A slight change of pace

This has nothing to do with the Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit as a whole, but rather a few links for the concert that Daddy played in for Bob Castelline's cd release party back on August 5th.  

His cd, called Never Too Late and can be purchased from CDBaby, I think on ReverbNation (but I'm not 100% positive) and thru Amazon (individual downloads or the full cd).

We had an lot of fun so I thought I would share some things that Bob has posted to youtube.  The concert was held at Lutheran Church of the Cross in Altoona (where most of the musicians on stage attend/are members).  

This first one is cover tune, called Praise Adonai written by Paul Baloche.  Yours truly plays a blistering solo at the end, that you can almost hear... most of...

This one is one of the songs on Bob's cd (Never Too Late). The song is called Incense.

Another one from Bob's cd. This one is called, Song Of My Heart. 

This is an old traditional hymn, that I'm guessing nearly everybody will recognize at some point.  This version is done in the style of U2's I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.  I do not play on this song but was lucky enough to go out into the crowd for it and simply enjoy.  I think they did an awesome job!

This song, Celebrate The King, is how we opened the show (another song on Bob's disc). 

Here To Praise You, another song that Bob wrote that's on his cd.

Miracle, one of my favorite Bob tunes, perhaps because the guitar riff is really, really, REALLY fun to play.  This video also has a relatively close shot of nice sunburst Telecaster!  :-)  Bob peels off the lead on this bad boy and I get the impression he was enjoying himself, both at practices and here!

This song, written by Krissy Nordhoff/Michael Neale, is Your Great Name. 

I don't play on Bob's cd, but he is quite a fine guitarist, keyboardist, and singer... not too mention being a danged fine songwriter as well as a good friend of mine.  

Here's hoping that you enjoy!!

Vacation, Day 2 - This time with pictures (part II)...

...and finally, the last of the day 2 vacation pics. 

This first room that we're in is basically a Green Bay Packers themed room to get all of the kids in the right frame of mind before proceeding thru the rest of the museum.  This thing was an interactive screen that you would kick or throw balls at and it would score you accordingly.  Here, the boys are trying to kick a soccer ball past the goalie.  They also had a basketball and football game on here.

This was a padded wall where you get on various Packers players uniforms and practice your own Lambeau leap.  Robby did it about 20 times.

This is a large mouth (on the left side of the photo) where the kids would crawl up the tongue and go thru the "digestive system" only to come down a slide - as the, uh... output, on the other end.  They have all of the steps along the way listed, along with little holes where the kids could stick their faces out and have their parents tell them where they're "at", in the body.  What you can't see is a gigantic toilet seat painted on the floor at the base of the slide.

The next attraction, and one that Caleb was absolutely thrilled in, was the little general/grocery store.  The kids would get a small grocery cart to push around and select their items.  You can see a kid in the upper left portion of the photo weighing his produce.

At the end, they would go up to the "check-out", which had a little crank (by Caleb's tummy) to move the items up to the cashier.  The little girl currently acting as cashier was really getting into the whole thing, as was Caleb so they had a good giggle when she handed him his play money change back.

While I was grocery shopping with Master Calebber, Robby and Momma went to the you-build-it-room and made this rather large cardboard structure.  They had erector sets, lincoln logs, tinker toys, legos and other stuff in this area.

The fire truck/station room. this is the room where we spent the most time. Driving the big truck was one thing...

But this area, where you used the "water guns" (lasers) to put out a warehouse fire on five little screens in front of them.  Robby was enamored with this exhibit and once we finally figured out how to put out the fire, okay, let's not lie... once we saw some other guy put out the fire and give us an example of how to do it, Rob was BENT on getting them all out, either with a helper or by himself.  And he did.  Many times.

Obviously, the fire pole.

And not to be outdone, Calebber on the fire pole.

The light house had a sandox on this side of it, and a real spiral staircase up the middle of it and you could go out on the balcony on the outside once up their.  Pretty elaborate toy, if you ask me.

We attempted to leave after spending a good bit of time at the museum, but the boys drifted back into the packers room where Caleb practiced his tail gating skills.  Robby was off practicing his Lambeau leap again and playing on the big video screen.

