who were also up there for a decent feed before next week.....
We went home and sorted Dad's birthday cake out with several thousand candles that I jammed into it (a few of which I did upside down in haste)
We rounded the day off with a Just Dance session on the Wii.
Monday
Dad's real birthday, and also holiday time!
Yep, we were all packed and ready to head off to Fuerteventura with Andy, Kimi, Marny, Ben and Rach and for once it wasn't at silly o'clock meaning we actually had time for breakfast before we left for once.
We were flying from Gatwick, fortunatley the forecast devastating storm failed to really materialise so we were all systems go. It was really cool in the airport carpark as we got the bags out of the car, there was a plane buzzing over our heads every few seconds to land.
We even had time to have a civilised lunch at the pub at the airport.
We boarded our flight and were on our way. It was a reasonably long flight at just over 4 hours but with everyone for company and our Ipods it soon passed by.
We arrived and straight away noticed it was a good deal warmer than home.
The baggage arrived and we were off to find our hire car, the rather hideous looking Opel Combi. If I thought it looked bad on the internet when it was booked it looked even worse in the flesh when we finally tracked it down in the darkest recess of the car park.
We were soon on the road and making good progress towards our villa,it was difficult to really see what the island was like as it was dark by now.
In a very uncharacteristic bit of useful behaviour from Dad he actually managed to navigate the last few tricky kilometres to our villa.
It looked lovely, even though it was dark. Great pool, outdoor space and a lovely hammock to relax in:
We also managed to secure ourslves the master suite with luxurious king size bed:
Which also had a rather lovely jacuzzi bath too:
It had been a pretty long day so we needed our bed.....
Tuesday
We got to see everything in daylight for the first time, it was so different to anywhere else we'd been before thats for sure.
Everything was pretty brown, there was no green grass at all, it was pretty cool though, like being on the moon or something!
There were volcanic rocks all over the place, they even use it to make dry stone walls, being a fan of rocks in general I lapped it up.
I made sure I was first one in the pool (well, I can't believe Dad or Andy went in that late last night when we got here).
The pool was really lovely and we certainly made the most of it, they'd even left us an inflatible shark to play with:
We took a wander to the local bakery to pick up some lunch and then headed off to the beach at El Cotillo.
It has to be said it was pretty windy.
It was indeed, it made everyones lunch just a little bit gritty.
Never the less, the sun was out and it was lovely and warm, so in the sea we went, complete with masks and snorkels to see what we could see. Much more than in Cornwall was the answer. To the side of the lagoon where small rocks started to crop up there were loads and loads of fish. Darting among the rocks, and not dull little tiddlers either. They were brightly coloured and swimming in shoals, it was wonderful.
I stayed a bit closer to shore with Marny, we had an ace time.
On the way home we dipped into the local supermarket to pick up some supplies for the week. Seeing as we were in Spain that meant lemon Fanta and chorizo of course.
In the evening we enjoyed a lovely jacuzzi bath....the bubbles got pretty out of control it has to be said.
Wednesday
A pattern was starting to emerge for the holiday, we spent a lot of time just chilling out and splashing in the pool.
Fine by me!
But with my sense of adventure I was glad to take a trip out in the afternoon for a bit of an explore. We headed towards Corallejo which looked like fun with it's waterpark and plethora of tut shops.
We carried on down the east coast where the road took us along the coast and through sand dunes so big it looked like the desert.
I suggested we pull over and go for a walk, so we did!
It was pretty awesome, wandering around in the sand:
It was also brilliant for long jump practice:
We got back inthe car and headed up into the mountains. All extinct volcanoes, pretty cool.
We didn't really know where we were headed so just picked the most interesting looking roads.
Not sure thsts the best policy in a place like the Canary Islands though, the roads suddenly turn into rough dirt tracks.
Which made it all the more interesting if you ask me, the dirt tracks were super bumpy.
We eventually decided to make a u-turn on one particular track when things got so remote we woke the local sleeping donkeys:
We eventually re-joined semi civilisation and somehow ended up at the viewing platform for Mount Tindaya.
We could see for miles!
Thursday
Another lazy morning around the villa and pool.
Yeah, we could get quite used to this.
Another exploration mission for the afternoon though, directly north from our villa on another dirt track. I was pretty disappointed that it turned back into a proper road, although I needn't have been as it soon turned into another dirt track.
This one went on for miles and miles, all along the coast.
We passed loads of lagoons and coves and sand dunes as we rattled our way along with Dad swerving every now and again to miss a particularly deep hole or a football sized boulder. We saw kitesurfers, windsurfers and normal surfers dotted all along the coast, as well as a couple of quad bike/off road buggy tours passing by as we made our way along the road.
