Snow

This morning when I opened the blinds, Liam let out a gasp and then yelled "SNOW BOOTS"

He has been waiting for this day since Mummy bought him the new boots a while ago.

Awesome Pumpkin Action

Ok, here are the good bits.

It seems that someone had the idea to make a theme for this pumpkin festival. A theme that would dictate what the glorious pumpkin sculptures would look like. I want to find the person responsible for this theme and thank them.

When you think pumpkins, what is the first and most logical theme that jumps to mind? Thats right, OUTER SPACE.

First up was the solar system. This thing was huge, an entire solar system made from pumpkins.
I HIGHLY recommend clicking this one to see it a little bigger. Clearly the sun is in the centre, then lots of green pumpkins to represent space, and orange pumpkins to represent the orbits of the planets. At certain points in the orbits, there is a bigger pumpkin for each planet. The planet-kins have the names written on them. Here is Saturn and Earth (Erde)
Once you have seen this awesomeness, I am sure you are thinking, OK, pumpkins are round, planets and stars are round, not too much of a stretch really. The impressiveness was all in the size of the display.

So we move on to man's exploration of space. Here is a pumpkin rocket.
Which of course flew to the moon. Where the pumpkin astronauts landed....
The pumpkin astronauts needed to get around... so they would of course need a pumpkin moon rover....
And what would those brave pumpnauts discover on the moon? They would drive around until they found some strange looking moon volcanoes...
I am sure the pumpnauts were amazed to discover moon volcanoes, since there are really no such thing, but I am sure this impossibility was nothing compared to what was behind the volcanoes.
That is right, pumpkin aliens. Just like something out of the X-files (p-files?) This was the pinnacle of awesome for me right here.

Close up on the alien. I will call him pumpy.
As strange as the outer space theme was, I thought it was made even more amazing by the path from some fact based displays on planets and exploration off into fantasy land of volcanoes and aliens.

This was truly the worlds greatest pumpkin themed exposition, the signs did not disappoint.

Whet Your Pumpking appetite

I am a little slow on the next pumking news, some busy busy days at work again. I will try to cover the REALLY good stuff tomorrow, but until then, have a look at these pumpkin sculptures.

Worlds Largest Pumpkin Exhibition

On this past Friday evening, I asked Claudia if there was anything going on this weekend. She asked me if I was interested in going to the world's largest pumpkin fest, which she had just read about in a magazine.

Did she even have to ask??? yes.

The festival is on in Ludwigsburg, just on the other side of Stuttgart from us. We have been there numerous times in the past as it is home to the fairy tale garden and a nice castle grounds.

I took quite a few photos, so lets embark on a pumpkin journey.

There was little question which way to go...
And it seemed that this was a big event. Indeed there was no parking for blocks, all lots full and we walked almost 20 min from the spot we found. Look at he throngs of pumpkin fans.
Something I expected was HUGE pumpkins, and that was delivered. Here are Claudia and Liam in front of the 4th largest pumpkin in Europe.
Off in this glorious tent are the top 3 pumpkins in Europe. First place is in the middle, it is from Belgium and weighs 610 kg. that is a lot of pumpkin.
Down the path from here was the area where they sold pumpkins. I have not seen so many in one place before. I did not know there was quite this many types to choose from. I will let you look at the glory of these stalls.
Stay tuned, I have not even scratched the surface of the awesomeness yet....

More Bed Time Action

Staying with the theme of bed time, I thought I would show off the new PJs that Claudia bought for Liam last week. We are all quite fond of Penguins and Liam really went for these. He especially loves the matching socks. At the moment, every bedtime is started with Liam talking about being the Penguin man.

This also was a good opportunity for Liam to show off some of his penguins by posing with them. He has acquired quite a few so far as gifts from various sources and they all have names. Here in his right hand is "Papa Penguin" and in the left "Mummy Penguin."
Not in the photo are "Liam Penguin, Lilly Penguin, and Crane Driver." Perhaps they will feature in a later post. In case you are wondering, all the penguins get to ride on his wooden train, and one of the train cars has a crane on it. "Crane Driver" is the penguin that he always put in this car. Occasionally "Crane Driver" is named "Caitlin" after his friend Lilly's baby sister.

Another comfortable position

I know that in the recent weeks I have been more than a little relaxed in the frequency of updates on here, but I will see what I can do to improve things...

Work has been crazy busy these days and I am happy to announce that I still have a job in the latest re-organization. My department was not reduced too much in size and I will continue to do pretty much the same things as before. Of course, the looming re-org has caused quite some stress in the past weeks.

On a lighter note, Liam is coming up with some interesting sleeping techniques. It is pretty often than about an hour after bed time, we will hear a THUMP from his room. Upon investigation, it will usually be the case that he has fallen out of bed... or knocked something over... or just done something odd. Usually it does not bother him and he just goes back to sleep wherever he finds himself.
I don't think this looks all that comfortable, but who am I to argue...

