More of Liams Birthday

This is becomming the longest time ever to get all the photos up. So, the birthday folks enjoyed some lovely cake.

In the middle of the cake eating, someone yelled that it was time for a pirate dance, all the kids got up and danced all around the room. I thought this was pretty awesome.

Then Claudia started the treasure hunt. the kids first had to make some pirate hats from newspapers.

Then each had a scrap of a map that they all put together to give a clue for the treasure hunt.

The treasure hunt took them through the house, playing games until they found the treasure at teh end, which had some treats for the kids.

More Birthday action

OK, Work is a crazy amount of stuff right now, so there has been almost no time for blogging.
Here are some more photos from the "Pirate Party" including gift opening, the Captain Sharky cake and the spontaneous Porate dance that took place in the midst of eating it.

Liam's Birthday - Part 1

I am pretty slow with the web page these days I know, I am just getting around to photos from Liam's Birthday now. The big boy turned five back on June 14. He of course awoke nice and early and went down to open up his gifts. It was a largely pirate themed year. His big gifts from Mum and Dad you can see were the treasure chest and a Lego Pirate ship.

The next big gift from was a real "grown up" tent. This was from Aunt Doris and Uncle Bernhard. He had a little kiddie tent that he had enjoyed for a long time, but it was at the end of its useful life. Many holes were showing up in the floor of the old tent, and the new one can be used for real camping one day....

From Oma and Opa, there were a bunch of gifts, a Knight wall-clock and this Captain Sharky Telescope were the clear favorites on the day though. The telescop got quite a lot of use once Liam learned the trick of focusing it.

There were of course lots more gifts from the family, books, toys and music, but I did not get everything photographed, as I spent much of the morning assembling the various pieces of other toys. I think that is the main role of parents on birthdays and Christmas, putting together tiny bits.

Finishing off the Medieval Fest

So to close out the series on “Ritterspiele” I will show some of the other fin things that were going on at the fest.

First of all, we had to have a good lunch.  As with every single outdoor activity in Germany, there were a variety of booths selling food.  I asked Liam what he was in the mood for, and he decided on a sausage.  We picked this booth from the many at hand.

Liam went for the “Ritterwurst” which was a big red sausage wrapped in bread.  It was neat, they put the bread dough on the sausage and baked it all together into a nice self contained hot dog.  Most of the food was called Ritter-something…

I went for the “Ritter bowl”  which was a bowl made of bread, then some chunks of meat, vegetables and a sauce all thrown together.  It was similar to a kebab, but not quite the same.The booth next to ours was cooking an entire pig in an olde tyme oven.  This also looked quite good, but I was satisfied with my bread bowl.

After lunch we had a walk around to look at the other attractions.  Right near our food booth was a falconing demonstration.  Liam did enjoy the birds, but it did not last all that long.

There were some games for kids of course, and Liam was too much of a chicken to try this one out.  The kid had to run really fast, and hit the target with the halbard, then keep running by fast enough so that the weight  did not swing around and smack them in the head.       What ended up being the highlight of the whole fest for Liam was the carpentry exhibit.  At this stall, the carpenter let him put on a a leather apron and work on some wood.  He sat here and carved wood for at least half an hour.  I think he would have stayed all day had I let him.  Opa would be proud of his wood working skills.