Jim Knopf

Another of Liam's gifts this Christmas was a "Jim Knopf" Marionette. This is from his favorite story "Jim Knopf und Lukas der Lokomotivführer (Jim Button and Lukas the Train Driver.) A children's story by Michael Ende, who many people know for "The Neverending Story."

There is a very famous version of this story made into a play by the Augsburg Puppet theatre, which is quite famous over here. Liam has the DVD of this puppet play and we had to watch it daily so many times I cannot count.

I am not sure that I ever saw a human being so excited as the moment when he was face to face with a real life Jim. He was running around the room shaking, yelling JIM JIM JIM. This Jim is not for him to play with though, but to hang up in his room where he can see him.

Jim has been up in Liam's room for a few weeks now and Liam still talks to him every day. When we are getting him dressed or ready for bed, he has to say "hello Jim" and then I pick him up so he can shake Jim's hand.

For the whole story of Jim, check out this link

Here is a bit of the puppet play from YouTube:


And here are some more Jim images I found:

More Chirstmas photos

This one is just a mish mash of Christmas Photos. Here is Uncle Bernhard receiving a little gift:

The Joneses enjoying some festive packages:

Liam helping out with peoples gifts:

Liam very proud with his new drill or as he calls it "Bohrschiene"

Ryan posing nice so I can try out my new flash

Christmas pics

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Although this was Liam's third Christmas, it was the first one where he really knew what was going on. He learned important words and phrases like "Lights Tree" "Santa" "Present" and of course "Mine"

I think at first he was annoyed that he was not allowed to go into the room where all the gifts and tree were (that is how we do it over here,) but when he did finally get to go in, he was amazed with all the display and boxes and best of all, a crane that was as tall as him. Opa Franz made a giant working crane for Liam for Christmas, it is big enough for him to sit on a little stool at the back and drive around.

Another great gift for Liam was his own little CD player, so he can enjoy his great love of music without ruining my stuff. On the bad side, it also has a microphone so he can sing along with an amplified yell. Funny enough, Liam mainly listens to James (best of) the Beatles (who he calls "car wash" for some reason, and Travis. Good taste boy.

Poor Sick Boy

Over the Christmas holidays, it seems like about 90% of Germany caught the flu. Our household was no exception, as Liam seemed to pick up the dreaded illness first.

I still believe that this came from the germ festival that is daycare, with a group of ten kids randomly licking things then handing them to each other seems to be the norm. Aunt Doris seemed to have quite some guilt that the cold came from her though... In the end, there were so many people sick over here that if one place did not pass it on, there were several other sickies waiting on every corner to cough at us.

Liam was a pathetic little lump while sick. Look at this guy on the couch... It is probably cruel to laugh at an innocent childs total misery, but what the heck. I like laughing at misery, especially when it is this sad looking.
As anyone who knows Liam, they will realize that this little energy ball does not sit still for more than a few seconds at a time. This level of inactivity was demonstrating just how rotten he felt.

Here is another look at Mr Pathetic.
Unrelated to the illness, Claudia bought Liam his own little chair to sit on. Despite feeling so bad, he still somehow found the energy to watch TV and eat gummi bears. What a trooper.

Christmas Gaming in Gersthofen

One of the great gifts I received this year was the very fun game San Juan. My mother included this in her Christmas package this year, she had seen it on my list of games I would like to try out sometime earlier in the year. It was unexpected to say the least.
This is a card game for 2-4 people and the idea is that each player is establishing a colony in San Juan, on the newly settled island of Puerto Rico. Once per round(which we called a year for the sake of understanding) each player must choose a job from five available, beginning with the governor for that year (governor rotates clockwise each year.)

Once a job is chosen, ALL players take the action associated with that job, building, trading, etc, and the player who selected the job gets some sort of special extra benefit.

It has some neat mechanics, where the same cards are used as buildings, currency, or commodities, depending on where they are placed, and you have to make some neat decisions... is making a 4-cost building worth throwing away 4 cards from your hand?? do you have 4 cards you want to throw?? I thought it was good fun.

Here is a layout of the board after a few rounds of play.
Like I said, there were tough decisions to be made and they required some thought. Part of this was also a factor of the games new-ness. Since it was the first play for all of us, we had to grapple with the new rules and try to figure out strategy at the same time. Here you can see that it was taxing the brains of Claudia and Doris to the maximum. Claudia glances over at me and Doris is lost deep in thought.
I thought it was a fairly even, hard fought battle... but I was wrong. When Ryan declared he had placed his 12th building, ending the game we added up the scores and it looked like he had certainly figured out something that the rest of us had not.

You can see from my scribbles that I had to re-do the scoring a bit as I was still learning it myself. I think that the rules folks could have made that even more clear for me. They have to remember that I am a slow thinker at times...
Claudia in desparation for some winning feeling, asked me to add together the married couples scores, to see if one family had out-scored the other, but this was in vain. The Jones's total was 53 to the Anderson's 52 points. An out and out Ryan-led Jones domination.

Here is the winning portrait of Governor Ryan to hang on the wall of his palace in San Juan. (to reference a long ago post about Ryan, notice once again he is wearing a shirt with orange on it. this did not occur to me until I just posted it.)

I am Back

Well, holidays are over and I am back to work now. I am one of TWO lucky folks in the office from today onwards.

I also plan to resume more regular posting now that the holidays are behind me. I will start with the Christmas gift that was my big one... a new flash for my camera. I received the Nikon SB-400 speedlight flash, just the model that I most wanted (thanks!) Here is what it looked like when I unwrapped my gift.
Now this is a nice compact flash, pocket sized when not in use and it works great. I am now making full use of the "bounce flash" when taking indoor photos. This is when I angle the flash 90 degrees to bounce the light off the ceiling, making nicer more natural looking images. Direct flash on the subject makes things look harsh and often with nasty rear shadows. Here are two examples of the same pose of Claudia, one with direct and one with indirect flash. I think it is an immediate and obvious improvement.

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.