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.

(That’s Martin on the right)

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

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.

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 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…

Yum, yum!!

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.

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.

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:-)

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.