Tuesday

Well it was the area Cross country championships up,at the showground.  We had a big coach for all of our very extensive team across years 3/4 and 5/6.  It was great fun and hugely exciting to leave school at lunch time and make our way over.  We had an impressive team area set up, massive tarpaulin for us all to sit on, nicely pegged down so it didnt flutter about in the wind too much and a couple of the gazebo's ready to be deployed in case of rain, we didn't need them.  There were a few patches of snow left dotted about but the course itself was clear, even if it was a bit soft and muddy in places.

We got to cheer on the year 3/4 girks and boys before our race was on.  Mum and thrn Dad arrived in time for a pre race pep talk and sneaky cuddle before we made our way to the pens to line up for the race.  I helped make sure we bagged a good inside line one and we all lined up with me at the front.

We were off and we made good progress filing in j st behind the really keen leading group.  The course went way out across the fields away from the sizeable crowd and the field got a lot more strung out the further we went.  The John Rankin representatives stayed largely together near the front of the main pack as we went past the crowds towards the end of the 3km's.

We were a lot more strung out by now:

I was delighted to finish 90th out of over 300 competitors, third quarter ne home for our school:

We stayed on to cheer on the boys team before packing up and heading for home.  I declined a trip hone with Mum or Dad in favour of our team coach which was far more fun.  Although it sounded like the spectator car park was fun in itself with the recently melted snow making it incredibly slippery.

Wednesday 

Parents evening, it went extremely well by all accounts.  Apparently i'm a pleasure to have in class, even if I am very chatty.  It went suffering well to qualify for a treat apparently.....

Thursday

I was a parents evening helper tonight, but aking on door duties with Liam and Tate.  We put in a long shift but it was good fun.

Friday 

Dad went out in his bike straight from work so by the time he'd finally got round to getting himself home and making tea I was nearly late Friday r Friday club.  Good job Mum had stepped in and made a head start.

Saturday

I cashed on my parents evening treat today, with a McDonalds breakfast .  If there is anything to tastier than a sausage mcmuffin i'm yet to experience it.  Ned was off paintballing for the day so we had a shopping trip to Basingstoke as treat part two.  I got a hoodie from the Newlook sale rail and a summer dress and a trouser suit from Primark all leaving change from £20.  I also got a squishy cake from the market which I love.

It was Sasha's birthday sleepover in the afternoon, so I was soonround there for a ;late) night of fun and games.....

Sunday

Well after last night festivities, there wasn't much happening today when I got picked up:

Tuesday
Bit of a hectic sporting schedule today, not only did I do PE at school we also had afternoon school practice for next weeks cross country competition and then straight on to gymnastics.  Pretty full on even by my standards.

Wednesday
So it was Nate's actual birthday today, we got an invite to Pizza Hut to have a pizza with him in the evening.  It was great fun, feeding Joel pizza crusts and entertaining Nate.  Happy 3rd birthday again Nate.

Friday
I went straight to Sasha's after school for tea and preparations for our school disco that night.  Her Mum had also enlisted my Mum as a helper on the night....I was devastated to learn this.  I didn't want her there, how embarrassing.  It wasn't so bad in the end I suppose, she worked on the sweet counter so at least she was extremely busy and spent her entire evening crouched over sweets and doing mental arithmetic.  it was a good night but the music left a lot to be desired.....

Saturday
Very lazy morning for me today, well it had started to snow again and there wasn't much doing.  It snowed quite a lot in the afternoon, I spent the day listening to Spotify and watching telly.  In the evening we went round to Kimi and Marny's for the adults meal club.  I spent the evening having a Youtube binge with Kimi and then appearing at the right time to hoover up the lovely left over Profiteroles that Carol had made.  It had snowed quite a lot by the time we set off for home.....

Sunday
...so I didn't get up until 10 Sunday morning, it was a good job Ned had had a telling off for screaming at his Xbox friends early doors.  

We did go out and have a play in the snow though, a quick go on the trampoline:

And then set about making a snowman, which we didn't do the last time it snowed a coupke of weeks ago:

In all honesty the snow wasn't great for rolling and compacting into snowman form but we did our best:

We had a roast for lunch, I did a bit of homework, we had a family outing to Tesco wheredespite the weather we purchased suncream:

And tried on a couple of items of novelty headwear:

We went home and watched the re-run of Saturday Night Takeaway (might be the last one of those for a while?) and mocked the 'celebrities' on catchphrase.

Monday
So Ned struggled round delivering his papers only for his school to be shut....I'm not so lucky, we're a hardy bunch at JRJ!

I came home covered in black pastel after todays artistic endeavours and was ordered to scrub up which I wasn't happy about......not sure what the fuss was about?

