Summer 2016, Post 4 - Riverside

Another year of Bible camp is in the books!  This year the camp saw about 180 campers during the week.  I think Robby's first year was well over 200 as was evidenced at the worship service that the parents can attend.  It was packed with people standing in any open spots.  This year had lots of empty seats but the kids were LOUD!!

Caleb was an Alpha camper this year, his first at Riverside.  The Alpha campers either camp from Sunday to Tuesday, or like Calebber, from Wednesday to Friday. This was his cabin (Aaron, on the right) complete with a basement with showers shared with the other cabin.

Robby was in the Apostles cabin which is barely visible in the photo.  It's down at the very end, towards the left side of the pic, visible only betwixt two trees.

Robby's making a grand entrance for the final worship program.

And Caleb's grand entrance.

The camp counselors sang Good, Good Father together this year.  It was beautiful!!  Robby's cabin mates had their arms around each other's shoulders and swayed back and forth thru the entire song.

Robby's cabin mates and some of the things they wrote about him. It's hard to read, but one of his counselors wrote: "What a blessing you have been to our cabin. I want to thank you for your constant attentiveness and curiosity about the Bible and God's Word".  The other counselor wrote, "You have had awesome questions this week in Bible study.  Thank you for your curiosity and starting interesting conversation. Your humor and personality have brought a lot of positive energy to Apostles cabin this week".   Can't beat that!

Caleb's cabin mates.  His counselors absolutely LOVED him and told me that he was amazing as a cabin mate as he would not let any of his mates NOT have fun!  They said they have never seen a kid who smiled constantly.  That's my boy!!

And so it goes.  When I first saw Caleb, he stressed that he was DEFINITELY going for the full 5 days next year.  He has 5 days of adoption camp coming up in about a month, so we'll see how he feels after that.  He also said he's less nervous about adoption camp after attending Riverside.

Graduation... They grow up so fast!

I don't have much time to before I need to leave for band practice tonight, so I thought I would post a pic of little Master C in his "grad-gee-a-shun" cap with his pre-school teachers.

He missed the graduation ceremony due to our Iowa City appointment/check-up for his palate surgery but he still got the cap and they made a video of photos set to music for everybody that is downright adorable. Caleb will watch it over and over... and over... and over...

He's in there representing Holt International with their t-shirt. That's a proud little dude!

Anniversary Day!

Today is a bit of a special day for a couple of reasons.

1 year ago today, we were matched with little Chang Rong Bo, who of course, is now known as Caleb RongBo Schmitz.

That alone would be a good enough reason to celebrate, but it is also the anniversary of another "minor" event.

20 years ago today, I married my true love; Lesley Kay Bushman.

We are now old farts who look back and wonder what happened to the last 20 years...

In those 20 years, we've had 2 kids, 2 dogs, 2 houses, 2 arguments (maybe a few more, but not many) 3 apartments, 3 surgeries (depending on how you count them), 4 lawn mowers, 9 cars (my memory is fuzzy...), roughly 29,000 meals, and about that many friends, if of course, you include family.  :-)

We've also had a WHOLE LOT OF FUN!

Thank you all for being part of the last 20 years.  I look forward to the next 20+ years and hope they continue to blossom the way the last several have.

Thank you Lesley for tolerating me. I love you to the moon and back!

Take care and God Bless!
Ted

Puttin' The Boys To Work

'Tis the season...

It's time to get the gardens planted but we've been a bit busier than usual this year with the additional boy, hospital visits, a moving mama (Grandma Schmitz) and so on.  So the garden(s) have been mildly neglected.  We do have a garden of onions planted that are doing well and our potato hills look downright gorgeous, if I do say so myself!

I had tilled all of them in the fall and then once in March so the dirt is nice and loose and easy to till now. Robby wanted to help so I gave him a brief lecture on how to handle the thing  (I was behind him except for when the photo was taken) and all of the stuff you need to respect on a machine like this.

