Another Caleb Update

So how is China Boy doing?

We thank you for asking!

He's starting to get what is commonly referred to as "cabin fever".  He's hyper, practically bouncing off of the walls and anything else that is in his way!

I always tease him that he's a wild donkey of a man and I think he's upped the ante tenfold in the past two days!  Last night we went to church and then the grocery store. While Caleb and Robby were getting back in the vehicle, Caleb grabs the "Oh p00p!" handle above the door on the interior and is swinging from it.  Not exactly what we're looking for during his 12 weeks of recovery...

To that end, he's a great worker around the house so we try to find him some jobs that he likes to do.  As I type, he's sorting and putting away the boy's laundry. He just swept/mopped the kitchen and dining room floors prior to that.

The other night, his speech teacher visited him and brought him homework and a gift as well as cards from his classmates.  He vaccuumed the floor prior to her arrival. 

You get the picture.

Here are the cards from Caleb's classmates...

So anyway, he says that his hip hurts, "maybe, a lil' bit".  That's about all we ever get from him even though when it gets hurting really bad, he walks like 101 year old man.  We did over hear him telling Robby this morning that it hurt really bad.  Of course, he's telling Robby because Robby does not administer his drugs!  Crafty boy.

This morning he helped Daddy make breakfast for everybody.  Bacon and eggs.  Here he is obviously doing the eggs.  I have him break the eggs into a small bowl, and once he's sure there's no shells in it, he adds it to the bigger bowl.  In the photo, you can see that the right cheek is still just a bit swollen, but not too bad.  The first two days, his face really looked different from the swelling but he's pretty much back to being "Caleb".

Here the boy is unenthusiastically eating his "bacon & eggs".  It wasn't quite as desirable as he was hoping, and I don't blame him...  I tried it and while you could tell it was bacon and eggs, it just ain't right to drink it.  We'll keep trying and occasionally finding things he likes.

And just so you know what I mean when I say it "just ain't right", here's his bacon and eggs.  Get you some!!

Quick Caleb Update

We are back home from Iowa City as of noon on Wednesday. 

Caleb's surgery went well and was about an hour shorter than the time estimated to us.  His hip is sore where they took the bone from, and his face is mildly swollen as well.  

He was up walking around and off his machines last night already so Mom & Dad walked him down to the toy/book room where he did some puzzles and played with a few things.  We took the Phineas & Ferb Christmas movie "A Very Perry Christmas" back to our room and watched that last night after playing.

He did awesome.  High tolerance for pain, which I suppose could be a blessing and a curse.  A blessing as he isn't always whining and crying every time he's in a bit of pain, but a curse because sometimes you know he has to be hurting but just won't admit it.  No matter, I think Mom & Dad are getting him figured out pretty good at this point.

He was scared out of wits a few times on this trip and there's not really a good medicine for that, so there was a lot of hand holding and snuggling going on.

So now we have a long 12 weeks of healing with liquid diets, no overall craziness, no outside activities and so on...  you get the picture.

He seems to understand that if he jacks it up, we have to do it all over again, and that is something that NONE of us want!

Thanks to Grandma Elaine for watching Robby and Aunt Molly for entertaining the wily beast! Thanks to all for the prayers and get well wishes! 

It's that time again...

Greetings and salutations.

Thought I would write a quick update about happenings here.  Crazy thing is, right outside of the window as I type this, it's blowing and snowing like mid-January!!  Not sticking much on the ground at this point, but fun none the less.

Tomorrow is the big day for Mr. Caleb.  He has his bone graft surgery and we will again be on a liquid diet for the boy for a good 10-12 weeks afterwards.

He's nervous/anxious/whatever you would care to call it about this medical procedure as he still remembers 1.5 years ago with the palette repair surgery.  We've been trying to give him details about it a little at a time and then finally yesterday, mom was able to get thru the whole procedure with him without him getting to agitated. 

He asked if it was going to "ow-ey".  Mom explained that it was and that it's important for him to tell mom and dad if it does so we can get him medicine.  He seemed to agree.

Robby will be going over to Grandma Schmitzs house tonight after his first of the season swim meet, and will be "taking care of Grandma".

On Saturday night, the boys stayed over at Aunt Mollys house as mom and dad were going out on a date to eat dinner at a favorite resturant (prior to our groupon expiring!) and then off to see my friend Jareds band play.  We didn't make it to se the band as I got sick and just wanted to crash after we had done some post-supper shopping.

Mom had recently finished up Caleb's 100 wishes adoption quilt so she put that on his bed so that when we came home from worship service on Sunday morning, it would be there for him.  

