The Christmas Decorations!!

Yesterday we put up our Christmas tree! This year we have gone for a silvery white colour scheme,to look a bit like snow(No snow here yet,unfortunately.)Last time we were in Leicester i bought a special hand blown glass bauble from Pastimes and it cost about 4 pounds, which i think is a bit too expensive for a bauble, but it is very special and quite pretty!Here is a picture of the tree!

The special bauble is near the golden tinsel at the top!



Also we are starting to get other decorations up elsewhere including tinsel,which we have a good few tons of but my dad is still complaining that we don't have enough,the tinsel maniac that he is!

PS: This is my second favourite part of Christmas.
PPS:My favourite? Opening the presents,eating all the chocolate and playing with all my new toys.
PPPS: Actually my favourite part of Christmas is listening and dancing to frosty the snowman!

Totonique Valley Express 2!

What's this picture about? Is it someone on fire? No. It is a long exposure shot of Yan pushing me all over the place in a wheelbarrow at about a million miles an hour!By the way the white line thing is the torch and the orangey thing is the fire! The best ride i went on(you may already know this) went nearly off a cliff, nearly into a muddy riverbed then nearly into a gorse bush, then i almost got flattened by a huge rock. Then we went back towards the house and nearly hit the spinach bush, then round the back into the pitch black and the washing line.

The second picture of the madness!

Viva Pinata

A wee while ago i got viva piñata!!In it you take over an old wrecked piñata garden and rebuild it to include all the piñata species on Piñata island! From time to time Piñata central will send you a request to send them piñatas to be bashed apart by sweet mad kids.I always say no for the sake of piñata rights. In it the best Piñata i have is the legendary Dragonache!! It is a brilliant game and i still haven't drawn the Chewnicorn out of hiding,the slippery beggar!!

Here is the dragonache!!Note: This picture is from Trouble In Paradise. You can tell by the fact that a limeosaurus is standing there.Also this is not from my game!

The recent weather!

This morning i woke up and looked out of the window and it was white as far as the eye can see! It was really good when i got to go outside into this white wonderland!Unfortunately there was no snow as far as i could see ,just frost.Hopefully it will snow soon!However it wasn't that cold that long ago(it was really rainy)so the cold hasn't had that much time to build up.Unfortunately all the frost had melted away before i could take any pictures.

Here is an overview of the things that we did in portugal!
Rude awakening,Tuesday
Aw,do i have to get up mum? It's half past four in the morning!
Arrival,Tuesday
We arrive in portugal!In this picture we are at faro train station!

Wall Building,over the week
We helped with building a wall to keep the cows out and the plants in!
Archery, Wednesday
I took my first shots today!In this picture i am preparing to take my first shot!

Ruin exploration, Wednesday
We had a look through all the abandoned old houses!
The door of the abandoned school of doooom!!

Stone rolling,Wednesday
We were rolling lots of stones down the hill when we found the cute salamander!In this picture the salamander is a bit startled,poor thing.

The medronho berry war, Thursday
On Thursday afternoon we splattered each other with gooey medronho berry's!
Music night,Thursday
We played lots of capoeira music through the night!
Pool Night,Saturday
We went to the local pub to play pool through the night!
Odemeira,Sunday
We went to the local supermarket and one of the things we found was an olive pic'n'mix type thing! Also on the way there we found an old ruined windmill!In this picture Yan is leaning over the pit of doom!

White-knuckle wheelbarrow rides,Monday
Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Olive collection, Monday
We went out to peel the abandoned olive groves of "olive" their olives,ha ha!
Here is a picture of their spoils!!

A local's birthday, Monday
It was the birthday of one of the remaining inhabitants of Totenique valley so we went down and played some music!
Departure,Tuesday
Aw,do we have to leave portugal?In this picture i am sleeping on the plane!

Unusual Wildlife

Whilst we were in Portugal we found quite a lot of unusual wildlife!The first piece of unusual wildlife we found was the super-cute salamander,pictured below! Then we found The Monster Praying Mantis! It was about 2 1/2 inches long(i think), which is much bigger than praying mantis's should grow,It is pictured below! Then we found a grasshopper that was about an inch long (i think) and he had one heck of a jump on him!! He is in one of the pictures below



The salamander!


THE MONSTERRRRR!


