IT'S A PARTY!!

As birthdays go, I would say that Caleb enjoyed his about as much as you could.  

We got up as we normally would on a Sunday morning, except that Mom and Dad woke the boys up by singing happy birthday to the Chinaman.  

We went to church and then Sunday school where he got to give out treats for his birthday, so they got to celebrate there.

Came home and were here for roughly 1/2 hour before the people started arriving.  We had Aunt Doris & Uncle Frank (Leonard), Aunt Molly, Aunt Dianne and her three chillin's Samuel, Jonah, and Zoe along with Grandma Elaine.

We had a big lunch, some cake and then opened presents.  The boy cleaned up!! 

Caleb, his brother Robby and cousins Sam and Jonah takin' down some dogs!

Jonah and Zoe hittin' the pop kinda hard...

That hot dog don't stand a chance!

Birthday upside down clowning around with daddy.

Here's birthday boy taking one of his presents, Iron Man, over to his brother in a moment of confusion.  Aunt Dianne claims they didn't get Robby anything for his birthday so they got something for him on this day.  He got the action figure and then a superhero cape and mask that you'll see shortly.

Some new Angry Bird pj's since he's taxing the ones he got for Christmas already!

Pretending to be interested in a card...

Birthday boy, Aunt Molly and bro Robby.

His Angry Birds towel from his brother.  Big hit.

B-Day boy and his cousins trying to to free the remote control truck.

Contemplating world domination with his freshly minted 1 dollar bill!

The Superhero Schmitzs in their new found garb.

Robby taking on the world.

Birthday boy and his haul!

And, as always, clowning for the camera.

As if that weren't enough for the lads, we piled in the vehicle after the house emptied and went up to Adventureland for 1.5 hours before they closed.

Caleb rode the Tornado for the first (and probably last!) time too!  Dad and Robby were in the very front seat, Mom and Caleb right behind us.  I looked back at him after we had plunged down the first hill and were heading up the second.  That boy was pale, 3/4 of his head was buried in Momma's rib cage and he had a look on his face that was pure gold!

When we got off, he had an obvious adrenalin rush and was talking fast and loud.  He said, "SCARE ME!  Up. Down.  Up. Down. Up. Down.  FAST!  Scare me!".

We asked if he wanted to go on it again, and he just calmly said. "No, thank you.".

Robby did the space shot for the first time. Probably NOT the last for that.  He drug his dear ol' dad on some coasters as well.  The rides are faster and taller now than they were when I was growing up!  :-)

Happy Birthday, Caleb Rongbo Schmitz!!!

Happy birthday to our small Chinese boy, who is not quite so small anymore!

Yes, he's dressed for church and wearing his football gloves.

Momma asked him this morning if "Momma loved him?".  He said, "YES!".  Mom replied, "What is love, Caleb?".  He replied, "Happy!".  

Happy indeed. 

Happy birthday little guy.  You are loved!

Something You Don't See Everyday

I need to get outside and enjoy the beautiful weather that we are experiencing currently. The boys are out on the swingset currently and I could stand to do some mowing since I'm finally starting to feel a little better. 

So the other day, I'm getting groceries out of the truck and I hear a commotion behind me.  It's the sound of flapping wings, lots of them, and it was fairly loud as well!  I turned and looked, and was surprised to see two geese, and a host of smaller birds seemingly attacking them.  The geese landed on the roof of the neighbors house.  

That started me to thinking.  I've been on walking paths and soccer fields and where ever else where there are piles of geese around.  Their poop is big and there is a LOT of it.  What I got curious about was how many geese would it take on the roof of a house to plug up the down spouts?

Yes, I am aware that it's an odd thought, but welcome to my head!

Moving along from the geese plumbing angle, on Thursday night when we got the mail, we got our monthly Pleasant Hill Living magazine/paper.  Nothing too exciting, but it's always an interesting quick thumb-thru.  Well, I was down in the basement playing my guitar when I heard excited little Chinese feet coming down the steps.  Caleb was clutching a magazine and barking wildly! 

Here's why:

That's one of the teachers that he works with on a regular basis, Mrs. Juhler.  She is the one who told us the story of sweet little China-boy coming over and patting her on the shoulder when she would seem to be getting frustrated with him.  He would pat her on the shoulder and tell her that, "It's okay.".  She is awesome, does an awesome job and loves our boy.  For that, she is one of our hero's!

Close up of what little China boy had to say.

The Death Sprawl

Momma was commenting to me this morning how much she likes watching small people sleep, because they are so cute and peaceful.  She then mentioned that after she looked at Caleb sleeping last night she looked at me next. 

She said I was like...    uh...         hmmm...

Well, I don't know how to express in typing what she did/said audibly, but she demonstrated that my arms and legs were contorted in some grotesque fashion, and I was making some gurgly death noise from my mou...

You get the point.

