Merry Christmas!

Well, I know that I am putting this up on the 26th, but I was quite busy with actual Christmas activities until now. I thought I would start of the Christmas picture extravaganza by showing our lovely display.

Despite the fact we spent Christmas with Claudia's family in Augsburg, we still decorated our place and set up a tree. Claudia decided to theme decorate the house this year, using only red and white ornaments and trying to have as many moose and snowflakes as possible in these colours. When it came to the tree, the red and white stuck.
I think all in all it turned out very well. Here is a shot of the final product, with our Franz-build nativity next to it, everything illuminated.
I hope everyone had a nice time over Christmas and I can assure you have accumulated lots of content for upcoming posts.

Winter Boy

Well, this is my last day in the office until Jan 2, so I am not sure how many posts I will make between now and then. Probably some since I will have some time with not much to do I am sure, and I will most likely take a whole bunch of photos over the Christmas visit.

Christmas always provides lots of photo content.

In the meantime, here is a frosty little man in his cool had driving his bobby car along the road in our neighbourhood. What a happy dude.

Helping out

Liam likes to help out around the house. When I am vacuuming, he is following me around with a little broom doing some sweeping up. He thinks he is helping, when I think normally he is just knocking stuff over and getting in the way.

It is the thought that counts though.

A Nice Gift

Last night was my work Christmas dinner and we went out to a nice local restaurant. After dinner, the boss gave us all a very nice surprise in the form of a nice jacket as a gift. Here is what it looks like. We were all pretty impressed as it is a pretty nice ski/trekking jacket from Jack Wolfskin. Funny enough, I was looking for a winter jacket recently and this has now saved me the pain of having to actually shop for one.

It does not even have any HP logo on it, so I am not branded as a corporate stooge when out in public. I did point out that now we look odd outside since our group is all wearing exactly the same thing and it could also make some confusion at the coat rack at the end of the day. 20 people with identical coats....

Party boy

Not much to say about this one, but here is the party boy:

Liam in the News

Liam's media coverage has begun... In yesterday's amazing edition of the "Ammerbuch Aktuelle" Liam's daycare was in a story because a dude donated (built) a nice wooden bench for them. Below is the image from the paper of all the little people sitting on this bench. Liam is in the front row, 2nd from left, and he is the only one with a big smile for the camera.

Now, I think this also speaks volumes about our local paper... this is the community newspaper, at least 3/4 of which is filled with news about local clubs, organizations and community events. It is not really a proper newspaper. There is only town news, and since our "town" is made up of 4 villages populated between 1000-4000 people, you don't really expect much on world events.

There was an exciting story last year when all the wild pigs escaped from the park.... I never did find out if they got them back.

click on the photo for a larger version where you can better see the little faces.

Mystery Box

I returned from a meeting today to find an enormous cooler on my desk. It had been brought over by the mail folks and I was surprised to see anything there. It was massive and my first worry that it was a kidney or perhaps human head inside, some sort of bizarre warning from paper competitors....

When I looked at the shipping label, I was relieved... then curious.... then very very happy.

Addressed to me, Mr. Fraser Anderson. Ok that is indeed me.

From...Inge de Braekeleir Never heard that name in my life.

address... Godiva Belgium. hmmmmm

I opened it up and hoorah! it was a massive basked of chocolate treats!
Wine, coffee, chocolates, cookies, some nutella like stuff, all from the wonderful Godiva chocolate house. It was even in a nice looking leather basket type thing. As excited as I was, I was not really expecting anything, so I had to open it right up to see the card.
Well thank you "HP Everyday Paper Team Europe" unexpected and awesome. This is the company that makes the uncoated HP office paper. The regular paper that you would be using most often. Now they are my favorite people on earth. At least until the basket is empty.

The Clever Niece

Not much news today, here is an amusing picture of my Niece, Claire. My mother brought this one over on her last visit. Look at the little astronomer.

The Little Hockey Star

Liam and I were playing in the basement yesterday and he made me a happy daddy. He wanted to play with my hockey stick. He had seen me with it before, shooting some of the little bean bag balls around the basement for him, and he wanted to try it out.


Sometimes he is not quite the smartest guy, he wanted to take the stick into the other room, but of course he tried to take it out sideways through the door. He really could not figure out why he was stuck. So like most problems, he tried to solve it by hitting the wall then yelling at me.


