A to Z year : January 15th-28th : the letter B

So here I am blogging the brilliant letter B :)

We’ve had a ton of fun this fortnight, not least because we now have some fellow passengers on the A-Z journey – our pals Michelle and Tracy and family have decided to play along, and they have been coming up with some fantastic suggestions for alphabet-styled activities.

So – what have we got up to?



First of all, we went to our first away ice hockey game of the season –because it was in Basingstoke, home of the Bison, and we couldn’t ignore that opportunity to pick up two Bs in one go. Unfortunately, the Wildcats (our team) got beaten :( But it was a good, close game, and we enjoyed making plenty of noise to support our boys.

We also got to see Bud, who is Basingstoke's mascot. He's very cool (if a little scary looking), and I even got a Bud-cuddle :) Sorry for the horrendous pic, I didn't have my proper camera with me, and the lights were very dim at this point. Just imagine a minotaur on skates....

The next day, we took the boys to the local ten pin alley for a spot of bowling. None of us are exactly experts at this particular sport, but we had a laugh, and Jay even got a couple of strrrrrrikes (such a show off). I came last, rubbish, I can’t even win against children! I like Reece’s bowling action – he kind of cocks his leg up like a dog doing a tinkle :) made me smile every time:

(you'll probably need to click on these multi-pics to see the big version, as they come out teeny on the blog)

We also did a spot of baking on that first weekend. I figured we could use this excuse twice, actually, and bake biscuits for B, then cook chocolate chip cookies for C – any ideas how we can shoehorn it into D? :) They were delicious, anyway ... hmmm ... that begins with D ... getting there!



In the week, Connor had his hair cut, or, to remain in the spirit of the exercise, a buzz cut. The plan was to take him to the barbers, but in the end, his dad got the clippers out and did it himself. Luckily, his dad is called Bryan, so it still fits.

Before and after shots, he looks so much older without his mop:



During our second B weekend, we did our first joint A-Z venture with Michelle, Tracy, Callum and Lauren (you'll be seeing many more of these over the year).

A local shop called Buyology is, sadly as my eldest son worked there and is now out of work, in the process of closing down, and so they are selling off all their stock at ludicrously cheap prices. Michelle managed to pick up these brilliant bubble-swords for only 59 pence each! Bargain :)

So we all went up to the local park for an hour or so before this week’s home hockey game to blow ginormous bubbles. It was cooooold up there, but not too cold to have fun :) I love the way the camera flash bounced off the bubbles:



Then on the Sunday, Connor and I went down to my dad’s in London for a belated Christmas dinner (our third attempt – we were originally supposed to go on Boxing Day, but Connor was in hospital, and then the snow put paid to attempt #2 in early January). My dad got in the spirit (literally!) of B fortnight by burning some brandy on the Christmas pud:

That's all the main activity - but there were a few other random Bs:

I bought some Bavarian Blue Brie cheese to try, because I couldn’t resist that BBB triple whammy :) And I’m glad I did – it was delicious!

Connor got a new basketball (and I was planning to snap some piccies of him shooting hoops, but the weather’s been a bit too wet when we haven’t been busy doing other things).

As you can see from previous blog posts, I've made a few bracelets.

And Connor has also been practicing lots of tricks with his new Brain yo-yo:

Check back in a fortnight to see what we managed to do with the letter C!