A Solar Eclipse

The magic of two pieces of card and a pin hole!

There was much excitement in the house the morning of the solar eclipse. A solar eclipse on the first day of Spring, no less! The Podlings were all walking to school with their friends, many of whom had pin hole projectors and colanders with them. As we walked, we heard the oft repeated phrase 'Don't look directly at the sun' that we parents had been drumming into them amongst their excited babble. It was wonderful to see so many children taking so much interest in an astronomical event. The maximum coverage of the sun in Staffordshire (around 90 %) happened just after half past nine, so Tom, Lily and Emma were at school when it happened. I was thrilled to learn that the entire school were out on the field for the eclipse and were watching through various safe methods arranged by their teachers.

I was at home with Alex, who probably wondered why Mummy kept popping into the garden! He was much more interested in his breakfast! I had my little pin hole projector and had a brief go with a colander, which I thought was more of a gimmick than anything else. I stuck with the two pieces of card to watch the eclipse, running into the garden for a quick look, then running back to Alex! He must have thought I was nuts! At maximum coverage the light levels were not dissimilar to an early evening sunset. Not dark by any means, but certainly darker than you would expect at half past nine in the morning. It was certainly dark enough to confuse the Dickens out of the birds, who were returning to the trees and twittering loudly in confusion. I found it all rather thrilling! Not quite as awe-inspiring as experiencing totality in the 1999 eclipse in Devon, but certainly exciting.

The Podlings were rather harder to impress! They came home from school complaining that "It didn't even get dark!". I think they were expecting to be plunged into total darkness in the middle of the day and felt rather let down!

I made 'eclipse burgers' for tea (a beef burger 'eclipsing' a chicken burger!), after which we settled down with some popcorn to watch the BBC Eclipse Live programme I had recorded in the morning. A lot of it was filmed at the Jodrell Bank observatory, which isn't very far from where we live. The programme also showed the total eclipse as experienced in the Faroe islands, which I think they all found really interesting.

The eclipse was rather a thrilling event for all of us in the end. Tom is talking of travelling the world to watch eclipses and they were all cheerfully telling Mark and me that we would be dead next time there is a total eclipse in the UK! Charming bunch! I hope that if they are watching that eclipse in their dotage in 2090, they may remember their first eclipse back in 2015 and the evening we spent talking about it together.

Another use for a kitchen colander!

The view through my pin hole!

Alex wondering why Mummy has gone mad!

Eclipse burgers!

From my photo album: Watching the eclipse with my sister and parents on Dartmoor in 1999

The irony of these pictures was that there was so much cloud coverage there was no way we needed the eclipse viewers! We couldn't see the sun at all! Experiencing totality was completely awe-inspiring though and I wouldn't have traded that for a glimpse of the sun!

Sun? What sun?

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Olympic Football Tea

The day after our trip to Old Trafford to watch the Olympic football, I was excited to find these football-shaped rolls and Olympic gingerbread bears in our local shop. I made the children burgers for their tea and tried to carry through the Olympic theme by attempting to arrange their chips and carrot sticks to look like the Olympic torch. If you squint a bit you might just see the resemblance!  The Podlings liked it though and it made for a cute tea!

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A Quiet Sunday

Mark is away on an extended business trip at the moment, so it is just me and the Podlings for over a  fortnight. I don't drive, so we are making our own entertainment at home at the weekends until he returns. We had a lovely day today and I thought Mark might enjoy seeing what we got up to. I like to think he misses us as much as we miss him!

We started the day off  in the kitchen. The girls and I made rock cakes together whilst Tom amused himself elsewhere. After lunch, we took advantage of the dry day to take a pleasant walk in the sunshine. We didn't go far as I sprained my ankle last week (and bruised my other foot a few days later), so I'm still not up to anything strenuous. We took an amble through the fields behind the house and finished up with drinks and a snack in the park. We were out for about two hours in the end. They played in the park for a while and then we came home and played with plasticine until teatime. There was much bouncing on the trampoline and playing in the garden in between whiles and we finished the day off as all days should be finished off, by reading books together at bedtime. It was, in short, an absolutely lovely day where nothing special happened, but it happened to be special all the same.

“I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens, but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.” 
- Anne, L.M Montgomery (One of my favourite quotes) 

The girls love helping out in the kitchen 

Now that Lily is six, I want to start trying to teach her some proper baking methods, rather than simply slapping everything together just for fun. Today she learnt the rubbing in method and I have to say she did brilliantly. In fact, other than weighing out the ingredients, I had minimal input in the process and she did really well just following my instructions. Emma did a really good job spooning the mixture onto the baking trays and beating the egg is her own particular delight. In a few years I shall be dispatching these two to the kitchen to whip up baked goods for the whole family!

Where was Tom while we were baking? In the conservatory on his DS of course! 

A walk in the sunshine, a somewhat rare commodity this summer. 

Brotherly love 

I love Tom's amusement at Lily's grumpy face in this picture. I feel it illustrates the challenges involved in getting decent pictures of all three children at once! 

In case you'd forgotten what it looks like, some blue sky, white clouds and sunshine. It is raining again this evening, but at least we had a lovely day. 

Never underestimate the fun that can be had with plasticine and a few pipe cleaners! 

 

Emma found it easier to manipulate the plasticine than I expected. Usually they get on better with play dough at this age.

.Tom making baby Wu-bats. I have to confess to being unclear what a Wu-bat is, but Tom informs me it is a type of Pokemon. He particularly wanted to make these and it was really for him that I bought the plasticine and pipe cleaners so he could do it. The girls had plenty of fun making spiders, snails and little girls (with some help from me...plasticine is fun for all ages after all!)

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In a pickle

You can't beat a good pickled egg with fish and chips, but they can be rather piquant for some tastes. It certainly wouldn't be something you would expect a child to enjoy, but Lily and Emma love them. We have been buying them, but it works out much cheaper to pickle your own, so I set to work in the kitchen today and now have two jars of eggs pickling in the pantry.

Emma made me laugh when she saw me boiling the large saucepan full of eggs. She evidently thought we were going to dye eggs again and started asking for "Yellow!" and "Stickers". She was a little disappointed when I told her that Mummy was only cooking them, but cheered up when I told her I was making pickled eggs. We now just have to wait six weeks before we can enjoy them!
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