Ker-Boing!!!(Note: he may be difficult to spot)

White knuckle wheelbarrow rides

On the last evening before we left we were trying to think of something to do. I sat down in the wheelbarrow(by mistake) and Yan appeared to have an idea.All of a sudden i was flying round the back of the house and into the clothesline at a million miles an hour in the pitch black.. Everybody had a go and Yan at least nearly drove them into the grapevines or nearly drove into a big tree. It was so much fun!! Unfortunately we didn't get any pictures of this madness but it was still lots of fun!! The best ride i was on very nearly went into the gorse bush,I very nearly got flattened by a big stone , then we went back up towards the house and we nearly hit the spinach bush.Then we went round the back and straight into the clothesline! It was really exciting and it was also really fun

Nighttime capoeira music!

One of the nights we were in Portugal we decided to spend the evening outside. We got the brazier(a sort of portable outdoor fireplace)and lit up a nice warm fire. All of a sudden Yan decided we should play some Capoeira music. Apparently capoeira music sets the rhythm, the style of play, and the energy of a game of capoeira. It was a bit tricky getting the rhythm down at first, but soon the music was going strong. Then we started getting experimental, using beer bottles with different levels of water in them as flutes. Then my Dad went inside and came out with this weird wine bottle thing drenched in water and used it as a sort of DJ instrument type-thing. The music was very happy-sounding,but we were all getting very tired so we stopped and went inside for some sleep.Here is to the capoeira music wikipedia website.
Read about Capoeira music on wikipedia!

A picture of the brazier(I don't have any night-time photos of it.)In this picture it is burning some eucalyptus to make smoke that deters the flies.


A picture from Yans mums garden of the eucalyptus smoke cloud drifting over the valley...


The next thing i will post about is the white knuckle wheelbarrow rides!!

Wall building!

Whilst we were in Portugal we did some wall building! The first thing we had to do was rolling stones down a big hill which was fun! Then there was the puzzle of finding out where the stones should go. We had to do all of this in the baking heat of the Portuguese sun. Whilst we were up there rolling stones we found a salamander. We accidentally disturbed it and the silly thing set fire to a tree and caused a huge forest fire. Only joking. The salamander was actually quite small and was black and yellow. It also didn't breath fire.We built him a little cave which he crawled into and fell asleep. Here is a picture of the salamander

The cute little salamander!



Unfortunately i don't have a picture of us wall building but i still had a good time!!

The Medronho Berry war!!

On Thursday we were all up at the fort that Yan had constructed enjoying the sun when Yan started flicking ripe medronho berrys at us and they left gooey marks! Soon i started throwing green ones at him and caught him a corker right between his eyes Shortly afterwards it became a full on Medronho berry war!! Here is a picture of some medronho berrys,both ripe (Red) and unripe(Green!)



After about half an hour we all stopped because we were completely covered in Medronho Berry goo! It was great but messy fun! The next thing i will post about is the wall building we did!

Archery!

The day after we arrived i tried some archery! It was great fun but i wasn't very good to begin with but that was to be expected. A couple of days later i was climbing rickety ladders up rotten old trees to shoot arrows far and wide!
Here is a picture of me doing that!




I was quite good at archery by the time we left!

Portugal!!

Last Tuesday we went over to Portugal!It was lovely and sunny the whole time! Also on the way there I flew on a plane for the first time and it was great fun! When we got there it was dark but it was also still warm when we arrived at Yans house (Maybe that's just me coming from Scotland.) Here is a picture of where we stayed!


The house we stayed in!



I will do several posts with a picture and a story of what the picture is about!

Twycross Zoo!!

Last week I went to Twycross Zoo!! One of the first things that happened was a play fight between two gibbons! One of the gibbons was cuddling a orang-utan toy! However the other gibbon decided to start bullying the other, but he was quickly taken away when it was feeding time. Then we noticed one of the real orang-utans was drinking a lot of cows milk,which i thought was odd until i was told that it was going to be a mummy orang! Then we went to see the elephants, and the new baby elephant, Ganeshe, was with them!It turned out that we were just in time for the elephant training routine which was really interesting, and it was rather funny when we saw Ganeshe trying to copy the other elephants, especially when they did the lifting up their feet thing and little Ganeshe tumbled over! Then we visited the penguins and it turns out that the eggs that we saw there last time we went had hatched and there was cute little baby Humboldt penguins! We went to check up on the gorillas and they still looked as grumpy as last time we saw them! The next animals we went to look at were the Bonobo's and we figured out which one was Diatou, the Bonobo that i adopted!
Then we went to see the giant turtles, and it turned out that they were still as slow! I had a brilliant day so here are the pictures!