At the end, the Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit - Male Chapter, all did the Lambeau leap.  Dad was worried about throwing his back out, but all went well and the fans obviously loved us!!

Speaking of Lambeau Field, that was our next stop.  Here the boys are posing in front of the Oneida Nation entry at Lambeau.

Caleb found a Mickey here, like he does nearly everywhere we go.  He didn't get it, much to his dismay.  He did get a long sleeved Packers shirt, yellow, that he can wear to school later this fall when it gets colder.  That appeased him, and was practical enough to please mom and dad as well since he doesn't have many long sleeved shirts.

This is in the huge atrium area.  Nope, I'm not wounded.  You see, it seems that when they redid Lambeau some years back, they laid the floor in the atrium in marble to look like the field outside.  It's even oriented correctly.  What I was trying to determine is if it was actually life-sized.  As you can tell by the hash marks behind me marking off the yards on the field, they're pretty dang accurate.  People were looking at us like we're weird...

Vacation, Day 2 - This time with pictures (part I)

This is a bit of a "duplicate" post as we're long home from vacation and back to work/school, depending on what member of the family you might be.

Regardless of all of that, I, Daddy, wanted to document some of the cooler pictures of the day.  And, after I prepared a pile of photos, I again decided that it would be best to split it into two different posts.

Admittedly, the zoo pictures aren't all that cool, but the pictures from the "childrens museum" in Green Bay are pretty cool... at least from a memory perspective.

So, here we go with part 1, the zoo, or the New Zoo, as it's officially called.

This guy seemed to want to pose for the camera.   He did several "face forward" pics for us but I seem to like this one the best.

This one is obviously of a giraffe eating a little kids head.  Oh sure, he didn't actually eat the little kids head, but he could have based on the size of a giraffe's head vs. a human head! 

Robert appears to be running for office with and merely posing with a commoner.

The only moose we saw on vacation... sadly...

The only albino crocodile that we saw on vacation... happily...

The China boy, obviously distraught.  What about?

The devil birds!  That's what!!  These gorgeous, at least according to daddy, were out to get everbody and Caleb, along with his aunt Doris, believe the press and buy into the fact that they will start eating you, eye's first and whatever body part is most convenient, second.

The First Day of Skool-Update

Several folks have asked me how Robby, and primarily, Caleb, have done at school so far.

Well, we're three days into it now and Robby is doing fine. He pretty much seemed to pick right back up where he left off, which was on good n' happy notes, so that's fantastic.  His teacher is not who he thought it was, but he "likes her anyway".  Again, fantastic.

Caleb...  So the first day of school was simply the orientation that included mom & dad in the room for rules n' paperwork and to give the new kindergartner a brief meeting with his/her teacher.  An "ice breaker" meeting, if you will.  As I said, he wavered from a whimper to a smile several times during that first day.

Day #2?  Well, he cried when momma dropped him off.  Daddy was at work for a few hours by that point, not that I'm saying my presence would have made any difference.  It wouldn't have.

Well, there was some "homework" for Mom & Dad as well as Caleb that needed to be returned on day #2.  Momma forgot it and therefore had to go back to school.  She spoke with Calebber's teacher and she said that he stopped crying within about 30 seconds of momma leaving and did good the rest of the day.  In fact, she said that he was a great helper as in helping other kids clean up.  Pretty much similar to what we heard from his preschool and jump-start teachers as well.

Caleb told momma several times on the 1/16th of a mile drive home, "Momma, no more. No more, momma.".  Meaning no more school. It was okay, but he's done.

When I got home, I heard the same thing and told him that he could indeed quit but only after completing the next 13 years.  He agreed with his daddy so I think we're good...  :-)

Good enough for the first full-length day, I say.

Day #3 (today), momma walked Robby to his room first and dropped him off, then proceeded to Caleb's room as the boy grew a little bit more anxious with each step. 

His teacher came out to greet him and took him by the hand and led him in the room.  Done deal.

Today was early out day, so that likely helped a little too, but both boys are tired and CRANKY!!

We'll likely go for a family walk/little boy bike ride tonight again but it's early to bed or my name ain't Boogie!!