I think he kind of liked it but was a little apprehensive when I stepped away for the pic.

Caleb is getting a little antsy about giving it a try too.  Neither boy likes to be outdone by the other, at anything!

So Caleb "helped" me with the smaller gardens.  The auger is not engaged but he got a kick out of holding on to the handles and just feeling the machine vibrate.

Someday, Robby and Caleb will be able to do this all by themselves and dear ol' dad will be able to sit on the deck, cold one in hand, and supervise the proceedings...   ahhhh...  what a dream.

Suppers After Surgery

Supers are an interesting endeavor these days.  

Caleb can only have food that can be drank from the side of a cup as nothing is supposed to go into his mouth.  No fingers, no spoons, no straws, no nothing!

So we've made a squash soup, a potato soup, a broccoli cheese soup... you get the idea.  

Momma has made the boys hot dogs thru the blender that looks pretty nasty, but they like it and as long as the boy is eating, so be it.

So I did a search on the fancy hi-tech world wide interweb for some new (at least to us) recipes for pureed foods.

This is what I came up with.  Take a guess at what it is.

Robby was looking at the picture and he said it, "looked like something that would come out of a cow", although he ate it and liked it quite a bit.

.

 .

.

 .

Give up yet?

It's spaghetti with a meat sauce.  I am still surprised on how good it was!

I've been curious about using meat in recipes thru the blender and now I'm not so hesitant, other than having to look at it.

I may try some chicken n' noodles this week but I'm not up for a steak... yet.

Caleb's Surgery - May 8th, Update

Just a quick update here...

Caleb is doing pretty good.  He's eating good, drinking lots of yogurt (thinned with milk).  He and big bro Robby had hot dog "shakes" for breakfast this morning.  That's right, hot dogs in the blender, thinned with water so Caleb could "drink his dogs".  They were both exclaiming how much they like it.

He's doing pretty good about not sticking his fingers and thumb in his mouth but even so, we still use the elbow braces on him at night as well as using tube gauze and a bandage wrap around his thumb and hand at night as well.  He doesn't like it much but I don't like the idea of sitting through another surgery and the hospital stay after such an ordeal either, so he'll have to keep wearing them for a bit longer.

He does have some irritation on his tongue that does not look good and I think it's probably similar to a bad sore throat.  He acts and sounds like he has a bit of sore throat too. Lesley called the surgeon about it and he said it's likely irritation from the tongue dealybopper that they had in his mouth for the duration of the surgery.

So that's it, nothing too exciting. Nothing too bad although it could be better if the tongue would heal up good.

That's all for now...

Caleb's Surgery - May 6th, 2012 Update part II

WE'RE GOING HOME TODAY!!!

We had an early morning visit from the doctor and he said that if we are comfortable with Calebs progress, that he will gladly discharge him today.

So, we are going home at some point today.  I would expect that we won't actually be released until sometime in the afternoon,  but I really have no idea.

He also took out the tongue stitch while he was here and Momma has since removed the remaining tape on his cheek to hold the stitch out of his mouth.

We're going to go for a quick walk as he's disconnected from his machines.

Caleb's Surgery - May 6th, 2012 A morning update...

Good morning from the University of Iowa Hospital. Caleb woke up feeling pretty spry and sassy this morning.


Well, that may be a bit of a stretch but a little optimism can take people a long ways!


I slept thru the night so I don't have many details about what went on but Lesley said at 1am, he woke up and wanted mom in bed to snuggle with him.  She got in bed then for the rest of the night (we were all up by roughly 6am'ish).  She was up one other time as sneaky boy was pulling the tape off of his cheeks trying to free up the tongue stitch.  In doing that, he lost the little-red-light-pulse-measuring-thingy-ma-bob from his finger, which causes the machine to read similar to flatlining.


