Twin Daughters for Chil & Dylan

Audrey and I are ecstatic at the news of the twins' births. All our family here in Norfolk, UK, are thinking of Chil, Dylan and little Namwezi and Wamaka. I would like to send our thanks to Chil and Dylan for producing such beautiful (grand)daughters, and our fond regards and congratulations to the rest of family, wherever you may be in the world.

Graham and Audrey
Proud grandparents.

Hooray for Mia and Ella!

Hip hip hooray!
Hope everyone is well - look forward to seeing some pictures before long.
Uncle Bill and Auntie Claudia

The finished extension to the farm in Lusaka

Pete sent me these photos of the newly finished extension to the house on Mum and Dad's farm in Lusaka. If you can't remember what it used to look like check out these photos from the first post on this blog, December 27 2006.



It looks fantastic on the inside...

This is how the veranda used to look

Thanks for the pictures Pete,

Dylan



PS

Mum just sent me these extra pictures of the new main entrance to the house in the extension. It looks huge!

A Mainsah/Che Christmas

Did everyone have a quiet Christmas? ...not everybody! Here are some photos of what the Mainsah/Che clan got up to over the holidays. If you want to see more then follow the 'More photography by Joel' link on the right.

For those of you that don't recognize her, this is Ese, Winnie and Victor's Daughter who is now 3 years of age-ish (not 100% sure of the dates here). Ese didn't recognize me in the summer, when I said "hi, Ese", she answered "how do you know my name?" in a very suspicous manner!


Kintashe, Sunjo and 'Zanga striking poses. Sunjo may look confused about your pose Zangi but we think you look cool.

Uncle Evaristus with Elsa, now about 2, last time you saw her on the blog she was just 6 months. She keeps getting prettier every day, just like Uncle Eva!

Left to right: Joel, Sophia, Joe, newborn baby Yana, Winnie, Eseosa, Kintashe, Monique, Evaristus, Kuzanga, Judith and Michael.

Chil promised that she'd grow an afro this big but got fed up with it and cut it! What do they put in the water in Budapest, Judith? Awesome!

The present-frenzy...


Some of little Elsa, obviously the star of the show, and below with her daddy Joel.


Nice boots 'Tashe, bet they keep you warm!

Looks like it was a great Christmas, wish we could have been there,

Dylan and Chil

Boxing Day

I thought I'd post this excellent portrait from Boxing day, stolen from Stephen's collection of photography, which you can find by using the Photography by Long Strattonian link on the right.

Dylan

Happy New Year from Toronto

Happy Christmas! I hope you've all had a great holiday.


This is Chil and I and friends at the work Christmas party at the posh restaurant at the top of the Royal Ontario Museum. As it was an event for the department from the hospital I left in July most of the people hadn't seen Chil for some time and were very surprised to see her so pregnant. This made a change as most of the time people have been saying how tiny Chil looks and how the bump can't possibly be twins. Personally, I think it's a pretty impressive bump!

We had a great Christmas, much busier than expected. We went to Vern's for Christmas Eve Eve for dinner.

This is our friend Vern and his 6 month old girl Laurel: we seem to be increasingly surrounded by small children these days and I think that it's only the start!

On Christmas Eve itself we had a party at our condo and invited all the other lonely expatriate fellows we know: British, Australian, Swiss, French and Belorussian. However, the stars of the show were definately Joshua and Nathan, the twin baby boys of Chil's friend Deborah who also lives in our building. One or other of them skillfully exposed Chil's inexperience in nappy changing by howling like a car alarm until his mother (and everyone else) came to see who was causing such a commotion. Chil had to be rescued mid-nappy change. I'm sure we'll both be experts before long, however.




On Christmas day one of my colleagues from my old job at St Mikes kindly invited us round for dinner with his parents. I actually had a week off work but after all that we were just happy to sleep.

Thanks to everyone for their Christmas cards and gifts. We were especially inefficient this year and didn't send out any cards at all. I know you can forgive Chil under the circumstances but I'm afraid I don't have much of an excuse. Especial thanks to Mum and Dad in Zambia who bought the twins these beautiful cribs, here being put together by myself...

...and to Mrs and Mr Bill Bould Snr who bought us the most amazing all terrain pram, essential for getting around in ice and snowstorms while -20c outside.

I was very impressed to see that Nandad is now fully operational with Skype, including webcam in glorious technicolor. I think there's definately no excuses now for Skypeophobia, it will be the best way to see the twins, when they come.

Happy New Year from Toronto,

Dylan

Christmas in Zambia

I got these pictures from Pete's Facebook page, so for those of you who don't do Facebook, these are some pictures of Christmas in Zambia. Were you hunting for turkey, Pete?

Winter's here!

I think we've caught up with the Norfolk winter. It's the wind chill that makes it "feels like -21" that tells the true story.

Ultrasound pictures of the twins

These are our latest pictures of the twins, in case you don't know, expected to be identical girls. They are probably all pictures of twin A as twin B is so active it's hard to get a clear picture: despite being identical they certainly seem to have different personalities already. Chil is 30 weeks tomorrow which means a maximum of 7 weeks left before they arrive. We are busy looking for an all terrain pram with snow wheels and a storm shield to enable mobility in the Toronto winter and getting things together to turn out solarium into a nursery. We're also anxiously waiting on information as to who's going to come and visit us, especially on visa information from Zambia!

Pictures of Chil and bump to follow.

Congratulations to Mwamba on her appointment to the Melbourne office and on Evaristus on his promotion in the New York branch of IBM.

Dylan

Winter arrives in Norfolk

Warm greetings to you
all, wherever you may
be in the world. I hope
these shots will give an idea

of our weather just now.

Over the last 24 hours we
have had about six inches
of snow, but of course it

is much deeper in places.
We don't often get much snow
before Christmas, so this is unusual.
It will probably only last a day or two.

Here is our village sign;
it stands just outside our
house, which is behind me.

This is our garden pond and picnic
table.

This is what I call rubbishy
weather!

A view of one of our

neighbours' allotments.
No ploughing today.

Hopefully we'll be able
to keep toasty warm
with these well seasoned
logs.