The First Day of Skool

Monday, Aug. 20th, 2012. Stardate -310363.8493915705... sorry, having a moment thinking about something else there.

Both boys begin the 2012 school year today.  Since we're coming off of vacation, I took an extra few hours so we could all go up to school for day #1.  I made some bacon and eggs for breakfast to send them off... and me too, of course.

Robert James Schmitz is a 2nd grader already!!!  Can't hardly believe it, but it's true.

Caleb RongBo Schmitz is beginning kindergarten today.  He was a little apprehensive and a LOT shy, wavering from smiles to wimpers for the hour that he was there.  Tomorrow is a full day and we're fully expecting tears.

A photo to make a daddy proud!

Vacation, Day 9 - sigh, the final day

The final day of vacation... 

We woke up to the alarm, for the first time on this vacation, early enough to have the continental breakfast at the hotel and hit the road with the idea that we would get to the Mall Of America / IKEA at 10am when they open.  We got there at 9:55am, so the plan was a success.

Momma went to IKEA to get some shelving that she's been wanting and Daddy took the critters over to the MoA to play on the "stuff".

Nothing very exciting but the boys were happy as pigs in poo, so that's worth something... right?  $50.00?  Not so much but they really did have a blast.

 

Robby, desperately trying to avoid Caleb, who is on his first bumper car ride.  Much like a youth soccer game, the kids mostly huddled in a big group so nothing too exciting happened.  It took Caleb about 1 minute of the 3 minute ride to figure out what he was supposed to do, but he came out of there with a huge grin on his face!

The Diego bus.  Note the driver and his front seat passenger (who is mostly obscured by a reflection in the window).

Calebber negotiating a tight turn in his "race".

Robby makes a new friend.  Caleb FREAKED OUT over the life sized Kai Lin.  Total panic pulling dad backwards away from her.

This was the entrance to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ride, which Robby and Daddy went back and rode later on.  They are easily the most brightly dressed "ninja's" that I've ever encountered.

That pretty much wraps up vacation, 2012 style.  From the MoA, we drove back to Grandma & Grandpa's house in Crystal Lake where we had a delightful fish dinner, caught by Grandpa, cooked by Grandma.  Good stuff!

A few golf cart rides later and we were headed back for Pleasant Hill.

Vacation, Day 8

Tonight I sit in a hotel room in Moose Lake, Minnesota writing this post.

It was a long, but fun day.  Most of the day was driving, but even so, we had a lot of fun singing, listening to the boys hammer out details, solutions, and whatever else they were dealing with in the back seat.  Crazy funny stuff we would hear from back there, most of it, we'll sadly never remember.

We left Munising, Michigan this morning around 9:30am after having breakfast at the Dogpatch... yes, the same restaurant that we ate supper at the night before.

You see, when we got home from supper last night, our key would not unlock the front door as I said in the last post.  We received a $20 off coupon for our breakfast at the Dogpatch. I'm guessing this place may have the same owner or at least be in the same family.  Who's to say?

Never-the-less, we left town and drove through some heavy rains with one scary incident involving a hydro-plane in water that we couldn't see on the road.  Nasty.

So as we're driving, we keep encountering Lake Superior along the way and Lesley would ask Robby what body of water it was.  After guessing wrong the first couple of times, he caught on and was simply amazed that it was still Superior.  He couldn't get over the size of it.

So after driving all day long, we FINALLY are heading into Duluth, Minnesota, on a different route due to road construction, and Lesley asks him for the final time of the day, "Robby, what body of water is this?".  He wanted to reply Lake Superior, but he just couldn't.  I think he finally said, "I don't know.".  Momma told him it was Lake Superior and he said, and I'm not joking, "WHAT THE FREAKIN' H3ll???".

I nearly drove off the side of a very high bridge!

So once Mom and Dad gathered themselves and fully recovered, we told him that he is not to talk that way.

His response?

You probably guessed right, he said, "Well, I got it from one of you guys!".

I can only assume it was me...  what a fine moment for gut check on how you're doing with your parenting. Good grief.

Anyway, let's get on with some pictures since it is approaching 11pm which is WAY past my bedtime.