While my ego was recovering from it's recent bruising, she went on to wonder aloud when we lose that cuteness/peacefulness, cause I apparently had none of either of those things.

My excuse?  I'm sick.  

Robby was sick last weekend and quite frankly, when you help clean-up the leakings of sick little ones, you're likely going to get sick to some degree yourself. 

That brings us current.

So here was Robby in the "death sprawl" last weekend, in the exact spot where he spent most of the weekend:

I would guess from Momma's description of me last night, I was not nearly this  * ahem *  "cute" or "peaceful"!

I can hardly wait til the boys are in bed and I can resume my own death sprawl tonight!

U. of Iowa, Hawkeyes, Caleb & Doctors... Lots of'em!

It seems a little hard to believe, but it's been nearly a year since the small Chinese boy had his palette repair surgery.  Today, Monday April 22nd was the "one-year" check-up for that.

His appointment was for 8:15 this morning so good ol' Aunt Molly stayed overnight at our house last evening so she could get up and get Robby to school since we'd be long gone by that point.  It seems that must have gone well, because he was there when I went to pick him up at 4. :-)

So we left the house this morning around 6am and arrived at the hospital in Iowa City right about 8am.  Perfect.  So we go and get checked in and Caleb is doing remarkably well when they call his name.  Last year when they would call his name, he would just lose it at that point and start crying.  We call this MAJOR progress!

We take him back for the hearing test...  no go, he has wax built up in his ears and the left one is not showing much drum movement on their fancy little machine.  Out of that room we go around to a different hallway to have his ears cleaned out.  

He crawls up on the big mechanical patients seat and has a definite look of concern on his face, but, he's not crying!

So a couple of young docs come in and use some various tools on his ears to extract the wax.  Once they had pulled a compact car sized wad of wax out of each ear, they sent him on his way.  

Off to the speech therapist.  This was the best part of multi-hour visit today.  That doc sat with him and went thru a series of photos having Master C tell him what they were, colors, how many and that sort of thing.  The doc said he was amazed at how much progress Caleb had made in the last year, especially for a kiddo getting his palette fixed "later" in life and only having it done a year ago. The doc even said, "wow!".  So that was a good report.

We saw the orthodontists over there as well and they took xrays of his teeth and gum lines, taught mom and dad a few things about making sure he brushes better and explained piles of things to us in sometimes repetitive detail. 

Away from there we trot, on down to see another doc. We spend some time with her and get the low-down on what comes next for the boy.  

Oh boy, what comes next is NOT going to be to Calebber's liking.  

Without going into too much detail as to spoil my boys h.i.p.p.a. rights, he will be busy with various doctors, dentists and surgeons over the next year.  Caleb doesn't understand it all at this point so we'll likely take it one visit at a time with him as to not overwhelm his pretty little head.

He's a healthy, smart little boy with a fantastic personality and smile to match it but we'll gladly welcome all prayers and well wishes as he enters phase two of cleft repairs.

Finally, we get back to the hearing tests.  The ears checked out mostly good as well.

And finally, four hours after we started, we get to leave and oh buddy does Caleb have an extra spring in his step now!  

We stopped at some river front restaurant for lunch and he was happy boy all over again.  He napped nearly all the way from Coralville to Altoona as far as the interstate is concerned.  So now that we've gone to pick up Robby from school, I have Robby, who always wants to do about 30 things at once when he gets home, and Caleb who slept for 3.5 hours in the car today both teamed up against a tired ol' Daddy!  

Mom's at school listening to 4 hours of nursing lecture, so quite frankly, I think I have it easy!

That's all the update from here...  No pictures because I forgot to grab the camera.

Oh!  And one funny thing that happened was when the dude taking the 3D picture of one the cuter little Chinese dudes ever, asked where we were from.  We've learned to just reply Des Moines, as it's easier than explaining Pleasant Hill or Altoona...  Anyway, once Momma answered that we were from Des Moines, the fella responded with another logical question; "Hmmmm, Hawkeye's or Cyclones?".  In an instant, all three of us answered, I said, "Both." Mom said "Hawkeyes" and Caleb exclaimed, "HAWKEYE'S!!" with his tiny little fist in the air. 

Springtime! Baseball & apple pie...

Well, baseball anyway, no apple pie. I did get some Shock Top Honey Crisp Apple Wheat beer though, that was delightful.  And it's better for you than apple pie because there's no crust plus the extra vegetable content in the making of the beer. Wheat and hops!  Tell your doctors!!

Back to the point.

Caleb starts baseball this week.  This morning he had pictures and met his team.

We had him stay in his garb for a couple of photos once we got home.  His team is the Pirates.

I don't care who you are, that boy is C.U.T.E!!

Pillows, Baseball, Spring, Gardens, Weekends and Time...

What the heck has happened to the weekends?!?

