When in Rome...

Eat a lot of pizza, seemed to be our motto...
After our time in Switzerland, we headed by train from Zurich to Rome to visit our lovely friends, the Bells, who live on the outskirts of the city. Lucy seemed to love the fact that Italians love babies, and lots of people came up to chat to her in Italian. Danny Bell reckoned she could speak baby-Italian, but maybe it was just the universal language of 'your giving me attention and I like that!' In fact after all our travels, she's now very good at smiling and sticking her tongue out at strangers to get a reaction... doesn't always work, which is probably no bad thing either. Surely it would be a crueller blow if it was to occur to you for the very first time at the age of 7 or 17 or 27 that in fact that world does not revolve around you. Though of course our world does revolve around Lucy just now, and that's fine.

As well as pizza and ice cream, we saw some historical stuff.

Lucy wasn't too impressed by the Colloseum...




Visiting the Vatican, and of course posting a card to Granda Jim.


And we also got to catch up with Tim King (Lucy was doing some pickpocketing...), and he showed us round the headquarters of the Focolare Movement and the resting place of founder Chiara Lubich.

Switzerland!

A few pictures of our five days in Switzerland, Chris at the International Planning Committee for the world conference of Friends taking place in Kenya next year, and Paul and Lucy having fun exploring the countryside and getting to know a few more Friends from around the world.

winter wanderings...

Way behind in our blogging once again, but we're off for some more adventures this month, so have to get a few past pics up before then.

Lucy's discovered food! And I think the verdict is it's generally a good thing.

And moved into a big cot in her own room - our wee girl is growing up...

In January Morag visited, it was great to see her! We enjoyed some lovely wintry walks and much tea and cake. She made Lucy a beautiful new companion, quickly named wonky donkey, which has been much admired as he travels round in the pushchair with her...






In February our next guest was Simon - great to see him on his Scottish holidays. Checking out a neolithic cist...

Lucy is looking very severe, don't know what's bothering her. A bit happier later when she got to enjoy Scotland's finest cheesy garlic bread with Simon...

Bringing in the New Year

So great to see Heather, Mike, Rose, Jude and meet Ben over New Year, all in a lovely converted barn in a glen south of Oban - lots of chat, walks, good food, board games ...




New Christmas toy - and new obsession - Carcassonne