I got up at 5:30 this morning in hopes of watching the sun rise from behind me (I'm looking West here) and lighting up the hills in the distance.  That dark cloud thru the middle of the photo eventually dumped a nice rain on the area before we said goodbye.  So while I did not get my sunrise as planned, me and the seagulls had a great time out there by ourselves.

Caleb spotted me taking a picture and started heading back to our room.  Those white chairs and the two little ones are where we watched the sunset the previous night with a bottle of Door County wine.  If Robby looks a little sad here, it's because he was. He was showered and ready for his play date with his new buddy Jack.  That's a football in his lap.  Jack never showed but we did run into him as we were making our final trip to the RamVan this morning, so he did get to officially say goodbye.  That made him feel better, but he REALLY wanted to play football with him again.

This was  a waterfall that we encountered at some point in our drive today.  It was about 3 hours into the drive and a good time to stretch as there was a short hike to get to it.

You had to hike underneath this bridge to get to falls lookout point.  I enjoyed this bridge and a really high old steel rail road tressle bridge that looked like a giant erector set.

We drove to the Apostle Islands today but didn't really do much.  Caleb was just about disassembling because he wanted to play in a park so badly.  You can't really see it, but this is on the waters edge.  There's a marina on the left side of the photo and there's an island that you cannot really see in the background of the photo as well.  It was about 50 feet or so from the edge of...  wait for it Robby...  Lake Superior!

This is a shot of the sea caves at small inlet in Apostle Islands called Myers Lake if I recall correctly...  I'm just the driver.  There was a young athletic kayaker that was killed here earlier this year.  The waves get to be pretty unforgiving, as they were today, and he got himself mashed up in this area.  I'm guessing it hurt really bad, but not for long!

The critters giggling like a couple of school girls as the waves would come in and circle around their feet.  Robby kept trying to go on the other side of that log but when I pointed out that you could see the drop off of shore about 10 to 12 feet into the water, he thankfully got a little more timid.

Pictures of waves never capture the essence of what you're seeing/hearing.  It was really, really loud out there and the waves were relentless.  Really humbling to watch the power of water.

What the heck is this, you ask?  For those of you who perhaps don't know, a nickname of mine from the days of working at Musicland in Ames, Iowa, is Boogie.  It's a long story and about 97% of it is indeed true.  So today we're driving thru what must have been around the 214th small town/township and we see this classy place.  A real live saloon!  I'm not lyin, the sign says so!  I had to wheel around the block and take a pic. I really like the Blatz beer sign on the second story! A classy joint, for sure.

So that pretty much wraps up vacation.  We got into Moose Lake around 7pm, ordered some pizza from Poor Gary's,  sketti and meatballs for Caleb, had an excellent dinner once it was delivered and then went swimming for roughly an hour and a half.

Everybody is in bed where I intend to be in mere moments.

I hope to find more of the interesting photos once we're home and I have more time to go through them.  There are a few I know I have forgotten now but haven't had time to go back and add them yet.

Vacation, Day 7

Day 7, and another big day.

We got up this morning with big intentions.  First off was the continental breakfast in the lobby of the motel. It consisted of various cereals, toast, English muffins, bagels, apples and oranges.  Your usual fare...

So the Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit piled into the RamVan (it's a gold Dodge Caravan... the Rams wear blue and gold... football season is fast approaching and I'm excited... okay?) and headed for the Miners Falls and the Miners Castle for our first hikes of the day to warm up for the "big one".

Momma and Caleb early on the hike to Miners Falls.

Momma and the critters sitting on some fascinating tree roots.

Momma and Caleb on the overlook platform as we reached Miners Falls.

and...  wait for it...   Miners Falls.

The varmints posing for a shot.

More fascinating tree roots.  You might be surprised by the tree roots that actually qualify as fascinating in these parts!

Here's the family on the overlook at Miners Castle.

The boys in an actual sweet moment...  they were bribed...

After the Miners "stuff" tour/hike, we headed for a somewhat lengthy drive to another area which has a the Au Sable lighthouse.  It's a 1.5 mile hike, each direction. Crazy to take two little boys on that kind of hike?  Possibly. Are there bears up here? Yes. There are.  In fact, we had one run across the road after lunch as we were driving to the lighthouse hike. I would say that the bear was maybe an 1/8 mile in front of us but there was no mistake once it started moving from the side of the road to the forest on the other side.  We tried to get a photo for proof, but alas, he was disappeared into the forest by the time we got up there.


