Happy Birthday Sarah!

My dear friend Sarah celebrated the big 4-oh on Thursday. A group of us went for afternoon tea at one of the local posh hotels (I never realised quite how many of them there are…).

And on Saturday Martin and I cooked her a slap-up meal here…Emily eating clams was a classic – she put the entire clam into her mouth, sucked the clam off and elegantly spat out the shell. Amazing!

Matthew brought the cake – in the shape of a green house (she was given a real one of those by her husband). Couldn’t quite fit everything into the photo…

And here’s little Emily trying on a wet suit (among other things in three bags of hand-me-downs she had just received). She looked like a mini-Miss-Marple in the brown tweed outfit on the right!

Here are some more pics from the last couple of weeks. Luke and I going for a muddy walk last weekend…

And a walk around Yew Tree Tarn on Sunday…

We got out the old fondue set recently for the first time in a long time…very nice, takes me back to the 70s!

And here’s the Main Man, digging up our allotment. Which concludes this post.

Thursday in the office…

We needed to have a bit of a talk about what to prioritise in terms of work for the next quarter or so, my co-director and I. Plus he needed to geo-code a local walk for an app he’s building for Lakeland Walker magazine. And so it was that today’s afternoon meeting was held as we ascended Helm Crag in the sunshine…

(That’s Martin on the right)

And this is how far some daffs have come in Grasmere on January 12!

First week of the new year

Wishing everyone a very happy 2012, and hope to see you all at some point!

We had a brilliant New Year’s Eve with Luke’s friend Josh and his parents Kate and Mark. However we had to cancel the fireworks, which we had planned for 5 pm, and instead just had some sparklers on the village green in the pouring rain….to make up for this we decided to invite some of Luke’s friends and their parents for a fireworks party on the evening of Jan 2. I made fish fingers for the kids and parsnip and ginger soup, with Martin’s home made bread, for the grown-ups. Good evening!

We’ve been on a few walks…Luke particularly loved this one on the side of Thirlmere, where he was the intrepid explorer clearing the way for me and Martin. Afterwards he even said; “Thanks, guys, for taking me on this walk, I loved it.”

On Friday, we celebrated Uncle Alastair’s (Jacob’s Godfather) 40th. Martin and I cooked starter and main course, and then it was time for Matthew’s cake…

…which was an anatomically correct representation of a human brain, made from correctly coloured sponge cake – pinkish (though Luke pointed out: “I think my brain is purple”). The cake even had the anatomical terms written all around; temporal lobe, and so on…

The boys did brilliantly; and absolutely scoffed the food (cured duck breast with melon, pickled cucumber and soya dressing and seabass cooked in salt with potatoes, green beans, asparagus and samphire and an olive oil, lemon and herb dressing (though they skipped the latter)).

This morning we found my old calligraphy pens and played around with them. This is Luke’s first attempt:

Martin has now gone off to take Josh back to University (Cardiff), and will be back tomorrow. It’s been great hanging out with Josh over the holidays – and we’ll miss him while he’s gone! Not least Luke.

Dinosaur Days

Luke’s class have been learning about dinosaurs since half term, and for Christmas he got a ticket to go to the Dinosaur exhibition at the World Museum in Liverpool (on loan from the Natural History Museum in London). Josh came with us, and we had a fantastic day out in Liverpool, which included a visit to a tapas restaurant – and this was Lukie’s favourite tapa (and it was pretty spicy too):

While in Liverpool, we went to check out 78 Yew Tree Lane in West Derby, where Martin grew up, including various schools, church and the golf club…he was definitely brought up on the posher side of Liverpool!

The visit to the dinosaur exhibition triggered an even greater interest in the boy, and yesterday we got out the fantastic present he got from Johanna a year ago, where you have to excavate a t-rex, assemble it and exhibit it. CLICK HERE for a video of the process!

He then proceeded to make a dinosaur book…

Christmas 2011…

…will go down in family history as a top one. We had two fantastic days and all that was missing was snow – but you can’t have everything. My Mum and Dad and Johanna were over for the duration, which really added to the feeling of special occasion.

Christmas Eve we celebrated Swedish style, as usual, with the Stables family joining us, also as usual. Christmas Day we did the traditional English thing, and Josh and Carmen joined us for that. Here are some (well, quite a lot actually) seasonal photos….

I had made identical photo albums for the boys; Luke and Jacob – the First Five Years. “Awesome”, said Jacob…

Making gravlax

One of the favourites on the Swedish Christmas buffet is gravlax; salmon marinated in salt-sugar-white pepper and dill. Delicious. In our house, Martin’s been the gravlax king for the past few years, but we’re working on the next generation…

Yum, yum!!

Let it snow!

We had a stunning weekend of sun and snow – well at least on the fell tops. We even managed to get Luke onto the snow with his sledge, by driving half-way up Wrynose pass. Some pics…

I filmed some Herdwick enjoying the snow – CLICK HERE to see them go!

Yesterday we spent the day with Jacob et al, and went to the National Trust’s family Christmas art morning, which included the children making animal masks and taking part in a Christmas story.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas

And so it was time for the annual nativity play courtesy of Grasmere Primary School. Performed in church as usual, it started, unusually, with a drumming performance by the older children. Awesome!

Luke was a shepherd in the Early Years section, falling asleep on the job an loosing all the little sheep. Very funny (that’s him on the right).

Click HERE for video of them all singing Have yourself a merry little Christmas for the finale. If your eyes are really good, you may be able to spot Luke in the background just to the right of Mrs Goode…

This week we’ve had our first snow, and the other day we went up to Whinlatter Forest to pick up a Christmas tree, and this was the first Luke had seen of the snow!

Down in the village it’s not really a cover, but beautiful nevertheless…these pics are from the way to school today.

And here’s one Martin took earlier, just up the road at Thirlmere.

The Campbell Christmas do

Huge thanks to Dominic (aka the Vicar) and Claire for once again putting on a fantastic Christmas dinner for the clan – a great time was had by all. And thank you too to Justin and Meeta, Yasmin and Aran for housing us at Somerhill Avenue. Extra special thanks to Aran for being such a lovely cousin to Luke and so generous with his time and toys…including Super Mario Brothers on the wii – Luke kind of got the hang of it. I think (who knows, impossible to figure out what is going on!) In return, Luke taught Aran some tricks on Angry Birds and his bigger cousin was suitably impressed.

And to the party…

And of course, Santa came. “That’s not Santa!” exclaimed Luke. Indeed – twas his father. But uncle Justin was determined to make sure the child continues to believe, and said the voice was like Martin’s “because they are from the same part of the world”. Luke was convinced. I think. And Martin maintained he’d been to the loo and had missed the whole thing:-)

One night in Bangkok…

Belatedly, some pics from my trip to Bangkok and Hong Kong two weeks ago (work of course!)

Aside from work (which was good, and we had a very fun group of newspaper execs this time), food was of course in focus.

My friend Gregor (mergers & acquisitions expert who really wants to be a chef) and I went to a fantastic restaurant in Bangkok…here he is with his coconut soup.

A couple more of the dishes we had…

They even had an iPad menu.

After dinner we headed for a roof top bar, complete with live music – great night.

And this was the dinner we were all treated to by Bangkok Post the following night.

Hong Kong was another first for me – managed to smell my way to the local food market of course!

One of the days in Hong Kong we held the seminar at the Aberdeen Marina Club, of which our member South China Morning Post is a member. Pretty fab…this was the view out of the meeting room….

And then they took us for dinner across the bay – fantastic!

One of the nine (?) courses…

This was the view out of my hotel window in Hong Kong…I hope I come back one day.