Arrrrghhh

Avast Dave. Here is a post.

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.

Horb Medieval fest

The next event on the agenda was yet another race and yet more fire.  Similar to Ye Olde Hydrogene Balloone Pop, this time the knights rode with flaming spears and knocked over some poor guy holding a shield.  The shield was covered in something flammable which burst into flames on impact.

I thought this event seemed a little brutal.  It showed the brave honor of too knights as they each raced to see who could first knock down and ignite an unarmed, unmounted opponent.  Truly a test of bravery.

After this one, we finally got some actual jousting, the knights did a proper fight, riding at each other with lances, which shattered on impact in a very fun and impressive manner.  Liam liked this a lot.

After knocking one another down, the Black Knight and the White Knight continued the fight on foot.

Here is a little film of a joust.

After all these events, of course the good guys won, but there was a final attack by the baddies.  The only way to stop them was to finally use the catapult to great effect.  This was another highlight for Liam.

And that wrapped up the tournament.  It was all in all a very fun time and I think I would take Liam again if he wanted to check it out. 

More of the Medieval Festival

Now that the characters had all been introduced, there was some blah blah story that Liam was completely uninterested in.  Then, at last, the knights started smashing each other.

The First event was pretty great.  The knights each took a flaming spear, and then had to charge down a balloon filled with flammable gas.  The first one to hit his target won the round.  I really felt like I had been transported back in time to the days of latex balloons filled with hydrogen of yore.

It did look really good though.  I also made a little film so you can see the fireball.

Oh, I forgot to mention, the evil Black Knight arrived to make trouble and generally be evil.  Look at his evil….

Next up was another race-type joust, this time, the knights had to charge in with lances and hit the targets.  First one to hit it won this round.   This event was notable because the Black Knight won it by cheating.  He started before the herald blew the horn.  This was met with much booing from the crowd.

Next there was some unmounted combat. Three good guys in white against three baddies in black.  They traded wins until the goodies came through with their last man and managed to get a victory.

That will do for today, One more update of knights should wrap up the games.  Stay tuned.

Horb Medieval Games

This past weekend I took Liam over to Horb am Neckar (about 30 min away) for their annual medieval games and festival.  He has been into knights for a while now and I thought he would have a good time here.

The centerpiece of the festival is the big knights jousting show.   We had a nice spot with a good view of the action, and the show started first with a parade of the heralds carrying all the knight flags.  While this started out OK, it did take a little too long and Liam jept asking me when the knights were coming.

After this procession, some knights wheeled out a catapult.  This was parked in a corner of the area and brought a lot of questions from Liam.  When would they shoot it, who would shoot it, would hey hit bad guys with it, was it safe….  lots of speculation.

There was a whole story to go along with the show, the evil empress wants the treasure of the good knights which was the prize in the tournament blah blah blah.  Anyway, here are the baddies.

After some narrative (which Liam was not interested in,) we finally saw the entrance of the good knights.

Now Liam was finally getting excited.  These knights very much lived up to his expectations.  The white knight was of course the hero and Liam right away knew that this was a guy who was supposed to win.

More tomorrow.

Improved bike film

We went for another bike practice session and this time I brought the good camera.

Here is Liam motoring around in all his glory. I think he is getting much better with each ride, but that is the whole point isn't it.

A little film.

This one is just for The Doris.

Liam is saying what a knight would say to his squire. For some reason The Doris found this particularly funny and had Liam saying it over and over the last time she was visiting.

The Super biker

After quite a few false starts and failed outings, Liam is finally able to ride his bike.

Until now, he had only managed to do it when I was holding on to the special bar attached to the back of the bike for teaching.

Last weekend though we took him first to the park, then over to the school grounds for some practice. As long as it is wide open level ground, he is doing quite well.

I made this tremendously poor quality film of him using my phone.

enjoy.

A Visit from the Joneses

Last week Ryan and Doris stopped by for a nice visit.  Ryan was off on a week long business trip, so it was a good chance for them to stop by.   This was there first face to face meeting of Henrik the new guy.  I guess it was there first meeting at all since infant gurgling over the phone does not really count so well.

Of course, Liam had to jump in and dominate them as much as he could and he knows that a visit from uncle Ryan mainly mean another chance to improve on his wrestling skills.

  But after a vigorous wrestle fest, Ryan got to enjoy the more quite activities of juice and books.  I think that is a Petersson and Findus book there.  Always a treat to read those guys.

The Doris seemed quite impressed with the cuteness of her new nephew.  She spent a lot of time with the little man perched on her lap, shoulder, or wherever else he felt like relaxing.  Henrik still spends the bulk of his day either sleeping or eating, so here is a rare moment of him being alert and active.  He is probably just wondering why no one is feeding him.Amidst all this action, Liam of course likes to assert himself as the big brother and make sure he gets some time to hold his little brother in a nest of cushions.  Liam is very much into the big brother role and if anything we have to be extra careful that he is not giving Henrik too much affection (Liam is still more powerful than he may think.) The visit was rounded up with a BBQ with no photos followed by watching Bayern Munich lose to Inter Milan in the Champions league final.  A nice visit and we look forward to the next one

Kindergarten Fest

Liam just had the yearly kindergarten fest a couple of weeks ago.  This is much like the many other fests, but as it is for a kindergarten, there is no beer.  More coffee and cake.

The kids always put on a play of some kind, and this year it was a play about “Petersson and Findus” which is a popular children’s story from Sweden.  The main characters are Petersson the farmer and his cat Findus.  Liam’s role in the play was as one of the farmer’s “crazy chickens”

They lived in this lovely henhouse:

At a key moment in the narrative, the crazy chickens all run out of the house.

  And then, as chickens often do… they perform the crazy chicken dance.  Here are highlights of Liam’s moves.

Then naturally, the police come, round up all those chickens and take them away.

My child is a natural showman.

Ammerbuch Fire dept day

The village I live in is called Entringen, which is a pretty small place of around 4000 people.  As is the case for many small places, we are grouped together with a few other villages to be considered one larger town for many municipal services and functions.  There are five villages that are grouped together to make up Ammerbuch, and we share things like a mayor, Police, and of course, Fire Dept.

The Ammerbuch FD purchased an exciting new fire truck this year and it was time for the annual open house and festival to show it off.

Germans are mad on “fests” and there seems to be one going on every week from April-October.  There is always a superficial reason, like a fire/police/hospital hosting, or maybe some cultural club of some kind like a brass band, but all the fests seem to have the same basic elements:

1. Booths with sausages and snacks
2. Beer

Basically, they serve as a nice reason to get a whole bunch of people out of the house and in a common place to hang out with snacks.  Generally a good thing.  Our Ammerbuch fest was typical, a big food and beer area, then booths around the outside from the fire dept, red cross etc describing themselves and their role in the community.

Since Liam is still a big Fire Truck fan, we had to go and check it out.  We looked at the schedule and planned our arrival to watch the mock-accident.  I correctly assumed Liam would enjoy watching smashed up cars get cut apart by firemen.

There was quite a large crowd there by the time we arrived, so Liam got some help from his giant Uncle Bernhard to see over the heads of everyone.

As interesting as the whole accident was, the highlight for all the little people was that all the trucks were parked and open for them to run in and out of as they pleased.  Liam liked the new fire truck best of all since it was the biggest.

The glare off the windshield makes it a little hard to see him in there, so I went around the side for a better shot on the next fire truck he climbed in.

All in all a nice way to enjoy an afternoon.  I did wonder a couple of times what would happen if there was a fire someplace during this fest.  All the firemen, ambulance workers and their equipment was pretty tied up in the crowd.