Empty Nesters

We had some visitors this summer.

I suppose, technically speaking, we have similar visitors every summer and last year was no exception.  The birdies were in one of the hanging baskets of flowers last year and I accidentally sprayed them while watering the flowers.  The four little birdies went flying out of the nest while mom and dad came in at me like a military attack!  Their frantic chirping was apparently some type of distress signal meant to summons help and soon, I had four adult robins within about 3 feet of my head all chirping/screaching wildly while I was using the water from the hose as my protection.  All the while trying not to step on two of the babies (who were really more toddler aged, as far as bird years go) who had "flown" from the nest in the hanging basket and got no further than a few feet away and on the deck.

So, that was fun...

This year, the parents built the nest in a bird feeder that I believe was made by Momma's Grandpa Maynard. It's mounted to the railing of our deck and contains a feeder box that's just about the perfect size for a nest.

And here is that feeder with Momma birdie sitting pretty guarding her four precious little eggs.

The four eggs, quite obviously.  This was the second group of eggs that appeared in the nest.  The first ones didn't last very long as we have raccoons and stray cats out here by the thousands.  Okay, that's exaggerating, but we do have quite a few.

Small Chinese boy was enamored with the eggs.  It was a fantastic tool for teaching the boys many things about birds and bird nests.  One of the best lessons though related to a Blue Jay trying to infiltrate Fort Birdie and getting his butt handed to him by the Robins.  Robby always asks questions about, "what would happen if someone tried to take me?".  I tell him that while Daddy would fight to the death to keep that from ever happening, there's a monster inside of Momma's that only comes out when someone is trying to do irreparable harm to her kiddies.  Robby got to see that when Momma bird and the Momma-Bird-Mafia whooped that Blue Jay and gave him good reason to not return. As far as we know, he never did.  Robby was impressed.  Does he feel any more secure?  Hard to say, but at least he got to see a little example of Monster Momma.  :-)

I think this is Momma, and I liked this picture.  She got to the point where she would only be nervous, but would stay at the nest while we were outside.  Early on, she would fly out to look-out posts whenever the inside door opened.

This was one of the look-out posts where she would chirp for reinforcements if she felt threatened.

The big day!  Momma was watching as baby number one cracked thru the egg and shimmied out. 

Momma and Daddy took turns going out to find meals.  We would use those opportunities to go out and check their growth/other eggs hatching and so-on.  Generally speaking, we allowed only one visit to the nest per day as to not cause the birdies undo distress.  This was a fun time to watch though. The feedings, the way Momma made herself twice as big to cover the babes from the rain and so on.  All great stuff and pretty interesting to boot.

And here is the first born of the brood.  Ready to fly the nest.  I never did see the babies leave the nest, but the day after this picture was taken...

Ma and Pa Birdie were empty nesters!

A metal medal...

June 14th wasn't just a big day for the China boy, it was also the day that Grandpa Jim was playing table tennis in the Senior Olympics.  Robby decided that he would stay with G'pa and go to the olympics as opposed to going to Iowa City with mom and dad and "enjoying" the whole experience of waiting rooms and doctor talk.

Why?

I dunno!  :-)  You'd hafta ask an 8 year old that question.

So how did Gpa do?

Well, he did great.  He came one match short of the bronze in the singles competition and scored a silver medal in the doubles.

Who was more proud? Gpa or his family?  

It's all debatable.

What I myself would have really liked to have seen was Gpa playing in a senior's pool tournament.  If he was on his 'A' game, or even his 'B' game, I think he could have wiped the floor with the opponents proverbial butts.  

Sadly, that's a debate for either another time or never.

Enjoy a few pics for what they are and hooray for Gpa!!!

If you're wondering why Robby looks sweaty, he was hawking balls for some various tables and had a ball doing it!  When Momma and I learned of that while still in Iowa City with Calebber, we were ecstatic that Robby was having as good of a time as Gpa!

The ABA's, not quite the CMA's, AMA's or any other MA's... but who cares?

I'm woefully behind. Life continues churning along and does not stop to ask me if I'm okay with it.  Do you know that feeling?

Tonight was the baseball awards ceremony and quite frankly, I believe God was smiling on the Altoona Pirates!  We were first!!!

 They had the grounds keepers cart out on field 6 loaded with trophies for the lads and ladettes that played in the 6 +/- year old group.
 

And here they are with their cart o' trophies.

The Pirates are marching up to accept their "hardware" after two different versions of the national anthem...  not that there's anything wrong with that.

There's small Chinese boy hoisting his GOLD!

And his team at the end...

I decided that we could have a fun "park hop" on the way home if the boys behaved themselves....

...they did.  This is at the Sam Wise complex which was not all that exciting to them.

We moved on to what we refer to as "Noah's Park" because once, many years ago, we ran into Robby's friend Noah here. They were roughly 4 years old at the time.

