My dearest little brother,

It has been way too long since I posted anything on this site. I feel terrible. Please forgive me. I'm sure you will understand though that whilst there's no excuse for not keeping you up to date for the first half of 2009, the second half was dominated by the arrival of Kyle Alan, your nephew and our sunshine.



These have been emotional weeks and months for me. I get so sad when I imagine the wee man growing up with no aunts or uncles, no cousins...you and I had such great times when the whole family got together and just loved being in the company of our extended family. I'm so worried that Kyle will miss this, be lonely in some way.

I have thought of you so often the past few months...even more so than before. I am so very sad that you and Kyle won't get to know each other. And I hope so much that our wee man will be a happy boy, that Steffen and I will do our very best for him. We will of course tell him all about you, when the time comes...show him the photos we have dotted around the flat. He's a great wee lad...smiley and fairly easy-going (if a little whiney at times, but by no means a crier!). I can only hope that he gets to enjoy the company of our cousins and second cousins, as well as his great aunts and uncles as often as possible to at least try and fill the gap you have left.

I love you and miss you, your sister Sha x

Hogmanay Fireworks, Stirling Castle

Well, Ali, another year begins...time seems to be flying by and we still think of you every day and miss you terribly. Hogmanay was a cracking event this year, spent with none other than Mr. Wootton himself on the Esplanade at Stirling Castle. Other stars included Clanadonia, piper Finlay MacDonald and the iconic Deacon Blue, who didn't let us down. They played Real Gone Kid, Raintown, Wages Day, Dignity, Fergus Sings the Blues amongst other excellent tunes. It was bloody freezing though and the queue for the hot drinks was longer than the one for the bar, which says a thing or two about the temperatures. Mum treated us to a trip to the panto at the MacRobert centre on the 2nd Jan, which was a hoot. I think Steff was slightly bemused by the whole thing, but joined in famously with all the standard panto lines. I hope wherever you are that you know we are thinking of you.

The Streets in Hamburg

Hi Ali,

Went to see The Streets on Tuesday night. It was an excellent gig. Mike Skinner has so much energy and the songs took on a whole new sound when performed with the live band. He also had a lot of fun letting himself be entertained by the audience, having us all stop and pose in the middle of one hit, and sit down during another. I thought about you a lot - I know how much you liked The Streets and you would have loved this concert, particularly as he also did a short cover of the Prodigy's "Out of Space" which was very cool.

Elbow next, and the Kooks after that, so will report on those in due course.

Love you and miss you
Sha xxx

Joy Rides

Hi Ali,

We went to Heide-Park Soltau yesterday, a place where you would have had fun as well. Went on a lot of rides – »Colossos«, the world's steepest wooden roller coaster with a 65 m/61 degree drop, »Desert Race« which catapults you to the speed of 100 km/h in only 2.4 seconds. Sharon was sitting in front of this ride and nearly crapped her pants. Here you can see a video of Sharon and our friend Carsten riding the »Top Spin« and a couple of photos.

Coldplay live in Hamburg

Hi Ali, we saw Coldplay tonight in the Color Line Arena, Hamburg. Here you can see some of the really impressive show:



Here are some of the paper butterflies we caught during the show:

Germany vs. Turkey

Hi Ali, we're just getting ready for the Euro game Germany vs. Turkey, but all we got was a flag for car windows. So we had to use a book to hang it up.

Bottle-feeding Lambchops-to-be.

Hi Ali, we visited the Open Farm near Tobermory where we were allowed to bottle-feed some cute lambs. They went mental once they saw the bottles.