Christmas

We were in Hampshire at Imogen and George's for Christmas, which meant travelling through London. So we took a few days to see some friends and do the two things we have to do when we go to London - see a film and go to Yo!Sushi. We saw "Up" in 3D and ate popcorn. Check the groovy glasses:

We stayed a t Gran and Pampa's for a few nights and most mornings we got a visit from this really friendly fox:

I mean, it's not too often that you can sit next to a fox and take a picture, albeit through a glass fronted door.

We went for a walk through Richmond park when the weather allowed and the kids fed the ducks and went tree climbing:

Then it was off to Alton for the main event. It was very white down there, so naturally everyone got into snowball fights almost immediately:

There was also this quite frantic episode where we went for a walk and halfway round left the teenagers in charge of the smaller kids while we went on a longer route. Naturally they got lost in a big forest and we had to split up and run around the place looking for them while the sun dipped below the horizon. Found them just in the nick of time. All fine.

One quite strange, but awesome highlight was our present to Pampa. A sphere made up of 216 spherical neodymium magnets. A great toy and as it turns out a great game, too. Once disassembled, it's a non-trivial issue to get it back to being a cube. So we all got a chance to try to put it back together. The shortest time was under a minute:

Ans so it was that we returned to Guernsey for a short rest before going skiing - what a life!

Christmas catchup

A broken computer over the Christmas period meant no blog postings, so here's a quick round up of the events in image form (not that there were many):

The children made cards with Meriel, although they'd already done some through the school (facilitated by Lenny amongst other PTA people). Meriel got them to do a picture of a basic Christmas tree each, then she scanned them both in and printed out a pile of them to be given decorations by the kids. Lenny was in London attending James' birthday party. Here's a shot of a snowman's backside from Carnaby Street:

And the street where he worked for years when he was living there (just a visit for old time's sake):

After a very relaxed Christmas at home entertaining Grandma (Catherine), we all spent the rest of the holidays just messing about and having fun. CAra made patterns on the windows (not all of the time):

And Jonah used his new explosive chemistry set to make a volcano and its environs:

and here's the result:

Almost hit the ceiling.

There was the usual "lots of walking" on cold beaches:

And there was tree planting at Ed and Vanessa's place where there was a film crew from the mainland who were doing some sort of "Grand Designs" for gardening. Lovely day and lots of nice grub sitting on their veranda looking over Saint's Bay (they have a phenomenal view).

Finally (because my memory is only as good as our images on Flickr) there were the crocodiles:

But we all escaped unharmed.

The end.