A to Z year : February 26th-March 11th : the letter E

I've got to admit, this has been the first letter we have found more than a little challenging...heaven help us when we get to Q :)

Still, not to worry, we managed to have more E-flavoured adventures than we expected to by the end of the fortnight.

We kicked off the two weeks with something educational but still very enjoyable - experiments! The credit for this one goes to my bessie mate Alison who heard me struggling for ideas as E approached, and rushed me a chemistry set in the post :)


Cool, huh? And we managed to avoid actually blowing anything up, which is always a good thing.

Later the same day we decided to do something about our economical situation. We tipped all the small change we have been saving for years out of its big plastic bottle in the kitchen, and took it to Tescos where they have a coinstar machine. We made £96!! result! Easy money indeed :)


I gave the kids £10 each, which got spent in approximately half a millisecond, and we used the rest to fund the rest of the weekend's fun.

For dinner that day? what else but Enchiladas :) Well, mine were more like fajitas (I'm never sure of the difference, to be honest) - but we made it with Old El Paso Enchilada sauce (yes, out of a jar I'm afraid, I'm certainly not the domestic goddess unlike many of my fellow A-Zers who put me to shame with their home-cooked masterpieces :))

They were blinking lovely, whatever they were :) Or should I say they were exquisitely edible :)

The following day, our pals Tracy and Michelle and family came round to play. We had each bought a pack of Sculpey Eraser Clay, and were itching to play. Everyone had a go, well except the two hockey-buds who sat and watched Sky Sports instead :).

This stuff is ace, it's just like polymer clay, in as much as you model with it while it is soft, and then bake it in the oven to "set" it - but instead of setting into a hard model, it makes rubbers! (for the sake of any non English people reading, that's what we call erasers here....and yes, I know it means something else entirely over the pond but let's not go there :))

I must admit they don't actually rub out all that brilliantly, but maybe I overcooked them?


We didn't mind though, they were fun to make, and they look cute :)

After all the fun of having their pals round, it was time for the boys to settle down and do their homework - English literature no less :) Yay for educational e-related photo opportunities :)



In the week, Connor's school put on an art exhibition, which they conveniently called Art Explosion, which we went along to.

It was really good, I especially loved the magazine mosaic one of the older kiddies had made of an orca (top left on the collage below, click on the picture for a closer look)


Connor's class had contributed animal masks, and with E fortnight in mind he chose to make an elephant (along with pretty much every other kiddie in the class, by the look of the display lol).

He got to bring it home after the show - here's a close up (and yes, it's a sock)







On the way home from the exhibition, we saw this lovely weathervane, which I took a picture of purely because it has an E for East on it (clutching at straws? moi?)- but I'm glad I did because I really love how the photo turned out - what a beautiful blue sky we had that day.



Also during the week was a football friendly - England vs Egypt. At the point that I took this photo, we were struggling and a goal down - but I'm glad to say that, thanks to some clever substitutions at the start of the second half, England came back to win this one 3-1. I actually really enjoyed watching the game - it's rare for me to watch sport other than hockey nowadays.

The following weekend, we had a great E to celebrate - Reece's eleventh birthday :) He chose swimming over in Stroud for his birthday treat, nothing e-related there, and no photos to share (they don't take kindly to people taking pics of other peoples children in swimwear nowadays :)) - but I can assure you we all had fun.

When we got home, it was time for cake (well, swimming really works up an appetite, you know!).

E for Eleven:



After cake, we went shopping as Reece's birthday money was burning a hole in his pocket, you know the way it does. He couldn't find anything he fancied in the toy department at TK Maxx, but I found this lovely wooden E in homewares ^


The next day, we went on an expedition in the woods, or exploring, if you will :) OK, actually we went geocaching, but as we haven't got to G yet, I need to call it something else :)

It was Reece & Jay's first time (which means I haven't been out caching in over a year! Bad geocacher!) - they both really enjoyed it though (what's not to love about a treasure hunt?) so I'm sure we'll be doing this some more over the year.


We found the first cache pretty quickly, and did start out on a second one, but it started to get really cold so we left the second one for another day.

The first cache was hidden close to an amazing iron sculpture called the Wish Hounds. This is what I love about caching - this sculpture is less than 2 miles from my house, but I never would have known it was there.

We both took loads of piccies of the sculpture, not sure if this is one of mine or one of Jay's, but I love it either way:



The name of the sculpture is set into the ground a few feet away, and further up the path we also found the words "Iron Ore" and "Earth" set into the grass in the same way.

What letter does Earth begin with again? Ah yes - get the camera out! :)



Here are a couple more pics from our walk in the woods that turned out nicely...

The boys having a well deserved rest after a LOT of walking:



Love the sun flare on this one:



Such a gorgeous sunset over the water:



My very last E for this fortnight was an expensive one!

My car got a flat ---->

And I needed it fixed in a hurry, so had to call the emergency fitters out to get it sorted. And pay their exorbitant fee.

That's all for now - see you in a fortnight for F...