Friday

Sponsored run right around the outside of the school grounds today, I managed a very commendable 12 laps which I was very pleased with.  I was pretty tired in the evening though.

Saturday

It was Nate's birthday party today, there was all sorts available for our entertainment, a bouncy castle, soft play stuff, mini trampoline and acrsh mat, sports equipment....oh and of course plenty lf food and drink (including my very favourite party rings).

Nate loved his present which was just as well as Mum had a nightmare getting it for him:

We got into all sorts of mischief:

Then it was home to find out I had loads of missed whatsapp messages, I guess all my friends were bored that afternoon?

Of course we watched Saturday Night Takeaway.

Sunday 

Mothers day, it could have gone better, what with Dad feeling a little bit 'delicate' and Ned being his usual teenager-y self.

Anyway, she loved her present and my card and we decided we'd go to Legoland as it had just opened.  Ned didn't come because he's boring.

This new model certainly caught my attention:

My main mission was to take mum and dad in the new Ninjago ride, they certainly enjoyed it even though Dad was rubbish.  Mum won of course.

I thoroughly enjoyed the playground it has to be said:

And I also loved the wave rider thingy, despite what my face might be implying in this picture:

I wasnt happy having to share a boat though:

I'm sure theres many pictures of me looking a lot smaller thanI do now sat on this little cat:

We stayed unitl the rides shut of course and then enjoyed the new additions to miniland until the rain came...heavy rain requiring a rather rapid retreat for the car.

Monday

Back to school, but a trip staright after the Basingstoke pool with Lilly.  It was great fun, we didn't get out for ages and then it was on to KFC.  I didnt get home until 9!

Thursday

The Snow finally arrived.  It had been built up for days on the news and weather and it pretty much delivered as billed.  School wasn't shut today, so once we were finished for the day it was down to the park for snowballs.
I got a call from home to see if I fancied sledging over at Northcroft, of course I did.  We dragged Luca along too and made our way very carefully in the car to our side of the canal before completing our journey on foot to the hill.
It was pretty busy (with loads of people we knew) but we managed to find (mostly) clear lines to make our descents:

The light was starting to fade so we had to make the most of it:

It was pretty blowy and cold....

But great fun

We survived intact despite Luca and I crashing on a doubles run and made our way home to drop Luca off, I think he enjoyed himself:

Friday

School was......CLOSED!  Brilliant, this hadn't ever happened before I don't think?  Dad was off too but Mum got collected to go in and do the payroll run....she's important!
This is the first significant snow we've had in years.
I got on my friends group chat and sorted out a mass snowball fight down the park later in the morning.  It was great fun.  I met up with Lilly and Betsy and ended up having a sleepover with them at Betsy's.  That was an unexpected surprise.
We had a good night and weren't even that late to bed really.....

Saturday

Cinema first thing to see Ferdinand.  There was still quite a bit of snow about as I got picked up from Betsy's.  Ned was along too, under protest so it was a family trip out.  I loved the film, loved it!  Even if we were the oldest kids in there by quite a margin.
We stopped off at the bakery on the way home for lunch, the cheese straws were good, nearly as good as mine!
Bit of a quiet afternoon, with great anticipation for that evenings instalment of Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway.  My favourite show ever.

Sunday

With football cancelled due to the weather it was another family trip out to the Beach in West Wittering.  The snow had vanished almost entirely and the sun was doing it's best to break through the clouds so it was nice to get outside for the day.
We started off with lunch.  Great idea.  We had what Dad christened English Tapas, separates form the breakfast menu, hash browns, sausages, fried bread (for Ned) and garlic bread (for me)  while Mum and Dad had boring proper meals.
Pudding though was a whole next level:

We did share it.....ha ha

We had a browse around the surf shop then headed down too the beach for a game of Boules (with the tide right in which wasn't ideal), and had a game of dodge the incoming waves on a very steep and pebbly bank which was fun.

And we stood on some pillars:

And some more pillars:

And some pillars with an arty backdrop:

Monday

So despite not attending cross country club after school, I got a letter to say I'd been picked for the schools area cross country!  I've requested Dad take me out on some training runs, he's allowed to ride his bike though and I'm proper excited.  It's an afternoon out with my friends instead of school.

Tuesday
Ive been made morning Door monitor, which means I get to bolt the doors closed when the bell goes...any latecomers get me to deal with!

We're doing an electricity project at the moment and have settled on doing one of those buzzer games betweem Tilly and I.  We have rather ambitously decided to make the 'course' an combination of our initials.

Thursday

I've got an enourmous appetite these days, mainly the good stuff, but I really ought to work on my cheese carving technique as it's giving me away too easily:

Friday

Ive decided to drop after school football.

So instead of that I took Mum and Dad into town by bike to buy myself a squashie.  It was cold.  Really cold.

