The (misguided) Adventures of Caleb

Caleb and Momma went furniture shopping. 

How did it go?

Great until the moment when the lad learned that he would NOT be bringing anything home!  Then he got mad and when he's mad, he gets mopey, and when he's mopey, he cannot be brought out of his mood until he decides to come out of that mood.

I suppose not much different than any of the rest of us...   come to think of it!

He wanted this Wookie chair.

And they both liked this one!!!

Caleb might have been upset, but Dad was relieved when they came home empty handed!

How High's the Water, Mama?

We are getting wet in Iowa. How wet, you ask?   

Well, we've had rain nearly every day for about a week now, and Monday nights rain was a 3 hour event where it rained hard, then harder, and then harder still, and even harder after that!

It was crazy loud inside the house and was scaring the smaller'ish Chinese boy!

We ended up in our area with what was said to be an inch of rain per hour, and less than a mile West of us, they got 4 inches in those same three hours and a little bit West of that got around 7 inches of rain in roughly 4.5 hours!!!  

That's a mess!

I was trying to go to bed, but was concerned about the electricity going off with potential for water coming into the sump pit.  Well, it was just coming in, it was POURING IN!!!  Never in the 13 years that we've lived here have I seen more than about 10 tiny drops per minute.   This thing was firing about every 12 seconds (after it shut off from the previous run) for nearly two hours!

This is a picture of our creek thru the front yard that was taken after I got home from work on Tuesday afternoon.  Note all of the weeds that are laid over flat and the sticks/brush in the lower-right side of the picture.  The water nearly came over the driveway, but didn't quite make it this time!

The previous shot was taken off to the right of this picture.  This is just showing the weeds/grasses laid over from the heavy waters.

And then, suddenly, today happened!

I went into work early and looked at the weather almost immediately upon my arrival.  It called for a sunny, dry day with NO RAIN IN SIGHT!

Around 11a.m.,  we started seeing storms popping up on the radar and then started getting warnings on the local news web pages, followed quickly by our phones.

I left early to work from home and drove home just a bit North of the storm and as a result, got to witness some amazingly cruel looking skies!

The most amazing part of the clouds is down behind those trees and I couldn't get a good picture of it.  There were "fingers" of lighter colored clouds that almost looked like a claw, or, if you'd rather,  the tips of about 10 funnel clouds, although there was no rotation.  Thank God.  By the time I took this picture, the winds were blowing mercilessly out of the South as you can see the trees leaning!

2018 Riverside Bible Camp, Drop #2

Well, I failed on dropping Robby off at camp. 

Oh I got him there on time and successfully registered but I failed to take any pictures.  I was more concerned with doing everything correctly that it didn't cross my mind until Caleb and I were driving out of the camp.

So be it...  I will include a picture of the boy doing one of his favorite things;  eating wings with ranch dipping sauce!

We'll toast a wing to your camp NOT getting flooded out and everybody still having a great time!  Love you, not-so-little-dude!

2018 Riverside Bible Camp, Pick Up #1

Well, thankfully, the four of us are back together again! 

Oh sure, it's only for about 45 hours until we drop Robby off at camp on Sunday, but back together non-the-less!

Picking the kids up from camp is as AWESOME as dropping them off is sucky.  Yes, that's a word.

When you drop them off, you worry about their cabin-mates, of whom you don't know a thing.  Will they get along with the counselors?  Will the weather behave (it did NOT behave for Calebs camp and part of his adventure got flooded out) and so on with other worries.  

When the boys go to camp, I try not to pay attention to the weather forecasts, severe weather alerts and so on, as there is simply not a dang thing you can do if something pops up.  For instance, I was outside playing basketball with Robby this week and the sky to the Northwest was just stupid mean looking.  I wanted to look at radar for our own safety, but didn't because I knew I would focus in on the area of Riverside.

So later, I checked Facebook and sure enough, there was a tornado on the ground 3 miles North of Perry and heading East, and a bit North...  so basically, towards Riverside.  I told myself, "God can be there SO MUCH FASTER than I can, He will handle it.".

Turns out, the tornado fizzled shortly after being on the ground...  BUT, they did get a bunch of rain at camp.

Anyway, picking kids up rules because the worship at the end of camp is something that you have to see to believe.  Those kids are ON FIRE!!  They drown out the music when they're singing along and the energy coming from them is so intense!

Then there's the drive home.

The boys get in the vehicle and start recounting their week and it's just a barrage of verbal spillage.  

Today was no different.  He was wound up and giving us random details of events in no certain order and it was funny as crap to listen too!

Best of all, he's back in our arms!

It's blurry because the little varmints move kinda fast.  But this is the walk-in when they come down the aisle with their cabin mates.

This is during their Bible verse recitation.  Caleb's in there and I can see him.  Can you?

Again, he's in there somewhere, can you find him?   This is during the first song that they did.  I took a bit of video but I didn't capture the more fervent moments of this song (which I had not heard before).

The boy was seriously talking nearly constantly on the way home and could barely finish a sentence before the next subject/thought came bursting forth and he started talking about that.  Suddenly, mid-sentence, he crapped out and was asleep until we slowed down to get the mail at our driveway.

I love it, I love it, I love it!!!  He was torn!  Robby didn't go with us because he goes to camp on Sunday and didn't want to ruin the surprise of the closing worship.  When I gave him the choice and he slowly declined, he came back and yelled, "Tell Caleb I love him!!".  This is when we got into the house tonight! My heart swells!!!!

Weekend at Crystal Lake

So, a weekend ago, we had originally planned a camping trip. That trip did not happen for various and sundry reasons. 

Since we had already boarded Juno "the beast", we thought it would be a perfect weekend to head up North, pick up one of my amplifiers that had been worked on, and visit Grandpa Jim at the same time. 