Just to round out my whole proud hockey daddy experience, here is a film of Liam giving it a try.

Christmas Decorations

Well, we are into December now and our house is all Christmassed up. Claudia spent a day last weekend putting up all the nice things and now we have a holiday feeling to the house.

First, we have the display of Christmas Munchins. Including nutcrackers, smoking men and a nice wooden bear.
Next, we have the big advent calendar with even more munchkins:
Claudia was all crafty and made some stockings. She did an excellent job, nice fun fur and snowflake motif.
The Key box has our little tree ornaments with our names on them that my Mum has gifted us with in past years...
And finally, the advent wreath type device in the centre of the dining table, also assembled by Claudia.
To reward herself for this impressive display, she enjoyed a small gluhwein

Another Super Toy

We were just in Augsburg over the weekend and Liam's Opa had another special treat for him. He had built him a little oven to play with. Little kids like to do the same things that Mummy and Daddy are doing, and now Liam can cook along with us. He is often making a pest of himself in the kitchen, and little play stoves are very common toys here.

Of course, Franz had to spend some weeks designing and building it himself, and you can see that it looks really great. We need to go get him some play food to cook on it now. He keeps cooking the potholders at the moment. You can see them in the oven in this image.

Lego display

Nothing much to say today, so here is a photo I took of an impressive Lego display. This was in a toy store window in Ulm. It is depicting the Ulm regatta that took place slightly beforehand. The buildings are all accurate to what is actually along the river there. It was huge and pretty neat.

The Little Trouble Maker

Today Liam was a bit of a pest, he did not want to eat breakfast, get dressed, go to daycare, get out of the car... he just wanted to play with trains and bobby. He would run away and hide in his little house when I wanted to brush his teeth.

It is sometimes frustrating, but how can I stay mad at this face?

Liam's Dance Party

Something that has recently become part of the day to day routine with Liam is the Dance Party. This was introduced by Aunt Doris on one of her visits... Liam has always liked listening to music, and in particular two CDs. He asks for these CDs by name, the first of which is "Trabis" which is the first album by Travis, and the other is "Car Wash" which is the Beatles.

I have no idea how or why the Beatles are "car wash" but they are.

Anyway, Liam was listening to his music and I think Doris wanted to liven things up by adding some dancing bears into the mix. Since that fateful moment, we have been having a bear dance party almost daily.

Here are some best of moments I managed to film. As far as my films go, this is a long one.

For the Americans

Well, today is American Thanksgiving, and although I don't celebrate, I thought that I would put up this photo in honor of their biggest holiday.

I bought these Roast Turkey flavoured chips the other day. What the tin failed to advertise, is that these are Roast Turkey WITH GRAVY flavour. They actually do taste reasonably like what they are supposed to, but I am not sure if it is really what I want to be eating.

There is also a very very unpleasant aftertaste that lingers for HOURS after just a couple of chips. A testament to he mighty chemicals involved in the flavouring no doubt.

Still, I will call this a triumph of chips, if not for quality, for imagination.

An Interesting warning sign

I have to say sorry for the very brief posts, I am having a super super busy time at work at the moment. Also, I have not really taken so many interesting photos lately. I will surely have something exciting coming along soon.

So here is a funny sign I saw once:

A Tiny Door

Sometimes you need the right person to open a certain door

Forgotten Cell Phone Photos

I looked through my cell phone and saw some photos I took a while ago and forgot to post.

These are taken in the Gersthofen mall, where we had popped over for a quick shop a little while ago. It seems that the store "Quelle" which is a bit like a Sears catalogue shop, was having some sort of celebration.

Like many stores, they chose to celebrate by giving students low paying jobs dressing up in humiliating costumes. Here we met a girl dressed as a giant cake. Liam was a little scared by all that dress, but he was fascinated and certainly wanted to check her out.
Later on, we again saw the cake girl, and she had been joined by a blue man. They were enjoying a beverage in the courtyard in front of the store. I cannot imagine what kind of jobs these two turned down before taking these ones. I am going to go ahead and assume that this is a minimum wage gig.

I would also say it is very believable that these two are somehow related to the local manager of Quelle. Although, if a relative approached me when I was a student with the "how would you like to make some extra money!" line followed by "You just have to walk around a mall dressed like a cake!" I don't think I would have taken them up on it.

