A to Z year : January 1st-14th : the letter A

So – what’s this A-Z year thing about?

It’s a stroke of genius, that’s what it is, and the genius in question is the super talented Nicole Maki

She explains the concept far better than I could in her blog posts here and here

But in a nutshell, 52 weeks in a year = 26 fortnights = 26 letters of the alphabet. The idea is to do / experience / try as many things as possible each fortnight starting with the allocated letter.

We’re only on B so far, but it has been a huge amount of fun already, the whole family has got involved in thinking of things to do and try.

I’m going to try and document each letter’s adventures here on my blog ….. so here’s what we did for the letter A:


First of all, we made an A-Z notebook....the boys helped me by punching the diamond shapes, and stamping the letter and date range on each double page spread for me. We are carrying this book around with us everywhere, so when we get an idea of something we’d like to do later in the year, we can jot it down under the correct letter in the book, before we forget. It’s already filling up nicely.

Then we went to see a movie – Alvin & the Chipmunks, the Squeakuel – it was funny – maybe not quite as good as the first one, but the “you spin me right round baby right round” moment in the mixing bowl certainly had me giggling :)








The next challenge was to get Connor to eat apples.....he wasn't keen :) But I did get him to try fresh pressed apple juice (which he has been resisting for years because it has 'bits' in, but has now decided he loves) and Nutrigrain cereal bars with an apple and blackberry filling, which he also really liked. So I count that as a partial success.



And who could resist an Art Attack afternoon? We all love this programme, so we watched an episode and the plan was we would all make something from the show. Neil, the presenter on the show, made these ace little crows out of cones of black card...here's my masterpiece :) (I'm not sure where his wings have got to...he did have some when I first made him)....the boys made some stuff too but they have whisked their creations away out of camera range so you'll just have to trust me on that one.


Our major "A" was a trip out to beautiful Avebury in the snow. Unfortunately Reece wasn't with us for this one as the weather was particularly bad around where his mum lives, and so Jay wasn't able to collect him. The rest of us had a cold but fun time though, exploring the ancient stones and throwing lots of snowballs. And I enjoyed the opportunity to take photos of the stones (and the boys) in the snow.



Other than doing our big shop at ASDA instead of Tesco for a change, I think that's all our As.

Oh hang on - there's one more - during the heavy snow the week before last, I had to work from home for a few days, as Connor's school was closed. So I needed to keep him amused while I got on with my work, and therefore I asked him to paint me some things beginning with A. This astronaut is my favourite of his paintings.





I'll be back in a couple of weeks with the next installment....