So funny.... Baby Care

OK, this is coming from this LINK, to give the proper credit to the place I saw this.

I thought these were very very funny.

The Other New Game

So, the biggest surprise I think I had at Christmas was the gift from Bernhard. Knowing that I am a huge board game fan, the big B surprised us with the gift of Shadows over Camelot. A big board game from Days of Wonder, the company that only makes big beautiful games (Battlelore, Memoir 44, Ticket to Ride, etc)

Here is the game just after opening. It is of course the German version.
Bernhard seemed almost as excited as me to check out the game, and he took a crack at reading the German rules while I loaded the English version from the publishers website. I am too much of a coward to tackle this one in German, the rule book is scary big.
This game is interesting because it is a Cooperative game for 3-7 players. That is right, you are not playing against one another, but working together against the system. Essentially, bad things and good things happen, which add either white or black swords to the round table at Camelot. When a certain number of white swords are present, the group wins. If a certain number of black swords appear, evil wins.

To make things even more tricky, it is possible that one of the players is a "traitor" and is secretly working against the others, trying to force the evil side to win. They have to be sneaky about it though, as getting discovered by dudes with swords is not good...

Here is the whole set up:

every turn, something bad happens which progresses the evil, and the players take actions to try and progress the good. It really boils down to a series of mini games, where the individual players take on tasks (quests) to try and win some white swords. There is a "main" board and a few mini boards where the various quests take place.

Each player gets to become a knight of the round table, from King Arthur to Sir Galahad. This character gives the player some special ability to help them in their questing.Sadly, we did not get a chance to try out the game yet. The fact you need at least three people (best with 7) and it takes 1.5-3 hours to play meant we had too much else going on during the holiday to squeeze in a game. I am really looking forward to trying it out for the first time though!

Here is the round table once again.

When I eventually play this, I will for sure have a more complete report of the game and the associated fun.

Getting Ready for Travel

This Saturday I embark on my latest voyage, A glorious 4 day trip to San Diego for work. To say I am looking forward to it would be an absolute lie. I have to give up my weekend, sit on two planes for 13 hours total, and sit in an airport for a five hour stop. There is nothing to look forward to on this one. Oh, and when I am there, I have two days in the office to compress about a weeks worth of content, followed by a 5:30am departure on Wed to get to the airport early enough to catch a flight.

The only thing I am looking forward to is eating an In-N-Out burger, and looking for a cheap digital camera on Sunday. Perhaps I will buy Liam a toy airplane, he does not have one of those, not one that looks like a real airliner anyway.

That completes my whining... at least until I land. I will try to make some posts from California. I am sure something news worthy will come of this thrill a minute trip.

Here is Liam in a penguin sweater that Claudia knit for him. Claudia's knitting skills are ever improving, Liam is a lucky boy to be so nicely decked out in flightless waterfowl fashion.

Super Sweeper

It seems that there is little more fun to a two year old than sweeping. I spend on average an hour a day every weekend outside with Liam while he sweeps the sidewalk and driveways of most houses on our street.
I am not sure that I can ever truly understand the glory of the street sweep, but it does translate to indoor activity as well. He likes to follow around the house when the vacuuming is done with his little broom, as outlined in an earlier post. At least he is tidy.

Liam the Early Riser

Sometimes Liam is a challenge to my nerves. This morning he woke up at 4am and would not calm down until I brought him over to sleep in our bed with us. Then at 5:30, he announced (while mercilessly kicking me) that it was time to get up and he wanted cereal. Oh, and his bear wanted toast.

I am not at all amused with this, his sleeping behaviour is already a nightmare when it is time to go into bed, if it becomes a nightmare when taking him out of bed too, we may have no choice than to sell him to the circus.

Here he is playing train in his robe. I think you can tell by his expression that he knows I am not thrilled with him. He had to play alone from 5:30 to 7:30 while I sat on the couch. I told him that he wanted up, not me, so he can find a way to fill this time on his own.

Christmas Dinner

The big day for Christmas in Germany is the 24th, this is when families all have a nice meal, open presents and do the Christmassy things. On this evening, it has become a tradition for us to have a nice ham for dinner. I did not take any photos of the ham, so you will have to close your eyes and think hammy thoughts.

However, on the 25th, we have been having another big meal for the last few Christmases, and on this day, we have a Turkey dinner. Very much like the kind of Christmas dinners that Ryan and I are more used to as the North Americans in the family. It was looking very nice as usual this year and I was trying out my new flash from the night before, so here are some photos of our dinner.

First, the Turkey. Not much more to say about it. It was a giant bird, cooked perfectly and full of poultry goodness.
Next comes mashed potatoes. I am a huge potato fan, and as a cooking snob, I think that my own mashed potatoes are the greatest on earth, but I have to say that these ones were certainly good enough that I enjoyed several helpings of them.
Next is the Apfelrotkohl which would be... Apple Red Cabbage? I have only had it over here, but it is red cabbage that is nice and sweet and apple bits are in there too. I love this and could eat a bucket full if it were not for the fact the table was full of other things I wanted to put in my belly too.
Here is actually something left over from the day before. Creamed horseradish with apples mixed in. This is so hot that it melts the inside of your nasal passage as you eat it. This is just about right for me. Not everyone in the family is a horseradish fan, but I know that Ryan, Bernadette and myself all eat vast amounts of this every year.
Here Bernhard stands at the head of the table, looking like he is ready to eat the whole feast himself. I think he would actually try if we asked him. Bernhard has a great skill at packing a lot of food in there.
Finally, here is Liam standing on his chair yelling at his noodles. That is apparently better than actually eating them in his book.

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.