The gibbon with the orangutan toy!


A picture of the mummy orangutan drinking milk!


The bonobo we think is Diatou is being groomed in the corner.Some other bonobo is in the huff.



Little Ganesh!


The Penguins!


The elephants doing their farewell salute!

The Scopio-XV1!!

Yesterday I got the Scopio-XV1!! It is currently my favourite lego thing but it cost me a months pocket money!!It can transform from a four-tracked vehicle to a highly manoeuvrable four legged scorpion(hence the name,Scopio)which i think is really cool!! Here are some pictures!!

The Scopio!(Note:this version is slightly edited . The pilot has a sword and he is also carrying the Thornax launcher)


The Scopio halfway through transforming.


The pilot, Telluris.

Beatles rock band!

Yesterday we got the Beatles rock band! It is only just out today so we got it a day early which means that we played through it before it had even come out! Unlike other rock band and guitar hero band games it only has Beatles songs on it. A good thing that happens is if you play a song that was made after the Beatles stop playing live it starts in an old studio but it soon becomes a mad video with trumpet trees in the background or ,if you want the official name, dreamscapes. My favourite song was Here Comes The Sun, because it is so rainy up here in Scotland. My dad is a big beatles fan ,and he liked pretty much all the songs.Here is the intro video.

The harry potter film!

When we went to the museums in Dumfries we also went to see the new (ish) Harry potter film! The main plot goes a bit like this:at the start Dumbledore takes Harry with him to help convince a new teacher,Horace slughorn, to come to Hogwarts. Then it turns out that Voldemort has launched an assault against the muggle world. In the middle the Death Eaters attack and destroy The burrow(Ron's home.) At the end Harry and Dumbledore look for a horcrux in an ancient cave and find nothing but a fake horcrux. When they return the death eaters attack hogwarts, and Snape kills Dumbledore. Here is the trailer, for those of you who haven't seen it.




I had a great time and my favorite bit was the firestorm in the cave scene!

The dumfries museums!

During he summer holidays we went to the Dumfries Museum! The first museum we went to was the Old Bridge House Museum which had an old fashioned dentists in it! I did a quiz about the Old Bridge House Museum and got 100%! Apparently it was an inn at one point and Robert burns visited it once his work was done for the day! Then we went to Dumfries Museum itself! There was all sorts of stuff from ancient pictish carvings to stuffed animals (which included a poor golden eagle and otters.) Then we went up to the camera obscura and I was one of the people who got given a spatula with a piece of white cardboard which meant that I could play around with the picture coming onto the viewing table. After a wee while we went back downstairs and we found a room full of old weapons where we (rather surprisingly) found halberds! I had a great day so here are some pictures!

The old bridge house


An old picture of the Dumfries Museum

Leicester!

Before my birthday we went down to Leicester for a few days! On the first day we went down to leicester on the train!Even when the train is going at 100mph it still took the whole day! When we got down to my granny's one of the first things we did was preparing our sleeping bags for sleeping in because it was about 7 o'clock when we arrived at my granny's house. The next day we went to the space museum!(I have done a specialised post about it) The space musuem had loads of actual rockets which was really cool.Then we went to wagamamas for dinner. Mum had itame yasai(which means something like vegtable stew),and i had salmon ramen. The next day we went to Twycross zoo!(I did a post about that too.)They had Amur leopards,or snow leopards!The last day before we went we had dinner at the local sushi restraunt which was great fun.I had a great time in Leicester but unfortunateley i got shopping fatigue.
Here are some pictures!

Me grabbing my "Peppered prey"


The conveyor belt which you grab your food off

My birthday!

