St. Louis, December 2015... I Forgot, Part II

So a couple of weeks back I had posted a bit about our trip to St. Louis in December of 2015 and how I had forgotten to ever post anything about it.  I did the first post but thought I had too many pictures to just do one blog post.

So here's the second...  and I decided there will be a third as well.  Why?  Because the City Museum is beyond an awesome place to visit! 
 

This is one of the aquariums that they have.  It's hard to really tell what you're looking at here and the scale of it, but trust me when I say, it was cool!

This is from atop one of the staircases that you encounter in the joint.  The stairs are at the bottom of the pic.  Any of the curly-q metal you see is stuff for people to climb in.  Yes, some of the stuff in this photo is over three stories tall.  The long copper'ish looking thing on the right side of the photo is a slide from the story above where we took the picture!

Giant propellers on each side of the photo and the pipe organ room straight ahead.

The pipe organs were, sadly, behind glass and therefore, difficult to get a decent picture.

Crazy chairs.  Now they have these same chairs at the Des Moines Farmers Market.

A display that you can walk on.  So, what is it that they're walking on?

Thousands of tiny people who are holding up the floating glass floor.

Weirdness #1...

Weirdness #2.  This is surrounding the cafe area.

Other weirdness.  I think that this was an area where Robby went down a slide to a different floor and we had to go find him.  A little discomforting, but it all ended well!

The worlds largest pencil. Why?  Because the world likes big, weird things... that's why!

The boys crawling thru some curly-q's that we had no idea of where they would exit.

More of the same...

Second story curly-q's.

Robby is up in there somewhere.  Roughly four stories up.

Speaking of the lad, that's him about dead-center in the photo.  We were on a bench, nearly four stories directly below him.

And so it was.  Up next is the slides and the outside of this wonderful building.

Bak Tu Skoul!

Deck the halls with ba... nope. Tis the season?  

Indeed it is!  Tis' the season to go back to school and terminate the sloth-like beings that inhabit summer break.

Here are the now obligatory back to school photos:

Mr. 3rd Grade, Caleb Rongbo Schmitz

Mr. 6th Grade Center, Robert James Schmitz

And the two ham n' egger's together...  and not jacking around.

So as I post this, day 3 of the school year is in the books.  Caleb is complaining about the constant pre-tests and Robby is claiming excitement in "finding his people".

Some Old Pics With Molly

Found some camera memory cards going thru Molly's stuff. Figured might as well look at them and see if there are any photos.  Turns out there were, and some pretty good ones at that!

There were a ton of photos where Molly and her two friends, Melanie and Talli, had gone somewhere together possibly for a weekend.  Including a trip to a zoo, a restaurant and a Piggly Wiggly, of all places.

Anyway, here are a few that relate to this blog in one way or another...

A tiny Robby after purchasing his crossbow and Grandpa helping him figure it out.

Sassy pants!

The aforementioned Grandpa Jim, possibly at Yellowbanks?

Photo #1 from that trip I mentioned.

Molly and one of her good friends, Melanie.

The "one who should not be photographed" actually posing for not one...

...but TWO pictures on the SAME DAY!!

Sure do miss that smile!  Not too mention doing stuff with the boys and we have an Amazon Fire thingy-ma-bob that she hooked up for us in the basement and we can't for the life of us figure out how to get local channels on it...   *sigh*

Looky, Looky Who Can't Have Cookies!

Well, crunchy cookies that is! Soft cookies would be fine.. 

So I think the lad is ready for 6th grade, freshly shorn and some new braces!  I think he's adorable!

Look closely and you'll see that every other "brace" is either pink or yellowish-green.

Caleb RongBo's Adoption Camp

Friday, August 5th, we were due in Ashland Nebraska to pick up our sweet little Chinaman at adoption camp. 

Last year, I took him to the "day camp" to see if he thought it was cool and something that he might want to do the next year, but for all five days.  He liked it last year and I think he liked it even more this year when attending from Monday afternoon thru Friday afternoon!  

My hope was, he would be excited to see us.  He was.

He would then declare that he wanted to stay there forever.  He did.

And then he would crawl into our vehicle and verbally vomit up his days at camp in such a rapid fashion that we thought it would never end.   And, he did!

Just exactly the same as Robby's first Riverside Lutheran Bible Camp experience!

 

Not many photos from today's camp.  This is the final ceremony where the four groups get up and do their skits that they've been rehearsing.  Obviously, Calebbers group.

Part of the skit...

After a trip to Beertopia, we headed to the Old Market area of Omaha and more specifically the Thomas Mangelson art gallery.  A slightly fudged...  errrr...  artisitc pic of Robby since I had my stupid finger in front of the camera.