This is at Clay Elementary park, which was our final stop in the "Park Hop" tour.     I took more photos at the other park but they didn't turn out all that good.  Go figure.

Small Chinese boy hamming it up for the camera.

I had to talk the boy into sliding down the dreaded pole.  He did it, twice, but wasn't about to do it again. :-)

Mr. Cutie Pa-tootie at the end of a slide.

The boys on the swings as I tried mightily to get them back into the van!

Closer to the van as you can see the parking lot behind the critters!

And wouldn't you know it?  We found a NFL pee-wee football laying in the grass, completely obstructing us from getting to our vehicle.  I threw about 8 to 10 passes to Robby and Caleb while a grandma of some other little cuties raved about how good the boys were about catching the ol' proverbial pigskin.

A fun night indeed!  Well, up until bathtime...

Fun with sunglasses, hair and self portraits...

I don't have much to add to these as the camera will pretty much tell the tale.  

Caleb likes to pose for pictures and REALLY likes to get hold of the camera and TAKE pictures.  He'll take a series of "self portraits" while making faces.  We won't know that he did that until we're loading pictures to the computer and see them.

In fact, there have been times where I've deleted probably 100 pictures +/- while loading them as he will have taken pics of the tv, papers, books, the stair railing, carpet, coins, shells, bed spreads and whatever else strikes his small Chinese fancy.

And so it is that we start off with a series of photos that Daddy took with the boys clowning around.

And now that we've finished up our initial series of photos, we drop into Caleb's section of "self portraits.  Enjoy!  We do.

Sweet Dreams, M'Love

If my feeble memory serves me correctly, and it rarely does, Robby has never stayed overnight at the house of anybody who is not part of our family. 

That changed on Friday night as his buddy Noah had recently turned 8 years old and was throwing a birthday bash to commemorate the momentous occasion.  

Rob was nervous as the time neared.  He was nervous about a good number of things, not the least of which was if Noah's family made sure that all of the doors were locked before crawling into bed, as he makes sure of here at home.  

I assured him that most likely, everything will work out as it should and it will be fine, but as we were about two blocks away from Noah's house, Robby said, "Uh-oh Dad, the butterflies have left my stomach and are flying up my throat!".  :-)

Again, I assured him that I too was nervous before birthday parties growing up and how within 30 seconds of getting there, the nervousness would leave you and be supplanted by twice as much fun!

So how did it go?

Perfect according to Robby.  I believe him since I think he has repeated not just stories of stuff that happened, but entire conversations with notations of who said what, when, and what they were doing when they said it!

I'm not kidding.

They went to an Iowa Cubs baseball game and stayed for the fireworks afterwards.  Noah's Dad told Momma that he has never heard so much talking as Robby, Noah and Vincent together.  I believe him...

Robby looked tired when he got home at 10am Saturday morning but he was way too wound up to possibly fall asleep.

But then, that wore off too...

This is Robby in our front hallway.  I'm standing by our front door, and the door behind Robby is the door to our garage.  Mom had told him to unpack his bag and get stuff put away. This was as far as he got.  You can see his pillow under his face, and his Diego sleeping bag sort of behind and under him, that were all crammed into his backpack.

Kindergarten graduation & all that goes with that.

Wow. Another school year done and in the books, as they say.

Robby took the end of second grade harder than I would have ever imagined!  He was upset the night before and it didn't get better even though his daddy surprised him for lunch on the final day.

Now, I've been dreading this day for some time.  Not because Robby is going to be a 3rd grader next year, although that was enough to send both he and momma into "noisy, wet reflections", but rather that we had decided along with Caleb's teachers to hold him in kindergarten another year.

June 5th, 2013 was simply the day that he was going to find out.

So, he goes to school, happy as the proverbial clam (as usual) only he knows that it's his last day of school this year and he is constantly asking daddy if he gets the summer off too!

A fella can dream, but I have to tell him "no" roughly 100 times and then explain why... again.  That's okay. He's getting it.

He "got" kindergarten too, but the decision was made based on the fact that he won't be able to complete everything expected of 1st graders at the end of 1st grade if we moved him on.  We want him to have a good base knowledge of everything before he starts to build on it.

I know from personal experience that if the foundation is missing, the house above quickly crumbles when the heavy rains come.  I don't want him to experience that to the degree that I did/do.

So, back to the day.  I worked a half day and left to get home and go up to school by 10am as the kindergartners put on a concert before their certificate ceremony.

The concert was fine and quite frankly, quite fun!  Let's see a few pix at this point.

This is the parade of kids to the risers.  Spot the smiling Chinese boy!

There's the dude, front and center with his music teacher in the striped dress and his K teacher in the denim jacket.

