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

I was a cute kid

Here is a photo of me when I was just a lad of 2 years.  I thought it would be interesting to have a look and see if Liam looks like tiny me.

I think there is some resemblance,  however we are not like twins.  When Liam was just a tiny little baby, I think he looked just like me but with slightly smaller ears (thankfully)  Of course, as he grows up he looks less like Baby Fraser and more like Liam. 

 

I still Think I looked pretty cute though.  Also please note the amazing 1970s decor.  I also have zero clue who that other kid is.

 

Chair = awesome

tablecloth = awesome

Carpet = awesome

Bib = awesome

Haircuts = awesome

the collar on the yellow shirt that kid is wearing = extra awesome