It must be Spring time because it seems like by the time I leave work on Friday afternoons, it's only about 1.5 hours until Sunday evening is upon us again.  Craziness.
This weekend was no exception.  The boys were itching to get their bicycles out so after a few Saturday morning errands, we got the bicycles out and the boys did a little riding while I walked around with the Beast (that's our dog...).

After some serious "two-wheelin'", it was time for garden work.  Daddy tilled up the compost pile (that's a story in itself) while Robby raked the mulch and Caleb shoveled it into a pile. 

Once we were done with gardening, the boys wanted a little baseball, and since Caleb starts playing baseball in a couple of weeks, it's probably time to start teaching him some fundamentals.  That task would be much better taught by Momma, than daddy!  Caleb wanted this picture for G'ma and G'pa.

There's a third varmint out there!  That is our little neighbor boy, Ryan, who really likes to play in our yard.  It's not a problem for me with the exception of the fact that he is not afraid of ANYTHING so he frightens me a bit.  On top of that, when he's out, so is Daisy Mae the chocolate lab, who Caleb is not so fond of.  He did great tonight, standing by Ryan's momma when I was not out there and even petting Daisy Mae when I was!  That's something right there!!

After suppers and baths, Caleb was asked to pick up the living room.  So, he sort of did, gathering all of the pillows and piling them on top of momma who was trying to study for class.

I know that I've left out tons of stuff, and I'm still exhausted after working today (in the office), but I can say that I am looking forward to next weekend, which I'm sure, will go way too fast!!

The Great Wall... of Pleasant Hill

The Great Wall, no, not THAT Great Wall, but rather the roughly 21' x 9' expanse in our living room.

Since we built this house 8 years ago, we've changed the decor of the main wall in our living room several times. 

At one point, we came up with an idea to use those stick-on wall words (I can't think of the name of that stuff for nuttin') to create a crossword puzzle of inspirational words. 

That was kinda cool but if we were truly thinking at the time we did it, we would have put them on 4" bathroom tiles to make it look more like a Scrabble game board, and by doing it that way, it would have been movable/reusable.  Sadly, it is now at the landfill.

Then Momma got an idea from Pinterest to build a frame with wires strung across the thing.  Then you would use clothes pins to hang pictures from it.

So, we procured some old wood siding boards from the house that Lesley's Grandpa Maynard had built/lived in, and did a similar project which you can sort of see in this photo of the oompa-loompa's after decorating their gingerbread houses:

I did nothing with the paint or texture of the boards.  I simply cut them to the length I wanted, used screw in loop-hooks on each side and used twine to string between them.  I sort of like it, but it didn't seem to "fit", for whatever reason.

So, what to do?

Again, from the lovely Pinterest site, Momma comes up with an idea to have shelves cover most of the walls.  

I'm sort of on board but it would cost many hundreds of clams to adorn the wall in shelving.  I don't want to spend that right now.

That left us with three options:
1.) Daddy builds and hangs the shelving
  or     
2.) Daddy builds and hangs the shelving
  or 
3.) Daddy builds and hangs the shelving


We ended up going with option 2, Daddy builds and hangs the shelving.

I figured I could have the boys help me a little to give them a little experience of that sort.  You know, POWER TOOLS!!

A few years back, Robby helped me build a new amp housing/speaker cabinet for a little cheapy amp in which I had blown the speaker.  We had a lot of fun and made a cheesy little amp sound pretty dang good.  

The frame of the cabinet.  Robby helped cut the wood using the miter saw for the first time.  He also helped with the sanding and filled all of the nail and screw holes for me.

Making progress...

The finished project with the exception of the speaker grill cover.

 
Back to the silly wall...

We finally settled on a shelf design called $10 shelves.  

I can assure you, unless you have an under-the-table wood connection, these shelves are NOT $10.  Closer to $30, but still much better than trying to buy something similar.

I had my worker elves help me until they got bored, which took roughly 20 minutes.  But it was still fun.  

Once the shelves were assembled, I had to move them from the garage to the storage room in the basement for painting as it was too cold outside yet.  Oh, and see that 5-gallon bucket behind Caleb?  There were 8 of them as I conducted an experiment this winter to see if I could grow potatoes indoors. You can, however, the first ones that I "planted", were rotten when I went to transfer them outside earlier this week, but the ones that I had "planted" only a month ago, were doing pretty good.  We'll see if they survived their transplant to wild outdoors soon enough...

The boys painted the first two and then decided that they needed a break... that meant that they had been talking and wanted to play Super Mario Bros instead.  I checked their work but they did pretty good getting everything covered and smooth.

And while they're hard to see since we painted them the same color as the wall (on purpose), there they are.  We need about 30 more pictures to fill them all up, but my part is done! 

And from a different angle...

So that's where we're at currently.  We both like it now but we both liked the crossword puzzle & picture frame clothes pins thingy-ma-bob as well.  

Again, we'll see...

And so goes the ever ongoing saga of the Great Wall... of Pleasant Hill.