christmas morning

presents!

those distracted him long enough to make french toast, then we sat around grinning cheesily.

a sunny walk through the fields

Merry Christmas! Our day started really early, Calvin has been spoiled by the English and Welsh side of the family and is now alarmingly good at identifying wrapped presents, and now we're relaxing a bit before traveling tomorrow to do this all over again, twice.

sunday walk

A few pictures from a short walk today. (We thought it was warmer out than it was, and I got cold. That's why it was short.)

Approaching the railroad bridge. This is a good spot to heckle rowers.

There are two horses we pass by regularly. The white horse is more exciting to Calvin.

Cal refuses to pet the horses though. This one is a little bitey, so maybe that's wise.

tree inspectors

Moeckel & son: serving Cambridgeshire and north-east Bedfordshire's tree inspection needs since 2010.

Tenerife

As you can see, we're getting behind on posting lately.  Sorry about that.

Last week, Nick had a conference on the island of Tenerife which is part of the Canary Islands which is part of Spain.  I had no idea where it was at first and my impression is that most Americans would not know about the Canaries either.  However, it is a hot tourist destination for European travellers so a lot of my British friends/family knew exactly where it is or have been there.  Tenerife is a volcanic island, boasting the world's third largest volcano, El Teide.  So in other words, the island is REALLY hilly.

Calvin learning about hot sand

Anyway, like I said, Nick had to work all week while Cal and I enjoyed the sun and the beach.  Luckily, he was able to take off one afternoon and one morning to travel to beaches with us and we had another full day after the conference was over.  We spent most of the time at beaches but managed to get a half day at the volcano national park and experience the alien-like landscape that are old lava flows.

Parque Nacional del Teide

So, things we learned on this trip:
- The south part of Tenerife, where we stayed, feels like a little Britain
- Volcanos are cool (when they're not active)
- Cal really likes going into the ocean
- Cal really likes ice cream cones, not necessarily the ice cream
- Never, I repeat, never drive mountainous terrain with less than a 1/4 tank of gas
- Nick is amazing at running across motorways to get to gas stations

More pictures are here.

a visit to Cal's birthland

Last week the three of us drove up to Scotland for a visit.  It was a work trip for Nick but Calvin and I tagged along so we could visit friends in Dundee and St. Andrews.  This was our first long road trip with the toddler (he was an easy sleeping 6 month old on our last drive across the island) and he gave us quite a lot of screaming on Day 2 but overall, did pretty well.  We split the long drive up into two days, stopping in York for a few hours and then spending the night in Durham.  On the way back, we stopped and spent the night in the Lake District but unfortunately had terrible weather and couldn't fully enjoy the beautiful surroundings.  We treated it as a scouting trip and now know that we want to go back there.

Conquering the slide at a playground in St. Andrews (note the cathedral in the background)

One thing we learned on this trip is that Cal and sit-down restaurants do not mix.  If you were to happen upon us at a restaurant last week, you would have seen Nick or me eating our food as fast as we can while the other parent chased around the (sometimes screaming) boy.  Meals were a stressful time.

Cathedral running

Roman wall running

Lake watching

Ancient stone circle lounging

All in all, our time in Scotland was busy but it was wonderful to see all of our friends.  It is such a beautiful country and I hope we get to visit again soon (but not in the winter!).

Our adventure in pictures is mostly documented here but I failed to take photos of all the friends we saw.  I'm terrible at remembering that I have a camera sometimes.

brief update

Random events! I went to Lisbon for two days. Here's the only picture I took.
Exciting! Lisbon was very hot and the people are mostly fashionable and beautiful. I was given a small backpack at the conference I was at, and we gave it to Calvin:
finally, he's contributing to the load bearing responsibilities of the household. Then he chased the neighbor's cat around in his new Wellies:
Today Cal and I went on a long walk to let Sam relax for a few hours. Adventure!
Calvin pointed at trees:
slapped trees:
was dwarfed by trees:
ran all over the place:
and patiently ate a gingerbread man while I harassed snails on trees:
we've got some more interesting travel coming up: back to Scotland for a few days and then off to Tenerife for some sunshine. After that the clocks will change and we'll be in full-blown "My God, it's drizzly and dark" mode for a few months. So look forward to that.

The Cotswolds: putting both quaints in "quaint- this is really quaint."

