Volleyball... just volleyball.

Another weekend is in the proverbial books and we have more volleyball that's been played.  It seems odd to me since I didn't really think that I would enjoy volleyball very much but its truly been the sport that I enjoy the boys playing, the most!

Not only is the competition great, but the sportsmanship on each team AND between the teams, the best I have witnessed.  It's great.

Today, with my back being injured and Mama being sick with the cold,  we went and watched the first game of Calebs where the boys won both of their matches.

Robby had left with a buddy's family at 7am for a tournament in Grimes.  

Caleb's coach took him to McDonalds and over to the tournament where Rob is playing.  The boys support each other in great ways and it is, from a parents perspective, great to see!

Caleb at the finals of Robby's tournament.

A mix of the different aged teams at Smokey D's in Des Moines.

If you would have told me 20 years ago that I would be a HUGE fan of volleyball, I'm not sure what response you would have received.  I am sure tho, that it would not have been favorable.

But here I am, loving both boys playing volleyball! 

Hawaii Vaca, Post 22 - Day 8 Part 3 - Fantasy Island

Okay, so it's not REALLY Fantasy Island, but it is where the waterfalls from the series were filmed.
 
I must confess, I did not watch the series but I believe that my sister Doris was a big fan!  I do, however, know enough about the show that I recognize the falls!

That being said, the drive to the falls was interesting.  It was a very narrow two lane road with essentially no parking lot at the end of it.  Just a simple turn around.  When you met a car in the areas where other cars were parked, it was an incredibly TIGHT squeeze to get by them without damaging either side of your rental vehicle.

When we got to the end, where you absolutely have to turn around, there were some type of crop right up to the side of the road.  Even more interesting, to us anyways, was the fact that there was a worker, hopefully, that was cutting a path with a machete thru the tall crop.

Anyway, we finally found a spot in the road wide enough for us to park our rental vehicle on a 30% grade dirt hill and walk up to the falls.

The falls did not disappoint.

So what could possibly make the falls any more beautiful? 

This guy...

...and this guy!

And the M.V.P. is...

Calebber!!  This kid is the kind of kid that teachers want in their classes.  We see a bit of a different side of him at home when it's time to do dishes and laundry, but, he's 10 years old!   We've always had amazing conferences with his teachers who have all said roughly the same thing;  "he's amazing.  He works hard. He helps people. He has a great attitude and has fun learning.".  That's what wins an M.V.P. award!

Congrats to my boy!

Love and Pebbles... (2018 edition)

****  NOTE: I originally wrote this post back in 2013 and posted it on Valentines Day.  You can read the original here, if you're so inclined, but upon reading it again, I decided to update the original with another 5 years worth of data that we've (mostly) happily collected on the subject.  ****


What is love?  How does a fella define love? What does it mean to "be in love"?

When I ponder those questions as I have often in the past several years since we retrieved our boy from Changchun China, I'm not confused by my love for my wife (okay, sometimes maybe WHY she STILL loves me).  It will be 26 years on May 16th, 2018 when we said our vows to each other and while some things have changed for the worse (see waist lines!), most have changed for the better.  We have gone thru various changes in jobs, health, maturity and so on and so forth. Together, we are aging like a fine wine in our own little crazy bottle.  Upon reflection, I cannot thank my bride enough for sticking by me in those early years!

When I ponder the love of our two boys, that's when things tend to get interesting.

Robby was born to us on March 1st, 2005.  The pregnancy was a wild ride of ups and downs, more downs than up, at the time anyway, but rear view mirrors have a way of putting things into perspective.

He was a great baby and is now a great kid who will be a teenager in just a short time. I was so honored to be a Daddy that I barely knew how to contain my excitement.  

I loved changing diapers.  I loved feeding him.  I loved bathing him. Holding him. Having him fall asleep on my chest while we laid on the couch. I loved reading to him. I love running my hand over his head and feeling his hair. I loved taking him places and showing him "stuff" before he could possibly understand any of it.  I loved everything about being a Daddy so much, that he was the only person on Earth who could puke on me, and I wouldn't puke back!

So Robby begins the rigors of growing up.  He gets all the way to 1st grade and we welcome another little duder into our home.  Only this time, it's not a baby. He's a 4.5 year old little Chinese boy who we know powerful little about. The time leading up to traveling to retrieve him were so wonderfully exciting and scary that I would truly wish it on everyone!