On the fourteenth of august it was my birthday!
I got all sorts of presents, from solid bubbles to redwall books (Technically my laptop was a birthday present and so was the trip to Leicester, but i didn't get either on my birthday.)My favorite presents were the redwall books because they are all very good books.The ones i got are Redwall,The Pearls Of Lutra,Eulalia! and Doomwyte. The weirdest present was the touchable bubbles which set a few seconds after you blow them meaning you can catch them and stack them up until your bubble tower collapses .I also got guitar hero Metallica for the wii as well as spore galactic adventures and spore creepy and cute on my laptop. They were all absolutely brilliant. Then my friend Logan was over for a while and we had a great time. The cake was brilliant and it had smarties and rollos all over it(mmm...)Unfortunateley Mum deceided to get self relighting candles, which made blowing them out a little tricky. I had a great birthday!

Twycross zoo

While we were down in Leicester we went to twycross zoo!
A interesting thing about twycross zoo is that it is the only zoo in Britain that has bononbos! when we came into the zoo the first thing we noticed were some monkeys! They looked like Golden Lion tamirins but I'm not that sure. Then we found the orangutans!
The next amazing primate (scientific name for the group of animals that monkeys and gorillas belong to ) that we saw was a spider monkey !Then mum made a bee-line for the bonobos. There appeared to be two groups of them (one was inside whilst we were at twycross zoo.) Most of the bonobos were relaxing in the sun but there was a granny bonobo who pretended to be old and frail but sometimes she suddenly started chasing a young and cheeky bonobo who was running around the enclosure at high speed. Then we had our lunch next to the kookaburra cage, which was next door to the ibis cage(This must have confused them ,because they don't live near each other in the wild.) Then we went to the big birds place ,where we saw wildcats(i don't know why they were there)Flamingos,storks, turtles and all sorts of weird birds. Then we went to see the elephants (who were all outside because there was a mother elephant with a newborn baby occupying their indoor habitat.) After that we went to see the leopards which were really cool(one of them was flopped out inside.Mum joked that i should tickle its paws.Naturally i freaked out.)Unfortunately our camera was out of batteries by then.Then we went to see the pride of Asian lions which was brilliant!(Apparently there is only about 300 left in the wild.Eeek.) Then we saw the giraffes which were really cool . One of them stuck its head through the fence and gave me a look up close. I mustn't forget the super cute meerkats .One was standing on a log and keeping watch(it was also looking very cute .)Another was suckling a furry ball of babys(Awww.) Then there was the giant guinea pigs,or capybara .Another cool creature we saw were the Marmosets,which basically looked like Meerkats that needed to go on a diet.
There was also pengwins! A few were hiding in the shade, a couple were soaking up the sun and the really clever ones were enjoying a good swim.
Here are the pictures!

The giant guinea pigs!


Piggy marmoset!


Awwww...


I'm going to have a nice nap afterwards....zzzzzz


Mmm... grass...


Kookaburra!Kookaburra!


Look, a flamingo!


a picture of the bonobo,Diatuou, that i adopted

the space museum

When we were in Leicester we went to the space museum! The main part looked like a hi-tech beehive! When you came in the first thing you saw was a reconstructed Russian space probe which was really cool.But before we did anything we had lunch. Under a rocket called Thor, which was next to an old British missile.(Which ,incidentally, has a shell thinner than that of a fizzy drinks can .) Then we went to the Darwin exhibition which had lots of cool stuff about evolution. It also had arcade machines which had evolution games on them(such as evolve your own plant.)Then we went into the actual museum. There was all sorts of cool things there, from how ancient people thought the universe began to an actual chunk of moon rock! My favorite thing there was the asteroid game in which you picked an asteroid and hurled it at the earth and observed the consequences ! I had a brilliant time so here are the pictures!

the space museum


us enjoying lunch under the rocket,Thor.


Phew! I landed safely!



Prepare for blastoff!!!!!!!!!

The summer holidays

Hello!I haven't posted in ages so this is going to be a big writeup.
We went to dumfries museum,the old bridge house museum, and the camera obscura.Then we went to see the new harry potter film!
Then i got the full band kit for guitar hero!
Another important thing that happened is that i got my laptop(which i am using right now!.)
Then we went down to Leicster to visit my granny and we went to the Space Museum.
We also went to Twycross Zoo. Then it was my birthday! And today i got my adoption certificate for Diatou the Bonabo!Here is a picture of Diatou!

Over the next few days i will write more specific posts about everything

A thunderstorm!