In the evening i went to Friday club at the school.

I got the remainder of my friends phone numbers so now it's text message overload.  Add into that our whatsapp group and it ping ping ping!

Saturday

A load of pinging phone action and a spot of jigsaw helped to while away the day before the highlight of the whole weekend.....the return of Saturday Night Takeaway with Ant and Dec which we love.

Sunday

Neds football was cancelled so we went swimming to Oasis instead.  I was thrilled and loved it.  There was what looked like a school trip that turned up, they looked really odd as the boys trunks all matched as did the girls swimming costumes.  There seemed to be hundreds of them but we didnt have to wait long for the slides.

Monday

I went to town after school with Lily and Jess.  We had a brief trip around, i bought myself some more of that weird putty and put it to good use:

Monday 5th


Tuesday 6th


Wednesday 7th


Thursday 8th


Friday 9th
It was a cold and pretty bleak football session after school.  I did not enjoy having the ball kicked at me one little bit......
But it was the last day of this particular half term, so after a shower and a bit of faffing about we were off for a trip away.
Maybe a bit of an unlikely destination for us lot, we were heading North to Manchester!
The drive wasn't too bad, we had an in car buffet so we didn't need to stop and we were soon checking in to our hotel.  After a brief 'discussion' about bed sharing arrangements we were all happy and settled down to watch the Last Leg.


Saturday 10th
The Winter Olympics were on when we woke up, so we took in a little bit of that before making our way down to take in a big bit of breakfast.
We then attempted to walk it off with a day of shopping in the Trafford Centre.  The place was massive, and really quite fancy and impressive.  I think it would make a great place to actually live if we took all the shops out......
Well, we say shopping....we passed a few shops before we got to the Adventure Golf anyway.  First round of two, and it was great fun:

Dad narrowly won the first round, which was a shame.
Then it was on to the shops, we tried on some hats:

Some looked better than others:

Ned finally replaced his jacket, which we think he has had since Autumn 2014.  So he's got his money's worth out of that one.
I also got myself some new ripped jeans which were a proper ladies size 4.
But the shopping had to give way to more important pursuits, the second round of golf on the other course that Ned won this time.
Next up was something to eat in the massive food hall before the real highlight of the day.....the dodgems:

Although the track looked small the cars themselves were super fast and you could even skid them around the corners!
Then it was back to the hotel for a Saturday night TV session, bit of Olympics, bit of take me out.....ideal.

Sunday 11th
After another morning of Olympics as we woke up we had a bit of lay in before making our way down to breakfast:

Once we'd consumed out own body weight in pork goods and Nutella (which I discovered for the first time) and Mum and Dad destroyed the cereal dispensers, we packed up our things, checked out and headed even further north......to Bury.
Our target, Arcade Club, a place full of retro arcade games on free play.  It was a bit of mission to find it but we were soon in and climbing the any stairs up inside a converted old mill building, to be dazzled by the bright lights:

There were hundreds of machines, and although the graphics might not be up to todays standards, but they were a lot of fun to play, especially the ones where you could have more than one player:

As well as the normal machines, there were also loads of driving games and who doesn't love a bit of a dance?

There were also ones shoved into tables, how cool is that?

As the machines were all on free play it took a very long time for us to actually leave, the lure of one more go was very hard to resist....
We got home at a reasonable time, narrowly missing the snow that fell in the late afternoon.
We'd had a great weekend though, and it made a really nice change to be together for once and not argue (too much).


Monday 12th
One night in my own bed then it was off again for a sleepover with Darcey.  We had face packs and beauty treatments and Onesie wearing!

Tuesday 13th
Next day was Bowling and McDonalds, thanks Laura!
It was also pancake day, so I was looking forward to this one.  Dad had been warned by myself and Ned that we wanted PLENTY!!
He tripled the approved batter quantity and stood there flipping away for over an hour, there were well over 20 in this little pile:

And I made sure I ate my fair share:

I managed to pack away at least 8, mostly keeping them simple with lemon and sugar.
Mum only managed a pitiful 3.

Wednesday 14th
Unheard of scenes today when I involuntarily decided to do a bit of room tidying to punctuate my laptop youtube binge.

Thursday 15th
Link centre Trampoline park today once Dad was finished work.  We hadn't been with all four of us before so that was a good:

I nailed backflips from the foam pit diving board and then from the bouncy runway thing too.

Dad tried to kill mum by bouncing across four trampolines and missing a padded plinth before crashing headfirst into her stomach and as usual Ned got told off for bouncing up onto the high wall you're not allowed to go onto.

Friday 16th
We finally arranged a meal with Anne and Mike and also roped in Nate, Joel, Hayley and Alan too.  It was a lovely get together and I loved my belated Christmas present from Anne (a lovely warm gilet) which I wore home as Mum and Dad had insisted we walked.