Happy Birthday Dave

Well, Yesterday was Dave's birthday. I sent him neither gift nor card.

Here is my gift to you Dave, a rather unflattering photo of you from 2005 when we pretended it was your birthday and sent you a cake.


Happy real Birthday Dave

Around Ouchy

In Lausanne, the part of the town down near the lake is called Ouchy. I am sure in French it sounds perfectly OK, but when I say it in English, it makes me laugh. One of the things I liked best was this place:

Chateau d'Ouchy. Amazing.

There were some other interesting things around the town that I thought were worth looking at. One of which was this pub. I recommend clicking it for the larger image, the Giraffe door was really something special. We did not go inside as it was far too early in the day for a bar, but I really liked the look and name.

I think this was part of a university or something. To be honest I can't remember, but we parked right next to it and it looked impressive.

We also had a look inside the cathedral there. As usual it was pretty amazing architecture in a nice Gothic style. I did not get any photos of the outside since it started raining quite heavy when we left the building and we just wanted to get indoors someplace to have lunch.

Olympic Museum and Chinese Acrobats

Back on our summer visit to Geneva, Claudia and I took a day to head up to Lausanne and have a look around the city. One of the famous things about this location is that the Olympic organization is based here and there is an Olympic Museum.

Since the Olympics were actually on at the time, we thought it would be worth heading over to have a look.

Here is the large fountain display marking the entrance to the grounds of the museum and park.
Up the steps was the entrance to the Museum, I have to say, the building itself was very unimpressive. A big white block with no real style to it. It seems like the Olympic types were not real big on getting some interesting architecture.

Naturally, there was extra decorations promoting the Beijing games added to the building.
The white pillars leading to the entrance have the city and year for each of the games. We actually saw this guy working on adding Beijing to the pillar as we were going in.
Once inside, I did not take many photos, some displays forbid it, such as the exhibit on the city of Beijing and others were just not that interesting. While it was neat to see some of the sporting equipment and the like, I don't really think I would look back fondly on a photo of some shoes.

What WAS exciting was that they had a performance by some acrobats from China. Since the show was just starting when we arrived, we decided to head in and have a look.

I also took this as a chance to practice taking some photos in lower light conditions. Acrobats in a darkened hall presented some interesting challenge, but I think these turned out not too badly.

The group were about 6 women and one man, all in quite flamboyant costumes. The first part of the show was a lot of plate spinning. Can't go wrong there. Although a couple of plates were dropped.
Here is a big group of them, putting on some slick plate spinning moves.
After a bit, they finally let the dude join in, who showed off his enormous muscles by picking up a bunch of tiny plate spinning ladies. I was slightly too slow on the photo and they had put their legs down at the sides, but I assure you they were all up there just a moment earlier.
Then to make up for being left out of the first act so much, Acrobat-man came out and rode a unicycle while flipping bowls from his feet up onto his head. I think his costume was a little bit too nuts for me.
He finished off this segment with some crazy ring twirling, all the while keeping a large number of bowls on his head.
Next up, a girl spun a bunch of cloth around. Kind of strange, but it looked nice. She had some moves while doing it, but I just liked this one with four going at the same time.
To round out the performance, there was some more crazy costumes and crazy posing moves.
All in all it was quite entertaining, and since we had not really expected to see any sort of show, it was a nice extra thing to see on our day out in Lausanne. The fact that the Olympics were going, actually benefitted me in a way I did not expect. I am also very happy that it was Chinese acrobats and not Chinese folk music. I am sure there are many many fans of that sort of thing, but I can't stand it.

Another Product test.... Dr Pepper Cherry Vanilla

Well, the gas station has once again been a gateway to a larger world of new flavours. As I was filling up the car recently, I saw this exciting new beverage on the shelf of the cooler section.

Dr. Pepper was never really one of my favorites, but it was ok. Adding exciting newness to the product made it a must have for me. I think I have some sort of mania when it comes to trying potentially horrible new things.
I opened it up and gave it the sniff test. Now since I don't drink standard Dr Pepper very often, I can not really gauge how much it differs from the normal stuff. It did smell quite sweet and not unpleasant at all though.
With the smell test getting a relative success, I thought it seemed safe enough to go ahead and give it a taste.
It was, as advertised, full of cherry and vanilla flavour. Here is where I had some trouble, as I recall, regular Dr.Pepper tastes quite similar to cherry cola. At least I thought the cherry flavour was always in there. I did like the vanilla though, it was a nice taste, not too strong. It did leave a bit of an aftertaste, but I am starting to find that almost all pop is doing that now. I think anything with that much sugar just leaves you feeling sticky.

After most coke/pop beverages, I almost always feel the need to follow them up with a little glass of water to clean away that sugar sticky feeling.

I had a nice long think about how this one tasted...
I will go ahead and give this product a slightly mediocre thumbs up. It was OK, but not really that different from regular Dr.Pepper as I remember it. I would drink it again if someone offered it to me, but I don't think I would go out of my way to get it on my own.