The 2013 Olympics!

What's that, you say? No Olympics in odd numbered years?

Tell that to these kids!

Four Mile Elementary had their annual Spring Olympics this Monday, May 20th.  We missed it last year when Robby was in them as we were over in Iowa City on a follow-up visit after Caleb's surgery.  Aunt Dianne went last year to represent for Mr. Robby, but we were indeed sorry we missed it.

How sorry we did not know until Monday.  It was a LOT more fun than I thought it would be and the 1-legged hop was truly a captivating event.  I'm not kidding.

This is a shot of SOME of the kids lining up for the opening ceremony parade.

They marched the kiddos in by class.  This is Caleb's kindergarten class led by the inimitable Mrs. Riordan.  I challenge anyone to locate the small Chinese boy in this photo.  He's in there, I promise!  A tiny bit of him anyway.  Three kids away from Mrs. Riordan is a little girl with a white shirt (butterfly on it) and blueish colored shorts with flowers. You can see Caleb's hair blowing in the wind behind her head and his forearm on the other side of her head.

This was a few steps later...  Caleb is in the Hillis Elementary tie-dyed t-shirt adjacent to Mrs. Riordan.  It took a bit to get the camera set correctly for being in the bright early morning sun light.

And here is Robby's class led by Mrs. Hengstenberg.  Robby is also in a Hillis Elementary tie-dyed t-shirt like his little bro.  If you start at the two folks sitting in chairs on the side of the football field, the fella in orange, the lady in a dark color, Robby is almost immediately below the lady.

This is Robby's class out of the field doing the crab-walk.

There's our hippie boy who did surprisingly well when you consider that he wasn't supposed to do this event, but rather the one-legged hop.  He got mixed up and wanted one of his parents to come sit with him in an effort to keep him organized.  We didn't.  2nd grade Olympics is a good place to screw up and have to deal with those consequences.

That is a mass of humanity on the field as they prepare for the 80-yard dash.

And speaking of the 80 yard dash, here is Caleb running it.  He's crossing the 40yard line in the photo and I put a flame under him to indicate his whereabouts.

The wheelbarrow race.  This is Caleb's class racing here.  Again, hard to spot, Caleb and his partner are just behind the 50 yard line with Master C in the "wheelbarrow" position as his partner refused to switch and Caleb is too nice to insist.

We only got two photos of Robby in the wheelbarrow race as it was impossible to see the view finder on the camera due to the sun.  This photo was the obvious choice since the other one looked like Robby was giving the kid some type of exam, of a rather personal variety.

That pretty well wrapped it up for us.  Both boys had fun and so did the parents so well worth taking a day off of work to attend!

LCC Rock n' Roll - Sunday School Style

May 19th, the final day of Sunday School for this particular school year.  We had music planned for the kiddos to sing in worship today.

Caleb's age group did Radical God while Robby's age group got bumped up with the older kids for this go 'round. They did Days Of Elijah.  They sang at both services today and had Sunday school in between.

I taught Robby's class today and we ended up outside in front of the church with sidewalk chalk with the kids playing, but ONLY after we had our lesson done.  :-)

Since I somewhat successfully added a video of Caleb reading his poem, I thought I would go for broke and attempt to upload both songs.  Will it work?  Only time will tell.

But first, some pictures!

Momma's been teaching in Caleb's class this year.  Today, their art project was fancy eyeball wear.  Caleb was the only kiddo who wore his glasses up to sing.

This is the bigger kids rehearsing prior to the 8:30 service.

This was during the 11:00 service. They were much louder and more energetic during this service, which made it more fun for everybody.

At the end of the song, the kids went out into the aisles and sang the final verse thru the end of the song.  Good stuff!

There's the man with his fancy eyeball enhancements!

Notice how Caleb separates from the group a little so he can dance during the proceedings.

 

Caleb finally gets to ride a bus! It's a field trip!

Thursday was the kindergarten to Living History Farms which is billed as an "outdoor museum".  It sprinkled a bit but overall was a nice, overcast day.  Caleb was psyched about the bus ride but on the way home he did fall asleep for a bit.  The ride is about 30 minutes each way.  After getting organized, the first stop for our class was a broom factory.  The brooms are made of broomcorn and we heard how the brooms used to be made and how much they cost.

The lady below is showing how a machine flattened the brooms.

The second stop was at a one room schoolhouse.  Everything in the schoolhouse came from one room schoolhouses around Iowa.  Below the boys and girls are getting in separate lines.  The boys always allow the girls to go in and out of the classroom first.

Here is a picture of the entire class outside of the schoolhouse.

This was one of the homes on the property.  She talked about the 5 F's of decorating back in the day.  

• Fruit
• Feathers
• Fringe
• Fur
• Flowers

This was a Native American home.  Note Caleb looking intently inside.

Mrs. Riordan pretending she is a cow :)  Right before this all the kids had the opportunity to pet a horse named Bill.  I am happy to report that Caleb did pet Bill. 

Here the kids are gathered looking at farm animals.

Caleb is wearing one glove.  Why you may ask, nobody knows and sometimes it is just better to go with the flow.

Here we are in an implement store and the lovely Miss Isadora is demonstrating how to use a two row planter.

Our last stop was the blacksmith shop.  They made an S hook and were really good with the kids.  A few kids got to go back and work the bellows to fan the flame. 