Mr. Mohning, the principal, is giving a brief talk about the kindergartners and what we're about to see and the procedures to see them in.

A huge bunch of cuties singing an adorable song!

Mr. Mohning and Mrs. Riordan handing out certificates to the students.

There's sweet little Calebber getting his certificate from his teacher!

And there's the boy with his teacher back in the classroom before the meeting we're about to have.

So we're back in the classroom for the meeting. Mom and I have already talked about how emotional we feel about the whole thing.

Remember, I said I've been dreading this for months.

We wait around for all of the other families parents to take pics with teach and leave the room.  Caleb and I are goofing around:

...when finally, it is time.

We sat down around one of the kiddos tables in the room and Mrs. Juhler and Mrs. Riordan began talking to him.  They say nearly perfect stuff to him, not lying or exaggerating, just telling him the truth the way it should be.

Dignity is life preserving and they did a wonderful job with Calebs.

At one point, I cautiously, bravely sneak a glance at Momma and notice that she's in roughly the same place as I am.  Which means that if we make eye contact with each other, it's all over.

By all over, I mean full on bawling. Woe and gnashing of teeth.  Ugly stuff.

I do not look her way again.

Caleb took it all with a smile on his face and shook his head when asked if he understood.


I had a suspicion that this would be an emotional day but I under estimated it.  Greatly.  Heck, I can't even type without crying about it now...

Caleb, undoubtedly you will read this blogpost someday.  You are a SMART boy!  So smart you scare mom and dad sometimes!  It would break my heart if you ever thought for a second you were held back because you weren't smart enough, weren't good enough, or weren't "whatever" enough.

That's crap!  You are everything we could have ever imagined and 1000 time more!

It's here that I would direct to a post that momma wrote about you!

You are amazing.  You are beautiful. You are fun. You are precious. You are SMART!  You, like your brother, are amazing in so many ways! 

But most of all, you are loved!

I've said it before and it's worth repeating another million times or more;

People always say how lucky he is to have been adopted by a family like us. True or not, we are the lucky ones that received such a fantastic little 4.5 year old boy like Caleb!

God works in mysterious ways.

Caleb, we LOVE you!!

Sinkholes, culverts, bobcats, gardens & way too short of weekends

Last summer, we had a smattering of woe when we had a few rains that were really heavy for short burst of maybe 10 minutes or so.  Not only did we have ruts in the driveway that the boys could have played "Grand Canyon" with using Matchbox cars, we developed a a good sized sink hole about 10' off the driveway where it crosses over the creek.

Needless to say, it got considerably bigger thru the remaining Fall, Winter and finally, Spring rains.

I called a three fellas about fixing it and only one showed up.  He said he would give me a bid and I never heard from him again. 

Another told me to throw some bags of top soil in there and forget about it.  I chose to forget about his company now and in the future instead.  

The other dude never bothered to respond to the message I left.

That was last Fall and the reason that it waited until now to fix it.  

This is the original hole that appeared last September.  You can barely see the culvert in the upper right corner of the pic, but notice also the ground cracking on the left side of the hole.  That had caved in plus some more on all other sides. Not cool...

Obviously the fella I hired working on it.  He dug towards the creek and a bit back towards the driveway, hitting solid dirt all the way down.  That was good news.

That black fabric is covering up three layers of a heavy plastic.  There was a small gap where the two pieces of culvert fit together and it was creating suction thru the hole during really heavy rains and eventually pulled a LOT of dirt down thru the culvert. Anti-awesomeness!

Self explanatory...  I think.

He dug out a trench in the creek itself as the water was no longer aimed at the opening of the culvert.  He also dug about 1' of dirt out on the right side of the culvert for a reason we'll see in a bit.

And here we are.  He brought in a huge load of broken up concrete to rip-wrap the area around the culvert which should help prevent more dirt wash-out, or at least, slow it way down.

And, since we were supposed to get a whole pile of rain, I wanted to get the area raked, seeded and covered in grass clippings before it started.  I would not have finished it had it not been for the help of fine neighbors!  Much gratitude and thanks to them!

And since the sinkhole was fixed, we had new rock put on the driveway as well.  That's Robby about halfway up posing, although you can't really tell at this size.

While all of that driveway fixin' was going on, I was out in the gardens trying to build a trellis for cucumbers or other vine based plants to grow on.  It failed and we had to come up with an alternative plan.  The plan was what you see on the right-most garden. I put the fencing up one side of the supports, looped it over and back down the other side. It's not bad but it's not even close to what we were attempting to do. It'll all be okay if we get piles and piles of cucumbers for me to consume at will.

And while the driveway fixin' and trellis screwing up'in was going on, the boys had a good, but short, time running thru the sprinkler.  Here's a wet Caleb who was not afraid to play in sand after being soaked. 

And another weekend was gone before I knew it...