Happy Resurrection Day!

Calebs First Communion, Step 2

Maundy Thursday is the Thursday of Holy Week that falls before Good Friday. This is the day that our church home, Lutheran Church of the Cross in Altoona, IA, celebrates First Communion.

April 13th, 2017 was Caleb's day! 

As a good little boy should do, he asked questions.  The hardest of which was, "Daddy, what does Maundy mean?".  I couldn't respond as I know what the day represents but didn't know the actual definition of the word.


So I looked it up:

Maundy

noun

1.the ceremony of washing the feet of the poor, especially commemorating Jesus' washing of His disciples' feet on Maundy Thursday.

 

2.Also called maundy money. money distributed as alms in conjunction with the ceremony of maundy or on Maundy Thursday.

We know from John 13 that it was the Feast Of Passover celebration when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples during what we know as The Last Supper.  The Last Supper is the reason that we celebrate 1st Communion.

This is Mr. Caleb Rongbo Schmitz as we're about to head out the door to service.  He is quite smashing!!!

After service family shot of the Mobile Chaos Unit.

Caleb with buddies Anna and Henry.  Good kids right there!

Regional Volleyball Tournament 2017

Occasionally we see a news story about a girl who has made her way onto a football team in some manner or another. It's always a good story that a female is crossing boundaries into a predominantly male sport.

Well here we have a situation of some fine young men who are playing a sport that has been mostly dominated by females.  At the age they're playing, our boy's team, the Average Joes, doesn't have much male competition and has a much wider age-range on their teams.  I believe we have an ages 7 - 13 on our team with most of the boys being around 10 - 12, including Robby.  

So this past weekend, the Average Joes became the first boys team to participate in what was always a girls only regional tournament.  How did the little critters do?   Well you'll just have to read on to find out...

Caleb all dressed up, not as a coach but rather an owner!

Breaktime after a couple of hard-fought battles.  The two girls laying down, one of which Robby is resting his feet on, are the two gals who are our high school aged assistant coaches.  I don't have any clue which events they will attend and which ones they won't.  There's likely a method to the madness but I don't pay attention so I've likely missed it.  All I know is that they have a lot of fun together.

This is warm-ups on day two.  Day 1 was at Simpson college in Indianola, day 2 was at a place just outside of waterworks park in Des Moines.  Looks like a tiny building from the outside, but then you walk in and walk and walk and walk before you reach the volleyball courts.

This is a shot of "most" of the volleyball courts in the small building. 

Some of our boys had to leave for other sports on day 2.  These are the critters who could stick around to referee the final games in their age group.  Everyone but that cute little black-shirted critter were receiving their second place medals.

A few families and their boys decided to go out for lunch after the games. Here's 5 current players and a future player (hint: he has a black shirt on!) prior to their meals arriving.

The boys took second place overall.  They ran into a buzzsaw with a 6-foot gal who could serve like a BEAST in the final match!  She was across the net from our 7-year old at one point and it was quite striking!

Overall, they did great and I was sad to see the season end.  I can't wait for next season to watch the boys continue to grow together into an even greater team!

A Little Dab Will Do Ya...

The boy, waiting very impatiently, was at the doctor for his annual check-up and would not allow me to get a "regular" picture.

Caleb's First Communion, Step 1

I remember well the class that I took Robert James too. We did a lot of discussion about what communion means and at the end of class, they gave all of the kids a chance to taste the wine so that they get their funny faces out of the way prior to service on Maunday Thursday, where most of them will experience Communion for the first time. 

Robby's reaction spoke volumes and he decided then and there that he would exercise his grape juice option in the stead of the wine.

Caleb got no such option as our church has different pastors now and a different leader of the First Communion class.  No matter, he still was the first of the kids to read from the Bible in front of the class and still answered many questions correctly indicating that he is indeed, picking some of this up!  So as I type, one week from tonight,  our Caleb will experience First Communion officially.  I won't be taking a picture of it, so this one will have to do!

Buddies Four Life!

I dumped all of the pictures from Lesley's phone into a folder on our computer. I occasionally sit down for a bit and sort pics, rotate them to the correct orientation and so on, since there's hundreds of pics to sort thru.

In doing that, it brings back many great memories of times that have recently passed and reminds you of how fun life can be!  Below are a few photos of four great kids and a great time that we had together last summer.

We met a family in China that I have written about before, and have remained friends over the years, even though we are separated by nearly 1000 miles.  They were on vacation this past summer and their drive home saw them passing by on I-80, about 7 miles from our house!  So they stayed a couple of days with us before proceeding home.

We showed them the sculpture park downtown and also the Des Moines Botanical Center before having lunch and parting ways again.

Here are just a few pics of that wonderful day:

From front to back, we have Ethan, Caleb, Liena and Robby.

It makes me smile to hope that these four people remain friends in adulthood and allow their respective families to share good times and houses/townhomes with each other!