All in all a pretty cool place.  I can see us coming back and going through the farms and buildings again.  For more information visit http://www.lhf.org/

Caleb "Longfellow" Schmitz

Caleb had a poetry reading at school on Tuesday.  The kids all got to pick which poem they wanted to read and the picked a pretty tough one for a small Chinese boy learning how to read, speak English and so on.

Here is his poem:
Rain on the green grass,
Rain on the trees,
Rain on the house tops
but not on me!

Rain on the flowers,
Rain on the bees,
Rain on the umbrella
but not on me!


I tried to insert a video of it below, but I'm not confident on it working.  He's pretty quiet on it as well, but he makes up for that with cuteness!

The luck of the... Germans? A 4-leaf clover.

Try as I might, as a kid, I only ever found one four leaf clover. If memory serves me correctly, which it seldom does these days, I ate the silly thing. 

Why?  Why not?

Robby was out playing with the neighbor boy, Ryan, tonight when he came in all amped up about finding the mythical fauna.  However, he was equally juiced about it last night when we were out playing football in the back yard, but he didn't pick it and indeed, lost the location of the beacon of untold luck and riches.

Tonight, he was much more keen on capturing his treasure. He came into the house declaring that he had found the clover that the world searches for, and was clutching it in his grubby little cabbage-collectors!

So?  What did he wish for?  Dunno...  probably McNuggets and a super sized fry.

Baseball, Apple Pie, Wind & Sandstorms... & 37 degrees!

Caleb had his first baseball game on Wednesday, May 1st.  As you know from my last post, we got about 5 inches of snow on Thursday.  The precursor to that snow was a 27 degree drop in temperatures from 5 o'clock Tuesday til 5pm Wednesday.

Now, anybody older than about 6 years old knows that when you have a wild swing in temperatures, you have piles of wind to go along with that.

So by the time his 6pm game rolled around, it was about 37 degrees out with sustained winds of 10mph out of the North, with gusts up to about 40mph.  Sweet Maria, was it miserable!!

But the game must go on...

That's Caleb up at the tee with Coach Joe.  When he came walking out to home plate the first time with the big ol'batting helmet on his head, he had this CUTE little grin on his face looking over at the bleachers.  He got some "Ahhhhs" and giggles for his cuteness!

The next batter up, Caleb is on first base down there getting instructions from his other coach, whose name escapes me as I type this.

Yes, it's him on second base too.  :-)   Nerdy parents, we are.

His second time at bat... still freezing!

The focus. The determination. The will. The cunning!  His little arms get tired after the first time at bat so he tends to hit the tee quite a bit when he's up the second time.  I think it took him 6 swings this time and never once did he swing high. In fact, Coach Joe knocked the tee down a couple of inches for him.

Cuteness.   The little guy behind Caleb took his glove off and put his hands in his pockets at one point. Did I mention it's May 1st and near freezing with a strong wind?

Caleb was going to play third base, but...

...got moved over to the non-existent position that is much like a short stop between 1st and 2nd bases.

They called the game out of mercy after two innings. Not one parent complained.

And that was all she wrote.  We went home and ran nice toasty bath water for the boys so they could defrost.

Come What May (or whatever...)

They always say, "If you don't like the weather in Iowa, just wait 5 (or 10 or 15 or 30 or whatever) minutes, depending on who it is that is saying it to you.

This winter/spring, we are all hoping for the best of the Al Gore styled Global Warming/climate change/climate chaos or whatever those particular smarty-pants peeps are calling it at this point in time.

Here's little Calebber in his new Angry Birds jammies.

Ahhhh... here we are on Tuesday night while it's nearly 80 degrees outside at 8pm in the evening.

Here's dear ol' dad with Robby reading in an adjacent chair and Master C playing down in the sand with his cape and superhero costume.

There's Robby reading on the same evening...

And here's Caleb, 48 hours later, shoveling the nasty ol' snow from the deck.

This is looking out towards the East from the garage.

And here's our poor onions that Lesley had put in the ground on Wednesday prior to our weather going to the pot...

Reading In The Woods

I posted, roughly a year ago about Robby and Daddy going to a Reading Under The Stars up at their school.  It's an event to promote reading as a family that includes a book swap, games, storytellers, and other stuffs.

This year was themed Reading In The Woods.  They had some tents set up in the cafeteria and people again brought sleeping bags and pillows.  They had a big "campfire" projected on one of the walls and were playing a outdoor-sounds cd.  Pretty neat idea and the kids seem to really like it.

Robby had swimming that night, so Mom took him to that, and I took Caleb up to school.  He was X-Cited!! He led me all around the school by hand showing me different rooms, artwork and the like. 

We swapped out his book and got a new book at his kindergarten reading level, called, "This Bird Can't Fly".  We read it. Several times. :-)

We played in the tents. Several times.

Mom and Robby showed up after swimming practice and we went and listened to a story teller.

Here's some pics...

Here we are in the tent with Robby reading his book aloud for us.  Caleb, as you can see, was apparently in a theme of a haunted forest so every time I would try to take a picture, he's make a scary face.

Again...

And one of Daddy keeping with the theme.  If you ever wondered what Momma saw in me those 22 years ago, look no further!!

This is the story teller dude. He's a Dakota Indian and told a wide variety of stories, my favorite being about how the Dakota's used to hunt bison before they ever had horses.  Good stuff.

And later that night, back at home for our family NFL draft party featuring gigantic ice cream cones, the boys pose after finishing their "work".

Robby really got into his...