So that's precisely what we did!  We headed to Northwood Iowa where my cousin lives and her brother in law had fixed my amplifier and as such, I am overjoyed!

Turns out, the fella who fixed my amp was out of town but he had dropped it with my cousin.  Now they had a virtual reality machine connected to their PS4 that we had to try out.  It was pretty cool and, I'm not going to lie, a little bit freaky!

We played a bar fight game, a carnival game with rope/mountain climbing, ski ball and so on.  It was pretty cool but also did a number on yer noggin!  The boys loved it, I thought it was cool, and mama chaos got a bit sick from it.

That's why we went back to real reality!  Nature!

In all of the years that I've known about Crystal Lake, I have never been privy to the "upper lake" which may be a bi-product of when they dredged the main lake...  just not sure.  Anyway, someone had mowed a nice walking path around half of the upper lake, so we decided to walk it!

This shot and the one before it are standing up on the berm of the upper lake looking "mostly" South unto the main lake, with the town of Crystal Lake in the background.

This is the much smaller upper lake.

The lower/main Crystal Lake from the upper berm with the elevator and some wind turbines in the background.

When we were about as far West as we could go on these newly discovered paths, we turned back to admire some of the storm clouds that were still in the area.  You see, we were nearly trapped in a grocery store some hours earlier from a tornado that was passing by.  No matter, we were fine and got to photograph this beauty!

Selfie #1!

At this point we had hiked back to the parking area and headed down a different path towards the main lake at Crystal Lake. This is one of several shots, this one looking nearly due West (and a bit South).

Another from roughly that same shot, but twisting almost directly straight West.

Guessing that a few fishermen were here!

Selfie #2!

This is between the two lakes.  That upper ridge you can see is where we were hiking in the earlier pictures.

Some of the paths of the lower lake.

The sun was setting but everything else (other than the bugs) was beautiful!

More path...

This is essentially where the path ends.  The bridge to nowhere...  errrr... the bridge over the marsh, and from there to nowhere.

From the bridge...

Whoa, what is that!?!?

Why...  It's the handsome Calebber up on the bridge as he and Momma went for a hike that very next morning.

2018 Riverside Bible Camp, Drop #1

So another year has passed and we again find ourselves dropping off one of the lads at Riverside Bible Camp. 

It gets easier every year because as a parent you can simply think about the independence that they are gaining in doing things on their own for 5 days, but along with that, you also feel like there's a huge hole where a certain piece of your heart has been.

It's no different this year except that the first drop of the season belongs to Caleb and so does the hole in the heart!  He's at adventure camp where he's staying in tents like what Robby stayed in back in 2015. 

He was excited as crap in the few days leading up to it, and was still excited on Sunday, but with just a hint of apprehention as this is his first "adventure" camp.

He will canoe.

He will ride a horse.

He will do a river stomp (providing the waters not too high/fast).

He will have a GREAT time and the drive home will be awesome as he tells us all about it.  Until then though, the hole in the heart is real!

After we got to the camp and Caleb was present and counted for, we walked up to the camp store and the official registration where they collect medicine/instructions, checks if you're delinquent, and a whole host of other things.  That takes place in the cafeteria where you also get a good hard whiff of that nights dessert.  It smelled like peanut butter, chocolate chip cookies! Robby is obviously in the middle of a fantastic story judging by his body English in the pic.

Heading back down to where we will leave our boy in the, hopefully, VERY capable hands of the camps counselors and leaders, that is the chapel straight ahead where I will no doubt post a follow-up post or two featuring the kids' worship in the final moments of the final day of camp.  It's my favorite!  Those kids are on fire for Christ and it shows!

The last photo with Caleb watching us as we pile into the vehicle to drive away.  Oh sure, I'm tearing up now but it's not because I'm worried about him, it's because he is so confident that his forever family will return with big hugs and kisses for him that HE is NOT WORRIED!!!  That is cool.  He is family and he knows it!

After that, it was a bit early for supper, which we had promised to Robby, so we went to Alluvial Brewing Company in Ames Iowa to sample their wares and play some Connect Four.  Good beer, great environment...  

I cannot WAIT to have our Caleb home again!

2018's Most Wanted...

We had to get the boy's passports updated in anticipation of this summer's vacation.  We went to the post office yesterday with all of the necassary paperwork & people to do just that!

The critters had to have their pictures taken for the updated version so the picture lady hauled them off to the side to carry out that task.

They were told not to smile so apparently, that was interpreted by them as, "look like a criminal".

So I had to have a little fun with it.

The Baddest of the "Goodest"

I love watching kids do Tae Kwon Do, and even better than that is watching the black belt demonstrations and listening to their hands "cutting" the air with their moves. The sound their hands make is amazing!

It was truly comforting to me to realize that there are that many black belts walking around the world and even where I work!  

If the unthinkable goes down at work someday,  I know who I'll be looking for to uh...  partner up with!

Anyway, Caleb had his brown belt test in Ankeny on Saturday and did okay.  He did not know the meaning of his form and it took him a LONG time and MANY kicks to break his board.  He wasn't as fired up coming out of it like he is sometimes after he does really well.  

So be it.  Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

Ready to spar!

Shortly after that first pic, and now he's waiting to see who his sparring partner is.

Doing his forms.

Board break in the picture that my sister Dianne took.  Caleb said it was EPIC and needed to be shared.

Caleb and another lad getting the flags ready on the following Tuesday for belt advances and another class.

Mrs. Burrell getting ready for Caleb's belt presentation.  That is Caleb's cousin, Sam, next to him.

The Last Day of Skool, 2017/2018

First day of 7th and 4th grade.

...and the last!