A Fireman's Birthday

I'm now 3!





I like Fireman Sam



And I got my fire truck



And played at King Louii







And I'm now a Fireman

A Handful

 HI...Today was my Birthday



I turned a handful and I got to have a party



Daddy picked us up from Kindergarten



Mommy and Daddy made me Butterfly cakes





We dug for burried treasure




Oh yeah, my brother came along too



We hung out in our treehouse



I got lots of cool presents



including a really cool hat



We painted our faces






jumped on the trampoline



And had french fries and other yummies for dinner.

what a great day!

Handyman II

Like Father, Like Son



Emmett now has his own drill.



He couldn't be prouder. And Can't separate from it.


 

Finally he can fix all the stuff he's destroying ;-P

Candy Cane Bike

It started with an old bike that we got from our neighbor.

It needed a little TLC.



So I asked Stella, how would she like her bike, fully expecting the answer to be a "pink hellow kitty" bike. (even though green is her new favorite color)

Her answer surprised me though.
Without hesitation, she told me...



"I want a Candy Cane bike Daddy"



And so she got one. 


 

Performance Art

It starts with an idea

 

or just something silly





It becomes a Native American Outfit



Or a flying eagle





The beginnings of




a performance artist

Handyman

Boys and their toys.

That’s how the old adage goes. 

And you can amend that to “Big Boy Toys”. 

Emmett likes his mini tool set.

He proudly carries the box around. 

He’ll hammer on anything.

Pretending to fix things. 

But when I borrowed my neighbors drill.

He would plop himself down in front of the shiny case

For what seemed an eternity.

Inspecting the drill

Opening and closing the case

Making sure all the bits were in place

 And when I picked up my new toy

He took one look at the big black box and said

“Emmett’s?”

I said no,  “Daddy’s”

He pointed and said “Emmett’s?”

And I caved and said okay, “Daddy & Emmett’s”

Of course big sister didn’t wanted to miss out on any fun either.

She likes to help just as much. 

Superhero

Superheroes have unknown powers.

Yeah, I knew that. I grew up with marvel comics. But back then, I failed to totally understand the true power and far reaching grasp that they can have.

Reaching  even into the unknown. 

Case in point.

My son.

Emmett is not even  2.5 years old. He has had no exposure to cartoons.

Maybe heard me make a reference to Batman.

Never seen a comic book.

Therefore I am utterly astonished to his sudden facination. 

Friends gave us a pair of Spiderman pajamas. 

Simple blue sweat pants and shirt with Spidy’s face.

This was totally love at first site. Since the first time we put the pajama’s on he won’t take them off. They are not just for sleeping but also to wear during the day.

A tractor is even a hard sell against the Spiderman.

And when you ask him who that is on his shirt...well his face lights up, a huge grin spreads across his face, eyes start to glow and he proudly announces “Piderman”.

 

This morning we a catastrophic turn of events. Luckily there were two pairs of Spiderman pajama’s. We were able to sneakily swap shirts so one could be washed.

Unfortunately our little Spiderman spilled juice all over his shirt and we had to change clothes.

He was so distraught that he just wandered room to room whining “Piderman, pideman”. Then he found the laundry basket and started tearing it apart trying to find his Spiderman shirt. It looked like a poltergeist hat cleared out our bureau drawers, disseminating every piece of clothing throughout the room.Some hanging in spots that seemed physically impossible.

 

Luckily I was able to distract him with how cool the tractor on his current shirt was  and we got out of the house before he could change his mind.

Truly Superheroes have a mind bending affect on young boys. Ours is no exception.

Tropical get-away

Call me ignorant but I thought all practical application of dirigibles outside of football game advertising halted after World War II.

I didn’t know that there were companies that even up into the 2000’s were planning heavy lift airships with zeppelin technology.

Such a company built the largest freestanding building per volume (5.5 million m3 or 194 million ft3) in the world.

 

This Building is huge.

The Statue of Liberty could stand in the middle with plenty of headroom.

The ground covers 8 soccer fields or 13 American football fields.

I don’t know too much about the heavy lift cargo industry but I can say I was surprised that this company went bust.

What did surprise me though, was to find that this huge building has become a tourist destination. 

But it’s not a museum.

Instead, it is a tropical rainforest to take your mind of the bitter north German winter.

And this is exactly what we did.

For three days this past week, we enjoyed wandering through a tropical rainforest.

In T-shirts and swimming suits.

Greeting the flamingos every morning 

Swimming in the lagoon or at the beach.

Petting

 

Or just watching Koi

Driving little jeeps, 

 

Building life size Lego huts,

Climbing really high

And sliding down a long twisty slide.

It was enough to make us forget that it was 0 degrees Celsius.

And as payment, Mother Nature has dumped a lot of snow on us the past few days.