We popped out at Toston lighthouse in the end.
We went in and made our way up the tower, the views were pretty good:
There was also a small museum about fishing, it looked really hard work. Not sure I want to be a fisherman thats for sure.
We drove on and eventually ended up back at El Cotillo beach again. Seing as we had the swimmng and snorkelling gear in the car it would have been rude not to stop for a swim.
Once again there were plenty of fish by the rocks, the real highlight was this black and neon blue specimen, we'd never seen anything like it!
I stayed dry for once, did some digging and some sculpting in the lovely sand and examined the outcrops of volcanic rock.
Once we were out of the water we made use of the rock windbreaks people had built on the beach. As it was late afternoon, people were beginning to leave so I managed to 'trade us up' to superior versions a few times until we ended up in this beauty:
It was also Halloween!
We were so excited.
We had our costumes to don (which took up a sizeable portion of our luggage space) while the grown ups dotted the sweets they'd bought (which also took up a lot of luggage space I would imagine) around the villa and the grounds.
Then the hunt was on!
There were certainly some interesting places to hide the bounty around the place, it kept us busy for quite a while.
But once we had exhausted all the hiding places and our bags were bulging we headed off into the village for a meal, still in our costumes!
All the local kids were out trick or treating too, I shouted 'hola' at them, as I like to do but then got an enthusiastic answer in Spanish....which of course I couldn't understand a word of.
We had a lovely meal all together and the waiter pulled out all the stops for Halloween. First of all he primed us to really scare one of the ladies as we left, secondly he sorted us out a special 'bloodshot' drink after we'd finished our meal. It was a layered drink of different coloured fruit juices and it was delicious.
Well, I didn't really like it....
So I polished off Ellis' before necking Kimi and Marny's too.
Scaring the other lady that was working there paid off, we got to pick ourselves some sweets for a job well done:
Friday
Waterpark day!
So instead of our now usual sleepy lazy mornings we were up and at 'em.
We don't really have any pictures but there should be some video to see of it pretty soon.
It was great fun, and a lovely sunny day to be splashing about in the water.
There were loads of slides, starting at one side of the park getting progressively more scary as you moved along them. We started at the least scary end and worked our way along.....all of them!!!
Yep, me too, even the tallest drop slidesalthough I didn't like the one that was completely dark.
I did, it was awesome, I had loads of goes and asked the man at the top for an extra push as I left the top. On my last go, he span me round backwards in my ring and gave me a massive shove! I loved it.
The lazy river was spectacularly lazy, like so lazy it barely even moved at all. It was nice to take it easy for a bit though.
The wave pool was rather good, i did some cool body surfing with Andy which startled quite a lot of people who were having a nice paddle as we shot past them, half underwater.
The park itself was pretty cool, and not that busy so we got to spend some time sitting on our sunloungers (under the shade of an umbrella) recharging for another assault on the slides.
There was also a jumping platform into a really deep pool.
It was awesome, you could run along the platform and really jump for it. Dad reckons my running bombs were among the best he'd ever seen.
I fancied a go too, it was a long drop and a long swim for a little one like me. After one false start where I recoiled from the edge, I took heed of Ned's encouragement and went for it....twice!
She did really well, she was certainly the smallest person I saw make the leap.
You would have thought we'd had enough of the water by the time we got home, but no way, the pool beckoned for another session!
Had we mentioned 'Turdy' the turtle yet?
We had spotted him hanging outside a shop and knew we wanted him straight away.
We waited ages outside the shop while the man in the shop insisted he blew it up for us on his compressor, he reckoned we'd never have enough puff for it.
So we had to wedge him into the car fully inflated and drive back to the villa. Must have been a sight to see!
Anyway, with that, the dolphin and Andy's airbed we had a blast.
My favourite move of the week was the front flip onto the air bed. Amazingly Dad pulled off one perfect attempt at this (sadly he didn't manage to replicate this feat again).
Saturday
Back to our usual morning routine, lazy breakfast, swimming pool and a game or two of Sleeping Queens.
In the afternoon we visited a lovely looking surfing beach we spotted during our sand dune excursion.
I fell asleep in the car.
So I went surfing with Andy and Dad while Mum read her book. The surfing was pretty wild as it goes, but I gave it my best shot and caught a few cracking waves right up onto the beach. I also got a few total dunkings and a couple of 'washing machine' type hold downs. I decided i'd had enough and went back to the car.
I'd woken up by this point so we went for a walk along the lovely sunny beach with Mum.
It was lovely, sunny and warm and the wind had dropped too.
We wandered along, past all the surfers to the other end of the beach and had it all to ourselves.