For the bank holiday we headed to the Cotswolds for a couple days. On the way there we stopped by Warwick castle, which is now run by the people who do Madame Tussauds so you know it's classy. It's a beautiful castle, but kind of Disney, and it was really crowded on the holiday weekend. Still pretty good though.
Then we stayed at a bed and breakfast that was a working farm. I was attacked by a territorial rooster and Calvin was almost run over by stampeding sheep, but it was pretty nice. This was our base for exploring the Cotswolds, which is a pleasant hilly area dotted with small, almost-too-quaint towns. We hiked around and drove around, gawking at the stone houses, churches built by rich wool barons, and ancient high streets. The countryside in that part of England is a lot more interesting than Cambridgeshire.
More pictures are here

pick your battles

Dining in the nude.  His choice.

Luckily, this has only been demanded once.

back from vacation

The last month has been pretty intense, lots of travel. I was in Mexico for two weeks at a conference and then two weeks in Minnesota, and Sam and Cal were in MN for the whole four weeks. The first week back in Cambridge felt long, but I think we're all sort of adjusted again. It's been kind of nice being back in English weather after the heat and humidity in MN

We put a bunch of pictures up:
Nick's Mexico trip
Minnesota extravaganza

Here are a few highlights; ruins, sailboats, swimming pools, fancy hats, beaches. See if you can guess which ones are Mexico and which ones are Minnesota.

new place

Just a quick post to say that we've moved. Still got a lot of unpacking to do, but we like the new place so far. Among it's advantages, in increasing order of excellence: walking distance to a convenience store; gas burners; no shared wall with a pub. We have no internet for another week though, so if Sam has been ignoring your emails it's not out of spite. Although she's pretty angry at some of you.

The view from our living room. The trees across the field are the edge of the Cam.

The vegetable part of our garden.

My new commute is really nice- along the river for a while...

...until this bridge over the locks by Jesus Green...

then through part of town and over to the Institute.

Unrelated shot of Calvin encountering corn on the cob for the first time.

hot tamale

We're in the midst of a heat wave in England and it's been feeling like we're on holiday.  Cal is spending a lot of time shirtless and pantsless due to the increased temperature, which makes it easier for him to walk around.  Speaking of which, he really is cruising around now.  He still puts his arms in the air (godzilla style, as a friend pointed out) but you can see the improvement every day.  Have I mentioned that I'm tired?

Here are a few pictures from the last few weeks.  We are moving house in the next week (again!) so we'll get some pictures of the new place.  Then we'll be heading back to MN for an extended visit!  Bring on the grandparents!

 

 That's a cherry in his mouth (just in case you thought he'd lost some teeth)

time to release him into the wild

Barcelona

I don't know about you guys, but we spent some time in Barcelona last week.  It was quite a scene, you should have been there.  I had a conference all week, then Sam and Calvin joined me for a few days of vacation.  The conference was pretty good if insanely scheduled- talks from 9 to 9 is too much. Not to make you too jealous, but we got to tour the local supercomputer.  Number 87 in the world.  Yep.  I also saw a three year old child climb thirty feet of humans stacked on top of each other though, so it all evens out.

I got fully on board with the Spanish eating and sleeping schedule during the week of the conference, but I noticed very few screaming babies out at dinner.  When Sam and Cal arrived we moved into a mode where we had a big lunch and then an early (by Iberian standards) picnic dinner, so that Cal could sleep fairly normally.  I think this worked out pretty well, even though it would have been nice to go out with Sam in the evenings.  Compromises!  That's life.  

We had some rain on Sunday, when a lot of indoor attractions have short hours, and on Monday the museum we really wanted to go to (Picasso) was closed.  This led Sam to note that if you have two and a half days to tour a European city, two of them shouldn't be Sunday and Monday.  Words of wisdom.  We had a good time though, ate some good food and soaked in some sun.  We'll be back, there's plenty to do and lots of seafood.  Below are a couple pictures, the full extravaganza is here.  Not pictured: local prostitutes, astronomers at all levels of seniority staggering out of a terrible disco at 5 am, deeply tanned and fully naked men strolling down the beach, and the Moeckel family madly dashing through a public employee strike/protest trying to find a taxi to get us to the airport.  Our driver was a master of extremely aggressive gridlock maneuvering, and got us there with minutes to spare.