That happened to me the day of the surgery shortly after Momma left the room for the first time.  He "flatlined" and I jumped up in a toot to try and call the nurse when I realized that I have no idea what button is the call button.  After pressing several things, all of which probably did nothing but change settings on the tv, I decided that I know cpr and I'll fix him myself!  That's when I noticed that he was breathing and doing everything else just fine.  :-)


So I started investigating the lines from the machine only to discover that he had indeed knocked of the little-red-light-pulse-measuring-thingy-ma-bob off of finger.  I put it back on and within seconds, he was "back".


So anyways...  back to this morning.


Here is the boy this morning:

He has had a little over 4 oz. of apple juice so far and probably an oz or two of water.

He's smiling at my "dancing".

He giggled at me pulling his nose off and replacing it with one of his ears.  Especially when I told him the next time they came in to take his temperature, they'd have to stick the thing in the ear in the middle of his face.

That was pure comedy gold for him!

That's about all for now... other than hoping we go home today!

More updates as we get them.

Daddy

Caleb's Surgery - May 5th, 2012 Happiness, finally! part III

An hour ago (it's now 8:30'ish pm American Iowa corn time), we were pretty much resolved to the fact that we were going to be here through Sunday night and (hopefully) be released at some point on Monday.

However, just recently, we were talking to the new nurse after the hand-off of patients at the changing of the guard.  While that was going on, we noticed that he had his mouth closed completely!  This marks major progress over where he's been because ever since his surgery, he has not been able to close his mouth because his tongue has been so swollen.

Also, his lips and cheeks are swollen as well as the soft tissue under his chin.  That last one makes him REALLY look like a Schmitz, the extra chin and all... well, as much as a small Chinese boy can.

The soft tissue under his chin has softened up too.  It has been really firm ever since recovery and quite puffy.

A few other developments is that we had the nurses unhook him from everything but the IV so that we could take him out of the room for a walk.  We walked around the pediactrics area and out into the hallway to look outside.  We looked at the fish tanks, the blue sky, the art work and found the "Art Center" where we got a coloring book and box of crayons for him.

We also Skyped with Grandma & Grandpa, Aunt Molly and the dapper, powerful & attractive Robert James Schmitz tonight.  It was good to see everyone and I think Caleb enjoyed it too, even though his tongue was still big at that time and he couldn't really express it.

Right now we're very excited about the recent developements although we know they can go the other way just as quickly.  

We still haven't been visited by the surgeon yet, which personally does not impress me although I have no idea what the dude's schedule looked like today.  I hope he shows up soon so that he doesn't come in 22 minutes after we all fall asleep.

So, thank you all for the prayers so far. Please keep them coming!  

Caleb's Surgery - May 5th, 2012 Ugh... part II

I'm simply posting that there is really nothing to post.

Haven't had a visit from his surgeon yet, although that should be coming soon.

Swelling has not gone down a bit, although they tell me that should be coming soon.

He did ask for coffee when he woke up from a nap today. That was better than yesterday.

He did ask to snuggle in the recliner with daddy today. That was better than yesterday.

We snuggled in bed all afternoon taking turns dozing and watching the NASCAR race.  Mom snuggled with him after that to do Starfall games on the computer.

Other than that, we've both pretty much said that we don't want to go home yet if he is this way tomorrow still.

And that, is not a pleasant thought.

As usual, I will post more when we know more.

Ted

PS  I miss his little voice!  The only time we get to hear it at all is when he gets bad upset and starts whimpering/crying.

PSS  I miss Robby's voice like crazy too!  He was wound up like a crazy man last night when I got to talk to him on the phone and that helped, but there is not substitute for the real mccoy.  Cyber hugs and kisses my bigger little dude.  Play hard at your soccer game tomorrow!  Wish we could be there...

Calebs Surgery - May 5th, 2012, "Got'cha" Day 5 month anniversary!

A celebration at the oasis, you ask?

Hardly.

The little man is having a rough day, much like 5 months ago except that where the pain was in his heart then, now it is in his face, his swollen little mouth, to be more accurate.