But how do I love him?

He's not my own flesh and blood...

I didn't get to do the things with him as a baby and a toddler, like I did with Robby...

I didn't get to mold him from day 1...

Will he trust me?

Will HE love ME?

Will he love Robby and Mama as well?

Will he be angry with the world for obvious reasons?

Will he understand why he's here and accept it?


As I now recollect the past 6+ years, going back to Got'cha day on December 5th, 2011, I realize that I have many wonderful memories of Caleb and the process of developing the love and trust that comes with being a Daddy.

Dec. 5th, Caleb was being ripped away from everything he had previously known.  He didn't want to be with us and as sure as I'm over-weight with a big honkin' nose, he did NOT want to leave that Changchun court house with us!

Day by day, we as a family worked to gain his trust in an effort to make him as comfortable as possible and, in his mind, assure him that everything was going to be okay.

As those days passed, I wasn't concerned so much with "how do I love him", but more with the fact that the love I felt for him seemed so different than the love I felt for Robby.  Not in a bad way. Not at all, but just... different.     

Now we can fast forward to today, February 14th, 2018. I've noted that I love reading to Caleb even though you have to trick him into thinking that it's his idea so that he'll pay attention and that my eyes suck now so I have to have perfect light without him squirming around so that I can see the words on the page!

I love running my fingers over his head and thru his black Chinese hair, although most of the time, he'll grab my hand to have me gently rub his cheeks, which is just as good!  :-) 

I love telling him Bible stories and praying with him even though I'm fairly certain that he doesn't "get it" yet.

I love showing him how to do something for the first time (and 2nd, and 3rd...).

I love the near-constant BIG smiles and the fits of laughter and genuine goofiness when overdoses on sugar (note: Caleb is a very healthy eater, so a little sugar sends him WELL over the edge!).



If we look at Dictionary.com, we see these definitions:
love  [luhv] noun, verb, loved, lov·ing.
noun
1. a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person.
2. a feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child, or friend.
3. sexual passion or desire.
4. a person toward whom love is felt; beloved person; sweetheart.
5. (used in direct address as a term of endearment, affection, or the like): Would you like to see a movie, love?

Those definitions are all well and good, and Caleb could easily fall under number 1 or 2, but it doesn't seem to cover it well enough.

In a well known and quoted Bible verse, we see this:
    John 15:13
    Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.


That's often used by folks in, or in reference to, the military who put their lives on the line for the person next to them who does not neccesarily fall into one of the definitions above, however, I think we tend to narrow the scope of that verse a little too much.

Perhaps just by caring enough for another life and taking time away from our own wants and desires, we are "laying down our life" a little bit for our friends, kiddo's, family, strangers or whoever else?

And the reward for doing so?  Well, there is no definition in the dictionary for that!

Happy Valentines Day!


P.S.  - the pebbles!  Since Caleb has been part of family we have had more pebbles in our house than you can possibly imagine!  It's simply staggering to comprehend how they have gotten to the places in our house where we have found them.  Perhaps we should've seen something while we were in Guangzhou when he was fascinated by the pebbles there, but we had nothing to base any suspicions on at the time! Thank goodness, for the sake of our washer, dryer and vaccuum cleaner, this has gotten much better since 2013!

Caleb, utterly transfixed by the pebbles at the base of a tree on Shamian Island, Guangzhou, China.

 

Braces OFFFFFFFF!!!

The nearly 13 year old lad got his braces off and is feeling goofy! I love this guy and his silly sense of humor!

Hawaii Vaca, Post 21 - Day 8 Part 2 - Tubing (part2)

So in the previous post, Day 8 Part 1 - Tubing (part 1), I had mentioned that our tour guides for our tubing trip, Kauai Backcountry Adventures, had found another market outside of just tubing, zip lining and other stuffs that they offer: photography.

As I had said, we didn't take our phones (cameras) since we really didn't know what we were getting ourselves into.  But, KBA has a photographer who goes up to certain points in the irrigation ditches and takes pictures of the tubers as they came thru and then upon returning home, you can purchase those pictures from their web site.  Which is how I did these two posts.

So the first post was the people in the group.   That's all well and good, but it did a poor job of showing what we were tubing thru. 