There are many, many things I would dearly love to dress up as. neither of these are on that list.
After that, they walked off into the proverbial sunset. I like to imagine they lived happily ever after.

Winter Weather

So it is below zero and we have lots of snow. Makes me feel very wintery.

In the winter weather, both Ryan and I have been known to wear exotic winter hats.
Claudia and Doris have their own winter look...
To be fair, we were off skiing when this was taken, but I know I would certainly dress like this for everyday winter fashion, and I think Ryan would do the same. Claudia generally has an aversion to hats, unless it gets really really cold. I cannot speak for the Doris.

Anyway, I was just feeling wintery and looked at some snowy photos today.

Sitting Nice at the Table

Liam is often not the best behaved boy when it comes to meal times. He does not want to eat what we eat, when we eat or how we eat. If it were up to him, every meal would be Pizza, Noodles, Toast, Cereal, followed by Gummi Bears.

Here you can see that no meal would be possible to enjoy unless it is accompanied by many many trucks:



And here is a photo of him enjoying a mini package of Gummi Bears. He certainly finds a way to behave when those are involved.

I Love this Comic Strip

I read the strip on www.penny-arcade.com pretty regularly. It is a great site that comments mainly about the world of video gaming, but on occasion they have non-gaming topics. This comic makes me laugh every time I see it.

The Popular Visitor

Last week, Aunt Doris stopped by for a brief visit. As so often mentioned, Aunt Doris is pretty much Liam's favorite person. As usual, the moment she came in the house, everything else was forgotten and Liam had to follow her around, telling her all of his adventures (with a limited vocabulary.)

Liam also makes sure that his guests are not bored. He certainly had lots on the agenda for Doris. He showed her all his books, watched Jim Knopf with her, made her listen to his music over and over (SINGEN, SINGEN!) and finally Doris looked like she would really like to play cars. This meant that Liam led the way with the big noisy truck and Doris had to drive right behind with the little blue car.

Lucky that Doris seems to like playing cars as well.

St. Martin's Walk

Last night I went on my first St. Martin's walk, which is a big seasonal event for kids over here. The little people go out on a walk from point A to point B carrying a paper lantern on a stick with a candle in it. In the case of Liam, this was done in cooperation between the two day-cares of the village, with Point A being the first daycare in middle of town, and Point B being Liam's daycare.

They sing lantern songs and march along and there is some religious significance to the whole thing, which goes with the story of St. Martin. Claudia was not able to really elaborate too much on the whole thing. I think basically it is something fun for little kids to do. They generally spend some time before making their lanterns and then they enjoy the walk. At the end of course there were snacks to be enjoyed.

I did my best to take photos of the event, but I am not so experienced in night-photography. I did not just want to use the flash since that would just look like people standing around in the dark, so I tried using a rear-sync flash, which would freeze people in focus at one point, then let the ambient light of the scene still appear. Since everything was moving around, this made some pretty funky looking effects and light trails.

Here is the group singing a little song:
Now a montage of Liam and his lantern walking around. I think some look pretty funky, click on the photo to enlarge it.

The good life

When my mother was here, we were out for a walk once and saw this person walking two wiener dogs. Ahhhh beloved wiener dog, how great it would be to trade places with her. I can only imagine all the crazy antics they must get up to.


Having a wiener dog is one of those long running fantasies of mine where I know that the fantasy is much much much better than the reality actually would be. Therefore I never really seriously consider getting a dog.

Considering Claudia and I both work all day, I really don't think it is fair to the animal to leave it home alone all day. I also don't really feel like caring for a pet. Caring for a kid is more than enough at the moment.

More rides at the discount fair

Another trip to the discount fair in Nagold, home of the conveyor belt milk cart ride. What other exciting things could such a place hold for our little friends???

why not let the kids have a barrel? that should be hours of fun. Well, all the "rides" here were free, but come on...

I suppose the kids looked like they were having fun.
The next ride was a strange one. It seems like someone had the brilliant idea to take an old car, park it on some tarps and then let kids paint it. Seriously, this ride was "paint the car." It is sort of like the Nagold version of "pimp my ride" but with less big screen TVs.

Again, who am I to complain when the kids appear to be having fun, but it really seemed like a deeply weird idea for something to put at a fun fair.

I would love to see the list of rides that did not make the cut. They were probably along the lines of:

1) Escape the well
2) Cat watching
3) Brick
4) Bury the rock