The swelling in his tongue did not go down overnight as we had hoped.  Apparently, it's not uncommon for it to not go down, and even for it to swell up more, in the first 24 hours.  If it goes up much further, we're going to have some problems.

He's also getting a little sore on the end of his tongue that looks similar to a mark/abrasion you would get when you bite your tongue hard.  That alone has to hurt much less what they did to the roof of his mouth!

The little guy keeps telling us that he's not having any owies.  I find that very hard to believe but every single time you ask him, he shakes his head "no".  Then when you ask if he wants the doctors/nurses to leave the room, you get a very emphatic "yes" head shake, so we can only assume he's telling us the truth.

Don't know much else at this point other than it pains me greatly to watch a person you love dearly, suffering and scared and not being able to do anything to help.

Anything but pray, that is.  Sadly, it's easy to forget that when he's agitated like he has been so far today. Perhaps that's my own immaturity in my personal walk with Jesus and a friendly reminder of where I can certainly do better.

Although, considering how well I know myself, I would think if it were indeed God showing me a sign, it wouldn't be so focused but much rather a very large, and heavy blanket of a sign covering all aspects of my life...

Hmmmmm...  considering that last paragraph, I should be going...

More later.
Ted (daddy)

Caleb's Surgery - May 4th, 2012 Surgery Day part IV

12:15 or so - we got to leave the goofy waiting area and finally head down to recovery to be with our boy. He was out when we got there and his face around his mouth was swollen. Something I was not expecting was the fact that his tongue was swollen as well. It makes perfect sense, just wasn't expecting it.

He has a stitch that goes thru his tongue and into his cheek so that if he has breathing issues this afternoon into tonight, they can lightly lift the stitch to pull his tongue up and open the airway.


When we were preparing to leave recovery and "drive the racecar" up to our room, he got very agitated and sort of panicky.  I reached my arm down to rub my thumb on his cheek and he grabbed hold of my arm and gave it a very firm hug.


Perhaps a little selfish of me, but it felt great because we've been discussing the fact that this could set him back a ways in his trust of us.  However, you wouldn't have guessed it from that arm grab/hug!


Another thing that happened is we were trying to figure out, along with nurse John, if he was in pain or what was aggravating him.  We asked him if he had "owies" and he would clearly shake his head to say no.  We asked him another question that I already forgot, and he clearly shook his head to say no.  I eventually asked him if he was scared, and he VERY clearly shook his head to say yes.


Mom and I were also rubbing his cheeks and the top of his head and mom asked him if he liked daddy rubbing his head, and he shook his head to say yes.


I am so very happy and thankful that I stumbled upon that while in the courtroom in Changchun as it works every bit as good for him now as it did 5 months ago.


We spent about 1.5 hours in recovery with him and he's been sleeping in our room ever since, waking up occaisionally.




Here's the little cutey in recovery.  This was taken almost immediately as we got there.  Tons of crap all around him and he would occaisionally wake up agitated. Big surprise with all of that stuff hanging off of you, huh?



This is back up in our room. Pretty much the same position but with a lot less crap hanging off of him. Dr. C. George is keeping a keen eye on him (Thanks Gonsalves!!!).

We had a couple of visitors recently.  Perky is the hospital's mascot and Herky is apparently the mascot of some local team...  I can't recall who though...  Oh yes, the Iowa Hawkeyes!  Too bad Caleb didn't have his Marvin McNutt jersey on when they visited! 


When they came into the room, Caleb's eyes were open just a tiny slit as he had just kind of came too. It took him a second or two to focus on them and when he finally did, he sort of jumped and got up on his elbows.  He wasn't so keen on it and eventually started to whimper a bit. They left and he flopped back down as if to say, "What in the h3!! are you going to do to me next!?". 

It's now 4:50 and he's waking up.  Momma is asking him if he wants to go for a walk or stand up for a hug, sit in the chair and rock or any other thing.  He does not. He wants to lay in bed.


More updates as we get them...

