A Boy and His "Sammy"...

Calebber McCheese spent the night with his cousins, Sam, Jonah and Zoe, and Mama Chaos had a conference to attend. 

That left Robert James and I home alone on Saturday morning for a good 5 hours!  How did Rob respond to this news?  He sang, "For the first time, in forever".  

His request for what he wanted to do?  Cook with dad!   And to that, I say  YAAAAYYYYYY!!!!

So what did we cook?  We made breakfast sammy's, that's what.  Robby's was considerably larger than mine as his contained about 1/3 pound sausage, 2 eggs, 2 slices of cheddar cheese, 1 slice of whole wheat bread and one crust of Texas toast bread, which is about an inch thick!!  Good thing he's active...

Basketball Jones

The Iowa Energy basketball team is an NBA d-league team and is affiliated with the Memphis Grizzlie's.

They don't sell a ton of tickets as you can see MANY empty seats in the photos below, so they do things like they did a couple of weeks ago and handed out many vouchers for 4 free tickets to the 6th grade center, which as coincidences go, is where the larger American boy gets his skoulin'.   That's over 600 vouchers!!!

They do this because of $8 parking and the sale of concessions, of which, are already ridiculously expensive and on top of that, I was charged for two popcorn's instead of just the one that we consumed!  Dirty, rotten...

Mama had to work 2nd shift that night so the boys and I headed downtown for the big contest against Los Angeles.  It was an excellent game and I could not believe how many of the players that Robby knew!

Our seats just before game time.  They filled in a bit more as the game started, but by no means were full.

The fella in the air made this dunk, and if he would have made the one with 4.4 seconds left at the end of the game, we would have forced overtime.  As it came to pass, we lost 101 - 99, but it truly was a great game.

Love this cutie!!!  And check out the empty seats behind Caleb.  Those never filled in, and so, I wonder...  what did the other end of the arena look like?

Much the same.  Empty seats everywhere!  And this kid, the capacity of his memory is astounding!  Where he learned about these players (from BOTH TEAMS!!!) I'll never know.  He even knew when the Grizzlies assigned one of the more recent players to us.  Amazing boy and I love him.

As I think about it more, another reason to give out vouchers is that I had so much fun watching the game, I actually checked what season tickets would cost for next year.  If only 10 families of four did just that (I didn't purchase them, btw), you have 40 more tickets sold for every game, not too mention the parking and concessions that you already have staffed and on payroll.  

Thinking of it that way, it's a pretty clever business move on their part!

Keep Calm and Chive On

The chives started popping up about two weeks ago when we were hitting the 70's in late February.  Then we got two inches of snow along with the coldest temperatures of the winter so far (or close), but these little soldiers weathered the storms and are thriving!  I suppose it helps that they're on the South side of the house and only 3 feet from the foundation...

Vacation 2016, #3 - Bay Beach Wild Life Sanctuary, Green Bay

With the completion of this post, I will have successfully wrapped up the 2016 vacation... finally.

This was the day after our trip to the Green Bay Packers training camp.  We went to Bay Beach area of Green Bay where the have the wild life sanctuary and an old amusement park where you still pay either $.25 or $.50 cents per ride with no admission fee.  It also contains the roller coaster, the Zippin Pippin, that was Elvis Presley's favorite and according to the sign, he rode it 8 days prior to his death... not that that is very significant.

Robby looks pretty much the same as today.

Calebber doesn't!!

Yes,  I, Ted Schmitz, took a picture of a snake skeleton.

This big boy was about 2 feet away from us, behind glass of course, but he was pacing anxiously.

The deer were close enough to pet and feed. We didn't.

But they did!

The boys were NOT happy about walking thru the hundreds of geese that were on the paths hoping for hand-outs.  It probably didn't help that I told them to keep their hands in a fist when you walk by them or else risk getting your fingers bit off.  :-)

Robby posing with a couple of different birds.  I'm surprised I got a good shot because the boy was constantly turning around in an attempt to avoid a sneak attack.

See here?  This is the more common posture...

The boys were amazed at the actual wingspan of the eagle.

It was a fun day with great weather (read that as looming storms...)  and it began to rain right as we left the amusement park.  We drove out of the rain about 3 miles south, so our campground was dry and just as we had left it.

Cute, As Cute Goes

The two...  sparring partners for a Tae Kwon Do event in Ankeny.  The won the first round by ousting two blue belts and came in second place within their "bracket".

Average Joes

Robby's volleyball team, The Average Joes, got an invite yesterday to Grand View College where the much larger Average Joe's (they're really the Vikings...) were playing in a tournament.  Robby is sort of hard to see in the picture as but he's nearly right in the middle with his black Average Joe's jersey on while most of his team has the red.