Em's parties always carry an optional fancy dress theme of one sort or another, and this year was no exception. And so it was that on a Saturday afternoon in January 2005 a bunch of friends, family and assorted spods turned up in Sutton Courtenay, dressed as a multitude of animals. Rounding off the gallery are pictures from Mr Knight's birthday gathering later that year.
In the spring of 2005, we finally got around to visiting Scotland - our last holiday before Josh was born. The lochside cottage, just outside Callender, gave us the perfect opportunity to visit all manner of castles, monuments and a rainy, windswept Glen Coe. We saw highland cattle, a never-ending supply of sheep and even the occasional kestrel. On the way up we'd stopped in Skipton for a few days to visit Emily's godmother - we bookended the trip with a mooch around Hadrian's Wall, a brief stint in Carlisle and dinner in Newcastle with the gorgeous Vicky Bell. A fantastic ten days.
Highlights from the first six months in the life of our eldest son. Joshua was two weeks late and had a lot of hair. He cried quite a bit but he was this amazing pocket of life, exploding into the world and turning it upside down, at least in our quiet little corner. His full birth story can be found here.
Our friends Kirsten and Colin got married on a cloudy, slightly drizzly day in Cambridge. Despite the less than brilliant weather, it was a splendid occasion: two perfectly suited people who've done the only really sensible thing, and decided to spend the rest of their lives together. Emily was chief bridesmaid and everyone generally looked lovely. It was Joshua's first wedding: perhaps not surprisingly considering his age, he slept through the whole thing.
I hadn't been to Germany in years, and even then the last time I visited it was high summer and we were deep in Mosel country. A busy German city in the middle of winter was a different experience altogether, but fun nonetheless. We stayed in a gorgeous hotel that overlooked the river, and visited numerous local haunts over the course of our four-day visit: Emily and her parents had been there before, so we were never stuck for ideas (or a translation, seeing as she's more or less fluent in German).
Stuff that didn't really fit anywhere else: an excursion to Bekonscot the day before Joshua was born; his first beer festival (a mere two weeks later); a London barbecue; excursions to Bournemouth and London...oh, and some Christmassy pictures.