Lunch, by the way, was at this delightful little place called the Bear Trap.  It's not much to look at but who cares about that kind of stuff.  The sign said they served authentic pasties.  What are pasties?  They were common food for the miners/loggers back in the day.  They're carrots, potatoes, rutabega, onion, and hamburger (probably something else that I'm forgetting...) cooked inside of a pie crust.  Kind of a pot-pie except not cooked in a pot.  Momma ordered that and it was fantastic!  I had a the Michigan/Wisconsin burger that was a hamburger and a brat pattie served in a mushroom and swiss style.  Also fantastic and quite honestly, a little bigger than I needed, but I took one for the team and ate the whole stinkin' thing.


Good thing too, the upcoming hike proved to be a little more than I was expecting.


Off we go...

This photo was one of the first of our hike to the light house.  It's of an old shipwreck.  One of many that are preserved along the beaches here.

The critters getting the sand out of their shoes after the 200' walk to the wreck and back.  Momma and daddy are preparing for a day of great drama...

The hike to...

The destination...

The sand dunes further East than we're planning to go.

The mobile chaos unit atop the light house.  They put us thru a lengthy tour of historical info that was both highly interesting and a little bit like torture to a fella with a not-so-good back before we were able to get out on the balcony shown here.

The "steps" from the lighthouse down to the beach.  They start off not so bad, but get a little treacherous towards the end, as Robby is finding out.  Dear ol' dad found the secret though.  You put your toes on the log while resting the heel of your foot on the cable for better stability.

Without adding about another 10 photos to this post, I found this one which does a pretty good job of showing the sand-to-pebbles-to-boulders that lined most of the length of the beach for our walk back.  There were other areas that were slightly more challenging/slippery/sharp/jagged/whatever else, but all-in-all, it was a FUN hike back to the RamVan.

Another shipwreck.  The things sticking up are the steel pegs that were used to hold the deck to the bracing underneath.  You're pretty much seeing the bracing underneath as the decking is gone.

The varmints and their well-packed bellies from our visit to the Bear Trap!

Sort of blurry, but the little bit of trees that you can see in the far background of the photo is where the lighthouse was and where we started our journey on the beach.  Much to the chagrin of the critters, we were only about 3/4 of the way back at this point.

As I've said, it was a great hike back.  We were all tired and thirsty by the time we hit the RamVan so we drank up and headed back to the motel.

Once there, we waited all but about 10 minutes to head to the "Dogpatch" restaurant for supper.  They have a seafood buffet that was pretty good.  We may be going there for breakfast in the morning as well since the lock on the "front" of our room didn't work when we got back tonight and the owner said he would send us up there for a free breakfast in the morning due to the fact that he couldn't get the lock fixed tonight and the other fact that we now have the grueling task of walk around the side of the building to the lakeside door to get into our room.  It's rough...  :-)

After dinner, Robby and I got our swimsuits on to go get into Lake Superior for a walk... it's too dang chilly to swim.  It hasn't hit 80 degrees for us yet and the water is a little less than desirable swimming temps for a man in his early 40's.

Regardless, we went in for a wade, and got about 15 feet out into the lake, roughly 20 feet from the steps leading down to it, when I spotted a snake in the water coming out from under a log.

Swimming excursion, over.

We decided that football was in our near future and so it was.  We played for a while, just the two of us, until Robby spotted a sturdy young lad roughing up his older sister.  He asked me if he could invite that kiddo to play with us.  Sure, why not.  So we played for a while until he had to go.

Later on while watching the sunset, the lad and his sisters came back outside, quite wildly and Robby and him started another game of football, sans me at QB.  It was great watching them play.  Jack is 10 years old and really a great kid from what I could tell.  Great family in general from my all too brief conversation with his mom that evening.

Robby and Jack set a time for 8am to get together and play one last time until we must part.  We'll see if it happens but it's great to see Robby collecting temporary summer friends and piles of great memories.  Turns out, he's a great kiddo too!!