He liked it! 

The front...

...and back!

So that's about it from here.  

The next 72 hours should be a whirlwind!

Vacation 2013 - Post #3, Gettysburg, PA. (Pt 2 - The Town/battlefield)

I covered the museum, albeit haphazardly in the last vacation post.  I'll try to do better with a little help from Robby on this one, since Gettysburg is one of his "specialities"!  I have my doubts that it will actually happen because every time I invite him in here, the conversation devolves into some type of football non-sense.

Go figure...

It's rather difficult to put everything that you saw on this day, into words.  It's breath-taking to be driving on a road that was built on a ridge of land where so many men lost their lives and the battle of Gettysburg began, McPhersons Ridge.  To see the monuments & memorials, literally, every way that you turned.

These photos are not in the order in which they happened on our tour.  Since we were working three cameras, they tended to get jumbled up a bit and out of order.  No matter, they're still good and bring back great memories.

One of many memorials as you drive down this fantastic road lined with canons left from the war.  I believe this was a North Carolina memorial for some reason but if you trust my memory, prepare to be disappointed and wrong... a lot!

This is up on Little Round Top. 

Standing up here and looking out in all directions, you can get a real sense of how important the hill was to the battle, being look-out points, firing down upon thine enemy and so on.  Great stuff!  That collection rocks down there towards the middle of the picture is known as Devils Den.  Bushman's hill is just out of the upper left side of the photo. 

I believe this is the memorial of General Henry Wanner Slocum... 

These particular types of memorials are nearly everywhere!  They mark the different infantries that fought in the war.  Sadly, you do not have enough time to stop and read them all unless you were going to spend a full week in the town of Gettysburg.

This was taken on the ridge that I spoke of above.  There are endless plaques and canons along this road and the cd we purchased for the driving tour named how many men died where you're currently driving.  Heavy stuff.

Along that same road...

You'll see this memorial building/tower in a lot of photos of Little Round Top.  It's extra cool because you get to climb up the inside of it as we'll see shortly...

Up on top of that memorial with Momma and Master C!  How cool is that looking out over that battlefield behind them and wondering about everything that happened on that ground!?

Three monkey's at the bottom of the steps as we descended back to ground level.

This was out on the driving tour as well.  I couldn't tell you what we're looking at here, but I thought it was a cool picture, so I included it.

I cannot remember what this was called and oddly enough, out of all of the cool memorial based pages on the fancy hi-tech world wide interweb, I could not find any photos of it based on a cursory glance.

I believe this is the barn at the Trostle farmstead where "Bigelows Desperate Stand" took place.  If you note those two decorative brick designs on this side of the barn, just to the bottom of the right one, you can see a hole in the bricks.  That's a cannon ball hole that was never repaired.

This is one of the old stone fences that was used as shelter for troops.  These cannons are either not the originals here or have been restored, but I cannot recall which.

Note the condition of this cannon!  It's all painted up and looking spiffy.  The fences are original although they have been repaired a bit in some places as some of them are actual fences that are still being used.

This guy was awesome.  He was a Union General and talked to us in character.  He took his very real sword out and showed the boys how he would direct troops and such.  Very cool!

And that's about all I'm going to post about the battlefield tour although we have about another 200 pictures or so.  

Did Robby help?  A little bit with a few facts.  Better than I expected, but not quite as good as what I was hoping for.

...Must Be Christmas, already!

If you're one of the regular readers of this blog, you probably realized that I'm procrastinating about posting our vacation picture. It's been nearly three months now and I've done two posts on it. I'll get to it... probably. 

Today when I returned home from the office, there was a box that had arrived.

This is the box in question...

Inside of it, another box. Smaller, but no less... uh...  boxy. 
Inside of it????

Whoa, buddy!!  That's a BC Rich Bich (I didn't name it!) double neck electric!!  Now who would have ordered that!?!?

Oh, him.  Dear Ol' Dad.  It seems that I've had a bit of a "geek" on for a double neck guitar for nearly 15 year now.  I've never seriously considered buying one as much as I've seriously wished I had one. Then, Musician's Friend had their Stupid Deal Of The Day last Friday.  This was it.  I waited 90 minutes after the excitement of seeing it to see if it was still interesting to me and I'll be danged if it wasn't. 

Hippie Boy Rob wanted to feel what the 12-String neck felt like under his grubby little cabbage-collectors.  He felt. He smiled. 

Much like his daddy (only you wouldn't know from the photo's as I was peeling off a wicked riff when the photo was snapped, hence my serious expression!).