Birmingham Thinktank

It's been a long time coming but we're back in Birmingham and it's kind of fun - although it's hard to believe that we left a decade ago. What happened? Well quite a lot by the look of the city centre although , our old stomping ground, is largely unchanged. Sadly it was raining this morning so we didn't spend any time sight-seeing; we just headed off to , Birmingham's newest museum, hoping to squeeze the maximum out of the not-so-cheap admission! First up then was the planetarium and a cute movie called The Little Star That Could:

Then it was time to visit the big machines - those huge, clanking and hissing steam engines that hark back to Birmingham's industrial heritage. Joshua was very impressed with the massive steam locomotive and I have to admit that its sheer size and sense of raw power made me feel like a little boy again!

However to be honest Joshua was just killing time until he got to visit the Lego Lab and learn the dark arts of animation. Yes, once again, he could sharpen his webcam skills while bringing a story all of his own to life. Well when I say story I mean that in its loosest sense as a viewing of Forest Crazy will reveal:

It's a shame that the sound hasn't uploaded correctly as Joshua chose a banging techno tune for this particular creation; maybe next time. After this excitement a bit of down-time was needed so Joshua and Christina enjoyed themselves immensely in the water-play and dressing-up zones. Who knew that pretending to be car mechanics and short-order chefs could be such fun? In fact it was quite a challenge to drag them off to the Object Handling show; itself a bit of a mystery. As it turned out Joshua and Christina properly enjoyed the deep-sea theme what with shark jaws, turtle shells, a saw-fish and assorted dried sea-life. I was quite jealous of all the fun they were having!

Still my chance came with England vs France in the ! An excellent rugby match, tense and right down to the wire with exactly the right result