Of course we did some sand art:
We made our way into Corallejo on the way back for the highlight of the week, tut shopping!
We do love a good tut shoping session, I bought some well cool crystals.
And I took an age to commit to anything, finally settling on a shot glass to remind me of our halloween night out and a mosaic goat to remind me of the goats we frequently saw wandering around the countryside.
In the evening we headed back to the cafe for tea. We saw some very cute chipmunks darting over the dry stone walls on the way!
And when we got back to the villa, Kimi and Marny had managed to get a cat to follow them back. He was a lovely cute little cat too.
I'm not too sure Mum and Dad agreed with you though Ellis, he miaowed outside their patio door all night.....
Sunday
Another up and out morning.
We were off Kayaking.....
But with a thundestorm apparently looming our guide Jorge had to cancel it.
What a shame, we were so looking forward to it as well.
So our last day was thrown into turmoil. It was a bit cloudy too....
We still had a pool session though, it still wasn't in any way cold.
We wandered down to the supermarket and bought an Oreo cheesecake packet mix. Mum was confident we could muddle through the Spanish instructions okay.
But sadly the bit saying we needed an electric whisk was lost in translation.......three adults taking it in turns with a fork just wasn't quite so good. Still, the end results were more than agreeable.
Monday
Going home day, up early, really early.
We had a ferry to catch, a Fred Olsen ferry to Lanzarote.
It was like a smaller version of the one we went to Jersey on. We got seats right at the front (there was hardly anyone else on it) and set sail.
It was brilliant, bouncing up and down on the waves. Although Ben didn't seem to think so.
The deck at the back was pretty smart too, as we could see Fuerteventura disappearing off into the distance:
Sadly it was a really short trip and we soon docked in Lanzarote.
We could already see the mini bus Andy had booked and we were soon sat in our seats and heading to the airport.
It didn't take long and we got to size up Lanzarote in view of maybe coming here on holiday some time.
After a brief situation with Mum and then Ben putting a family of scary haircuts trying to queue jump at check in their place (Ben thinks they'd just arrived on a flight from 1984) we were checked in on our Norwegian Air flight home.
Yeah, Norwegian Air, a new one for us, and very agreeable too.
Especially the free in flight Wifi.
We were soon back over England, which was pretty exciting, I was longing to see some lush green grass.
Even if it did look like a lot of it was under some big old puddles.
So that was that, another great week away, thanks as ever to everyone who came along, especially Andy who really made this one happen with his persistance in the booking stages.
Tuesday
Back to school, but we were strangely up for it actually.
Yeah, I was right back into it. We've been learning about the great fire of London and it's really captivated me. I know all the facts about it.
I spent my break time toast money on a poppy.
I was even dead keen on gymnastics this week.
And netball was back on, we were both well and truly back on it.
Wednesday
I was pretty impressed with the Indian Mars rocket on the morning news! How cool.
Have we mentioned our heating has packed up?
It's certainly a lot chillier than Fuerteventura thats for sure.
The repair man came, stayed really late but couldn't fix it.
Thursday
We danced to 'What's a fox say' at after school dance club. Becky took great pleasure in telling Dad that only I could have come up with a one legged fox/chicken dance for the freestyle section in the middle.
The heating man came back inthe evening, he still didn't fix it.....
And Mum worked really late so didn't even tuck us in.
Friday
I earned a marble at school, for my willingness to answer questions.
We played parachute games indoors with the sports leaders as it was wet for Golden Time. The washing machine game was brilliant, but not without a few injuries (bumped heads).
In the evening it was the school fireworks display.
Indeed it was, we'd been super excited about this one, especially with the prospect of a Mr Jones bonfire.
There were plenty of people there and the fire was alight by the time we got there.
We warmed ourselves up by the fire and had a hot chocolate while we waited for the fireworks to start.
It wasn't long, and they really were very good.
They were, I loved watching them. Once they were over and done with we moved back to the bonfire and sure enough Mr Jones moved the fence right in so we could get nice and close to the fire.
To soak up some much needed heat to take home.....
Saturday
Our annual trip to Marlborough for advent calendars.
Are we early this year? Who knows, the shop had them in stock so i'll say no I think.
We spent ages in the toy shop talking to the assistant about Hex Bugs!
We also went to get some small radiators to tide us over while we are without proper heating. We were ridiculously excited about them.
At least we had warm bedrooms, I think our excitement was justified.
Sunday
A family trip to the Chinese restaurant Sunday lunch buffet with the family?
Sounds good to us.
Even better though was a trip back to Auntie Christines afterwards for a few games and some cake, brilliant!