This post will remedy that by actually showing more of the "trail", the tunnels and so on.

The van that hauls your carcass out to the starting point of your tubing adventure.  You need those kinds of tires as it rains quite a bit where you're at and the roads are pretty much nothing but red'ish volcanic ash.  They're bumpy and a little greasy in spots.

This was up near where you start the tubing.  It's no wonder why they film movies like Jurassic Park in these parts as well as movies about Vietnam and other wars.  On the drive to get us started, they showed us one of the palm trees (not native to the islands!) that the top was blown off of in a war scene.  Since the fruit bearing part of the tree was no longer, they just left the stump, but the full trees that they brought in for the filming had to be removed once filming wrapped.

Now we're actually getting into some of the areas that you don't get to see in the previous post.

Cave number 1.

Cave number 2.

Things would get a little knotted up in areas like this.  You're instructed to feel free to kick the other tubes around you to break things loose in the event that you did get stuck.

There's are "mammoth" waterfall we went over!

I'm truly not sure what this is but I'm sure we passed it and I missed it.

This is the longest cave and gets pretty dark.  It's also the one where a sharp rock in the wall introduced itself to the back of my neck.

So there you have it and I would highly recommend it!  

Caleb saw me getting the pictures ready for these two posts and said, "OOOOoooohhhh!  That was the BEST!!  I will definitely do that again some day!".

And I have no doubt he will.

Hawaii Vaca, Post 20 - Day 8 Part 1 - Tubing (part1)

Oh my goodness!! This was our tubing tour thru Kauai back country adventures.  I would encourage a visit to their web page if you're planning on visiting Kauai!

This was one of the more fun adventures on our trip and quite frankly, I was stressing about it before we left the mainland.

Why?

Because I had not researched the Hawaiian Island very well and I did not know at that point that they did not have snakes!  Because snakes can ruin any situation regardless of how wonderful it is!

I also didn't research how rough/calm the water would be.  I do not care for water much unless I'm on terra firma and simply looking at it.  This was clear that me bum was going to be in it.  Not so cool.

So how was it you ask?

It was amazing and something that I would probably do again even tho I know how it ends.  It was simply relaxing, joyous and undemanding fun.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Drew Brees and family does it every time he's in Kauai, so why wouldn't I?

Johnny Depp did it in full Pirates of the Carribean garb and character as well, so you never know who might show up on your trip thru the old sugarcane plantation irrigation ditches.

Lets see some pictures.

Towards the beginning when we were just winding up!  I don't know the shirtless dude, but I love the Robby right behind him!

That's me in the bright pink shirt.  After looking thru these pictures, I was happy that I wore that because it's really hard to find mama in her somewhat nondescript bathing suit.

Speaking of mama, there she is relaxing in her shades.

Rob again, all bunched up with others.

The green ladder to the left of the photo is your last chance to bail if you think you are unsure of the adventure ahead.  Nobody has ever used it since the other mechanism to not freak out if your tube flips is to just...  wait for it...   just stand up!  The water is only about 3 feet deep at it's absolute deepest.

This was the "waterfall".  It's about a 3 foot drop that was designed to keep the water flowing healthily thru the drainage ditch.  He was the first in the group, and he was a HAPPY BOY!!!

Shot 2.

Pic 3.

And pic four as he reached the bottom.  Pure joy from this boy!

The next family member to reach the falls.

He doesn't look quite as convinced.

DRAMA!!!

He made it, but that water is CHILLY!

Big Daddy not feeling as confident as Caleb either!

This is the point in which me bum hit a rock on the bottom.  I did not enjoy that part of the ride...

Mom, she's calm cool and collected at the top.

And at the bottom.  Took the falls like a champ!

That's Robby's foot.  He seems to be on the wrong side of the tube.

Me, picking my nose after Robby's wipeout.

Mama and Calebber!

So how did Robby get upside down a few photos back?  He was accepting a challenge of one of the tour guides to ride your tube in a fashion similar to what he's doing in this picture. Just prior to...

And, there he is again... this time displaying both of his feet!

What are we discussing?

Who knows, but it was FUNNY!!

So that's the first post on this subject.  I will post a second with some generic pictures that are included with the purchased pictures that we bought from the website since we weren't sure if you could bring cameras.  Which many people did, so it's okay.