Reunions

Last week, we had visitors. The Browers are old family friends of the Mattus. In a nutshell, our families knew each other more than 30 years ago, when we all lived in a small Alberta farming community called Wainwright (where I was born). As the two families moved on, contact was lost until son Derek and son Ravi met while both working at Prospect in 1997. Crazy, eh?

Derek, Sandra and Leon (pictured above) Brower are spending an academic year in St Petersburg (Derek is doing a PhD on Russian literature-related stuff and Sandra is on maternity leave from her PhD), and they were back in the UK to visit family and friends and, in Derek's case, a few pubs.

Derek and Sandra have been incredibly good guides to both of us on being new parents, by offering a lot of practical and encouraging advice, giving us tonnes of baby stuff that has proved more useful than we ever imagined and, perhaps most important, giving us the idea for a blog. (I mentioned the Browler in my first entry). And Leon is about twice as old as Kirin, a fact reflected in the size differential.

Finally, a few brief words of guidance on how to maximise your use of the blog:

• You can click on the pictures to enlarge them.
  
• Any text that is highlighted (like the words"Prospect" and "Browler" above) is a hyperlink that I have inserted. Just click on it and you will find yourselves in a parallel world of online delight.
  
• At the end of each entry, there is a comment button if you want to offer any thoughts. So far, the Hinckley-Australian Auntie Sarah is leading the way but all communication is welcome. And don't worry - I vet everything before it is published.