Calebs Surgery - May 4th, 2012, Surgery day part II

At about 12:15, the good Doc came up to speak to us.

Caleb is out of surgery since about 11:30am.  It sounds as if everything went about as good as we could have hoped.  He said that Caleb's palate has good two layer coverage now and it went without any serious complication.

We get to go down and see him soon.  I've requested that we be in the room prior to him coming out of anethesia so that he see's us immediately.  You know, what with the whole orphan thing, abandonment issues and the such.

Thanks for the prayers. We're nearly complete with the first part of this current journey.  We'll still need plenty more prayers for the next two weeks.

1 Thessalonians 5

New American Standard Bible (NASB)

¹⁶  Rejoice always; ¹⁷  pray without ceasing; ¹⁸ in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. ¹⁹  Do not quench the Spirit;

Caleb's Surgery - May 4th, 2012 Surgery day, part 1

We woke up about 4:40am this morning (before the alarm by 4 minutes!).

We got ready as quietly as possible since everybody else in the house could sleep for another couple of hours. Hopefully, we made it out without disturbing the masses.

We left for Iowa City (from Ely, IA.) around 5:15, arriving at the hospital with about 5 minutes to spare. Of course, we were a little naive on how far we had to walk once we were in the hospital, but that's beside the point.

We went straight to floor 5 even though we were apparently supposed to go check in on floor 6 first. The good part about that was is as we were walking into the area where Caleb would be admitted, two nurses asked who we were and we told them, obviously, so they marched right straight to the room where vitals and the same questions as yesterday will be asked again.

Thankfully, they're easy questions and we answered them all the same as we did the previous day.

Lucky for us, there were three episodes of Mickey Mouse in a row on so that took a little concern away from the little guy.

A parade of doctors and nurses came thru the room asking questions and telling us the same stuff, but with slightly different details. :-) They should work on that.

Finally, they gave Caleb some "Joyful juice" as one doc called it. They told us to keep an eye on him as he'll act drunk and try to wander off somewhere. Well, trust me, that boy wasn't wandering anywhere without mom or dad!

That being said, he did act like he was drunk. He was having trouble holding up his head and at one point let out one of the funniest giggles I've heard at something on Mickey Mouse that wasn't really funny. It was nearly as funny as the "HEY!!" at dinner yesterday when he discovered the sausage was gone!

Finally, they wheeled in the gurney and Lesley lifted him from my lap to lay him on it.

Joyful juice or not, he was upset and started crying out reaching for us. We promised him that we wouldn't leave him and so Momma asked if she could go with him until the put him under. They got her in scrubs quick and let her stay with him. She came back to me in about 5 or 6 minutes and we were off to the waiting area on floor 6 where we should have gone earlier.

The ear/nose/throat doctor got first crack at him this morning and called shortly after we were up there (probably 25 minutes) to say that his ears were cleaned out and that he did NOT need tubes. Wooo-hooo.

We were informed about 10:15 or so that the palate doc got a bit of a late start on him so they're still in surgery but everything is going well.

That brings us current. I'll post more when we know more.

This photo is as much for Robby as anybody else.  It's at the end of the skywalk as you enter the hospital from the parking ramp.  It's part of a Herky On Parade series apparently.

Caleb's Surgery - Thursday, Pre-op & other stuff

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012 - We got Robby successfully dropped off at school (about 4 minutes late, according to his delicate mockings of his Momma) around 8:50 and hit the road for Iowa City.

Caleb was a happy, happy boy all the way while on the interstate, and for nearly all of the way from the interstate to the hospital parking ramp. He quite obviously recognized the pavilion and parking ramp area as he got noticeably agitated and upset as we drove in.  We got him settled down and looked at the football players in Sports Illustrated to occupy his brain.

This time, when they called his name, instead of wailing and crying big'ol crocodile tears, he just did his little whiny noise which tells us that he is experiencing some pretty intense anxiety.

