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.

Cauliflowers fluffy…

I will be posting pics from the Campbell Christmas do shortly, in the meantime, here’s Luke filming himself singing – for video CLICK HERE

(this pic is has nothing to do with the song but I like it:-)