Saturday 17th
Big old you tube day, not much more to add.

Sunday 18th
Ned was ill today, not like him at all. Our planned activities were scuppered then, we watched a 
Streetcat named Bob on DVD which we all loved (despite me claiming any scenes not featuring Bob himself were boring)

I took out skateboarding in the afternoon.  We hadn't been down Victoria Park in ages.  We skated about and played on the park like it was summer.....but a fair bit colder.

Monday 19th
Back to school after half term, nothing to report, it was just like we had never been away really!

Tuesday 18th

Well I spent a decent portion of the week trying to catch up on sleep and indeed food acter my Rhos trip.

I did manage gymnastics okay though.

Friday 19th

Well this one was a bit of a bolt from the blue, once we'd finished tea we went to london for the Lumiere London festival of light.  Basically a load of arty light themed stuff dotted about the city, Ned was overjoyed about coming along.
We parked up and go ton the underground to Leicester Square.  Dad had an app on his phone that had all the locations of the pieces and this seemed like a decent place to start. It was pretty bisu but the middle of the square was lit up by giant bulrushes, rabbits, badgers and a load of other countryside stuff.  It was pretty cool actually.  Next up were some 'flying' flamingos in China town that moved around the streets on poles carried by people (way better than it sounds) before we headed off covering some serious mileage, via Carnaby street, Piccadilly Circus (where the building being projected onto was somewhat diminished by the rather vulgar permanent advertising screens), and then up a very traffic free Regent Street:

The light up (and sound producing) see-saws were a massive hit:

Oxford Street took on a strange, otherworldly presence:

This light up bench was also rather brilliant, even if it didn't produce any detectable heat which I think Dad was hoping for:

We finished off at Westminster Abbey:

Even the side door was lit:

The lights went off at 10:30 so we headed back for the car and home.  I was glad I'd put my pelt in the back so Ned and I could share it for a nice warm snooze on the way home.

Saturday 20th:

We were supposed to be having Luca round for a good portion of the day, but that didn't pan out which was a big shame.

Mum and Dad went out for Auntie Trish's birthday in the evening so I got to hang out with Nate and Joel again!

Sunday 21st:

I needed new school shoes, new PE shoes and a new pair of shell toes (there was some dispute over whether I actually needed the shell toes or not) so we set out on a trip to Kingston upon Thames.

We had barely even got there when it was time for lunch...Greggs no less, we're proper classy.

I found some lovely PE trainers (mens, no pink bits) and eventually conceded that the forst pair of school shoes we'd seen in Bentalls even before our Greggs pitstop were pretty much unbeatable.

We rounded off our day with a browse of the toy section in Bentalls, although, maybe, just maybe I'm starting to get a little bit big for this sort of thing:

Sadly I didn't manage to get another pair of shell toes due to shoddy stock-keeping practices in one of the shops, they had one size 3.5 out on display but couldn't find the other one in the back room.

When we got home, Dad found some on the internet and we ordered those....

Monday 22nd

To make up for his Saturday no-show we had Luca round for tea.  He's great fun and we all enjoyed his company at the dinner table.

Thursday 25th

My new trainers arrived today, all the way from Germany:

Bling gold no less, Dad loves them, shame he's not a size 3.5.

Friday 26th

Film night had come round again, sadly it was Despicable Me 3 which all of year 6 had already seen at Rhos.  Oh well, good excuse to go and spend the evening with your friends anyway I suppose.

Saturday 27th

Nate and Joel's for the evening, for board games and pizza, and a bit of reading with Joel too who loved to try and wrestle the book out of Mum's grasp.

Sunday 29th

Ned's Football was in Andover today, and despite the weather it was the best one yet I reckon.  There was a really good park on  the field, a nice place for some skateboarding and a decent little shop too.  I did get a rather muddy bum, but wasn't as bad as one of the chaps who retrieved the stray match ball and slipped over into some really slimey mud.....

We spent the rest of the day painting the living room.  I got proper stuck in and was put in charge of painting the walls, first off with a brush around the skirting boards and door frames and then with a roller.

Monday 30th
Rushed home from school to get some more painting done, to tell the truth though I was getting a bit bored of it.....it doesn't allow the creative freedom i'm used to.

Friday 2nd February

We had our Rhos assembly today.  I was happy to see Mum and Dad come along and we enjoyed giving everyone a taste of our week away.  I also got to take them back to my classroom afterwards and show them some of my recent work.  I'm really proud of recent efforts so it was nice to show Mum and Dad.  They seemed really impressed.

Sunday 4th February

A monumental day today, I went to town with Lilly, pretty much unaccompanied.  We had a great time, had McDonalds for lunch, bought matching t-shirts and other cool stuff.