On monday there was a thunderstorm! Unfortunately i didn't see any lightning but i knew it was happening because of the deafening thunder. Mum and Dad apparently saw some big strikes which, unfortunately i didn't see. So i went out to our garden. Soon after i went out there was a strike of lightning behind me which gave me quite a surprise because it was a relatively close strike. It was nice to hear the roll of thunder (because lightning is my second favorite weather)and i hope that there is another thunderstorm soon so i can see some lightning.

What i did at the weekend

On saturday my best friend logan was over for a while. We spent quite a bit of time in the graveyard, looking for his great granny's grave. Ultimately we didn't find it but we did have quite a fun time ,which is the important part. On sunday we spent most of the day outside enjoying the sun. It got quite hot until the sun went behind a cloud , and it didn't come out again for quite some time . Overall i had a fun and sunny weekend. Unfortunatley the weather has become cloudy and is rather annoyingly threatening rain. Recently I have been reading the Discworld books which are by Terry Pratchett. They can be very funny in places but can suddenly become a bit frightening , like a scene where a bat gets hit by a garlic sausage then suddenly gets eaten by a cat. My favorite book so far has to be the hilarious Witches Abroad
in which three witches attempt to go on a very long trip across the Discworld. The witches are Magrat (who turn anything into pumpkins) , Nanny ogg and Granny Weatherwax (who owns a massive cat called Greebo ,who can even scare wolves.) The Discworld books are fantastic and i recommend them for people who like fantasy books.

Redwall

Recently i read one of the Redwall books(which are by Brian Jacques) . The Redwall books are Animal Adventure Fantasy. They always feature Redwall abbey , a place in the dense forests of mossflower where mice,hedgehogs,squirrels and the like live together happily with their cheeky dibbuns, who are also referred to as babes(ie: molebabes, shrewbabes.)
The one that i recently read was Marlfox, in which the main enemy's are the cunning Marlfoxes and their massive army of water rats. They are all ruled over by Queen Silth ,an old and evil vixen. She has sent the Marlfoxes to plunder the treasured tapestry of redwall
My favorite character is Florian Duggawolf Wilffachop who is an absolutely hilarious hare! He has the appetite of an elephant, so he is referred to as Florian Forkbottom
or Florian Wilffachomp. I think this book is absolutely brilliant and also hilarious! I highly recommend this for people who like either fantasy or animal stories!

Bluebell wood

I was going to write about what i did last weekend but we had such a quiet and rainy weekend that it is barely worth mentioning. So i am writing about a walk we did last week instead. The first thing i noticed was the sweltering heat- i was sweating before we reached the end of my street! The next thing we knew we were at the bridge. We looked into the clear, calm water and we saw a big pike- it must have been at least 4 pounds!Here are some pictures

The pike was a little bit hard to see so i put in an arrow to help


In this picture the pike looks a bit like a stick so i put in yet another arrow


We then went up Waterside hill which was surprisingly dry. It didn't take long and soon we were in the glen.We went across another bridge and took a right. We found the turnoff for bluebell wood and we went up it.We went back down it after we explored the wood and rather quickly our feet felt weary- never nice. When we got back to Dalry we made a bee-line to the shop and got ourselves ice cream.

Charity banners

Have you noticed the charity banners on the left? They're there because i am trying to help the rainforests and wild cats,and you might want to help too.By the way the amazon rainforest is being cut down at a crazy rate, roughly a football pitch sized area every ten seconds.I was looking for a tiger one but i couldn't find one, so if any of you know a link to a tiger banner please post it in a comment.If you click on one of them it will take you to a charity website.

What i did at the weekend

Over the weekend it has been hot and cloudless. I mean HOT- it has been as hot as 20 degrees Celsius.Anyway. On saturday i basically just enjoyed the sun ,which gave me sunburn on the back of my legs(which still hurts now.)On sunday we went for a walk by the black loch until we were halfway round.At that point we suddenly decided to go to mossyard beach. When we got there the first thing we noticed were the huge basalt rocks
which in some places were covered with barnacles. Amongst these big rocks were rock pools.One of the rock pools we found had crab sized prawns in it which we tried to catch by hand.Seriously- I'm not joking(about the size).Anyway here are some pictures

Me lying in the sea


Me at the pool of crab sized prawns- again i am not joking


a close up picture of me at the pool of crab sized prawns


I had a brilliant time and when we had to go i was soaking wet.