My Own Personal Oompa Loompa

What does a Daddy do when a kid pulls a "I have a (insert crazy-@$$ed school based thing" put on him the night before at 8:45pm? After a 2:15 minute baseball game?  After picking up not just two boys, but two of our good friends' boys from school and getting them supper?

You panic.

That's the correct answer.  It was a mild panic, to be sure, but a panic just as well.

Robby wanted to be an Oompa Loompa from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  

Does he have green hair?  No.
Does he have vertically striped socks?  Of any color? No.
Is his skin a creepy, unnatural looking orange?  No.  Thank God.

So what do we do.  We get his whitest shorts.  His stripiest socks, two pieces of elastic as suspenders and hope he's happy. 

He was.  Did he place in the costume contest.  Nope.

But I think he's gorgeous!! 

My own personal Oompa Loompa.

Now if he could just generate a personal chocolate river!  

On second thought...  I think I'll pass on the river and just keep accepting hugs and kisses.

Tales At Brushy Creek State Park

After our wonderful time at the Grotto, we headed back home with the idea that we would break up the trip for the young'ins by stopping off somewhere roughly halfway home that had hiking trails. 

I had done a little research on the fancy, hi-tech world wide interweb thingymabob and found Brushy Creek State Park.  Perfect.

So we got there, sorta thru the "back door" as I'm not one to take familiar roads.  I like to see "stuff" I have not seen before, even if most of the stuff looks very similar to most of what I've seen before.

Kind of a nice looking area not at all unlike the Des Moines areas own Saylorville Park.

Have a look:

This was on top of the dam with the spillway roughly behind us.  I'm standing on the highway, which will not be the dumbest thing that I did during this visit.

China boy is already sad because Robby, still a hippie in these photos, set out leading the way and wouldn't you know it?  That's EXACTLY what RongBo wanted to do!  Go figure...

I had to stop and "water a pretty plant" that I had found so I fell behind the group a bit.  Little did I know that people on bicycles would come flying around the bend with little to no notice!

I catch back up with the group as they have been placed in a conundrum.  The walking path had been washed out in the earlier Spring rains.  How do I know?  Because if you zoom in on this area with satellite, you can still see it. 

Now all that's left is some oddly placed rocks and a rotten log that is none to sturdy or steady. 

Me?  I'm not going to use no stinkin' log to get across, right?  No sirree.  I'm going to hop rocks like a person a third of my age.  Just below the center of the photo is where I began my journey. Just a little to the left of that is where one of the rocks I placed my bulky little foot on, upended, sending my left foot into about 1 foot of water and causing me to lose my balance completely.  I twisted my leg, fell backwards onto the rocks friends damaging my knee slightly but getting some really deep bruises on my left thigh and elbow.  Not too mention the fact that I had a bit of a wet butt as well.  I hiked a bit further and decided to turn it around as the leg was really binding up on me.  I took Caleb back with me (I crossed at the friggin' log this time!) while Momma and Robby went on further.

Then there were these two guys...  If you're thinking to yourself, "that guy looks like he's on the wrong side of the fence!", why you'd be correct in your thinking.  He crawled up and over the fence, shimmied down the other side, still facing the fence.  Bubba, the guy on the "right" side of the fence, slipped a belt harness thru the fence in which Butch, the guy on the wrong side, put it around his waist and buckled it.  He turned around and then cinched it up tight.  When properly cinched, that's Bubba's cue to pass the cross-bow and matching ammunition over the fence.  He then leans out over the water and probably a 35 - 40 degree angle and commences fishing. The arrows are attached to a rope so in the event he does indeed pierce a fish, they can just simply pull it up.  Did they catch anything in the time that I was watching?  Nope.  But then again, neither did any of the others who fished by more conventional means.

Daddy and Calebber RongBo getting our picture "tooken" at the top of the spillway.  To my right  in the photo, you can see Butch starting his lean-out while Bubba carefully surveys the proceedings.

And mom snapped this photo of "graduation practice picture" of the former hippie whilst he was still a hippie.

And that was about the extent of it.  Now all I had to do was be able to stand up after another 1.5 hours in the truck on the way home.  

Turns out it really wasn't that bad considering what could have been!

Until next time, if you do something stupid, document for all to enjoy!

The Grotto At West Bend, Iowa, Pt. Deux

So now after roughly 3 weeks of no posts at all, here I am on back to back days! That's what happens when baseball practice for small Chinese boys is cancelled due to storms in the area.

It's about 83 degrees outside yet at 8p.m. and nearly 80% humidity.

For those of you not accustomed to those conditions, it's miserable. You walk from one room of the house to another and you're sweating. I hit grounders to Caleb outside since he didn't have baseball practice and I was drenched. Put away laundry? Sweating. Typing blog post? Sweating.

Not my idea of ideal conditions...

Regardless of my silly little complaints, life is good and we now find ourselves in part II of the Grotto. Much like the first installment, there will not be many words. The amazing confines of where we were at are words enough.

Aunt Molly actually letting herself be photographed!!

Dear ol' Dad and his varmints on a beautiful day!

This is inside the building on the grounds there.  We went in because the birth of Jesus is represented inside the building itself, which is coming up a few pictures from now.

This is what I spoke of...  there is a recorded message from the longtime pastor of this church describing the many things that you see when you focus in on this part of the Grotto.  The detail, which is not evident in the photo, is truly beyond amazing!!

And a shot of our full travelling group, sans G'ma Marlene who was taking the photo.

The Grotto At West Bend

If you sense a "common theme" when I say this, it's not your imagination. I'm so far behind on blogging stuff that I want to blog that I'm not sure if I can catch up!

I just realized that I did not post anything about Easter weekend and our egg hunt this year.  I still haven't finished last years vacation as I still have the second half of the wonderful Harpers Ferry to document.  I didn't do anything for our anniversary this year...  I still had not covered the wonderful day we spent at the Grotto in West Bend, Ia, or the hiking we did at Brushy Creek State Park on the way home from there.  On top of that, the boys had their annual 4-Mile Elementary Olympics today that I have nearly 60 photos from...

Trust me, there's more.  I'm behind.

So lets get on with the Grotto in West Bend, Iowa.  Click on that link to read stuff from their official web page if you're so inclined to learn what inspired this incredible place in small town Iowa. As you might guess, I don't have time to go into a lot of explanation, although I would like to.

I'm also not going to caption most of these because I truly don't know what I would say that wouldn't take away from the already amazing/awesomeness of the Grotto.

I realize that you will not be able to read this on the blog, but this is Jesus' Sermon On The Mount.

Robby had his camera and was taking photos of the Stations Of The Cross.  After he'd take a photo, he'd review it befor he moved on,  which is what he's doing here.  Caleb had his camera as well, but he dropped his on the sidewalk back by the phone booth outside of the Grotto and it hasn't been right since.

A motley looking crew if I've ever saw one!

I had too many photos that I wanted to share, so I'll do another post in a day or so (yeah, right...) with the second half.