He settled in when we saw the big fish tank and toys.  He got to play for about 5 minutes until they called his name for gathering vitals and asking Mom and Dad some questions.  He was worried but no tears.

For those unaware, this marks some MAJOR progress for the lad. 

We spent some time in the room reading books and doing temperatures and blood pressures and weight and stuff like that.

When the good Doc came into the room, he repositioned himself and latched on to my neck tight enough to make me squirm to regain airflow. But, no tears!

Finally we were done with all of that hoo-hah, and went upstairs to get some blood drawn.

Uh-oh...

We waited up there for a short time, maybe 6 or 7 minutes and he had me check his tummy a few times so that I would KNOW that he was hungry.  As if the steady reminders of, "Hungee.  Caleb hungee. Me hungee.  Hungee?" weren't good enough.

Then Anthonia Ibeawuchi (that's pretty close) called his name as best as a foreigner could. "Kallob?".

More whiny groaning, but still no tears.

Anthonia was a God-send, to put it lightly!  She pulled out the rubber gloves and Caleb started to cry a little.  She immediately said, "No, Kallob, touch my hand. Touch my hand."  He reached his hand out and put it in hers with the gloves on.  She started gently rubbing his hands and saying stuff like, "It's okay, it's okay.".  He settled right down.  He was sitting on my lap, so I had first hand evidence of it as you could feel his body relax.

She showed him the little tool used to prick his finger, and you couldn't see the needle.  He looked it over, approved it, and she told him as she gently took his finger, "Little sting, okay, little sting. It's all done now.". She then massaged his finger to get the blood in the vial, which he watched with razor sharp precision!  :-)

Once she was completely done, she gave him his choice of flourescent band-aides, he picked orange, and put it on him and released us.

Free at last! Free at last!

He was happy as a clam that we were done and walked tall like he does when he's coming home from preschool.

So we left the hospital, went over to Kinnick to take his pic with Herky up behind him.

He was excited that we were at the place where they played footbal.

Next, we drove to the Amana Colonies to have some lunch and do a little wine tasting.

The little dude in front of place where they might sell some flowers and stuff for your yard...  or something.

The boys on a swing that put daddy to sleep. Quickly.

Momma and Master Caleb on the bridge.

Caleb has taken a shining to walking on whatever walls that he can find.

The chocolate haus.  We were looking around in here when the lady working asked us if he was from Korea. We explained the situation that he was from China and we had only had him for about 5 months.  She has a five year old girl that they adopted from Vietnam a few years back.  Always good to run into folks like this and get some other stories (and chocolate!) and perspectives.

The building off to the right is where we had lunch.  We got Caleb a smoked pork chop that was outstanding. He thought so too, but he wanted my sausages, and he wanted them bad.  I cut the two sausages up into bite sized chunks and gave him three pieces of each kind.  He gobbled down a few bites of his pork chop, piles of sour kraut, tried the spiced apple, tried the cottage cheese, tried the lettuce salad, tried the taters n' gravy but poo-pooh'd them all.  He was happily eating away when all of sudden, he noticed that my plate was empty.  He got a really mad look on his face and said, "HEY!!".  The poor boy wanted more sausage and we were nearly dying laughing.  Thankfully, he was content with the remainder of his chop and green beans so we avoided ordering another meal.  :-)

We visited the Fireside winery as we experienced their wares at the Swine festival at DMACC a few years back.  They were just as good today!

We left there and drove back into Iowa City to go to John's Grocery where a fella can choose from probably close to 1000 different kinds of beer from all over the world.  Choose I did.  Football season can't get here soon enough now!

One of the reasons that we wanted to drive back into IC, is so that we could time how long it would take to drive from the hospital to Ely Iowa where we were staying with some new friends.  A heaping pile of thanks to Dan, Shauna, Lydia and Brooks.  Especially Mr. Brooks as he is the dude who gave up his bedroom for the night. Brooks also filled the void about as good as anybody ever could for me missing Robby.  He wanted me to read a book to him, I did.  He wanted me to play tickle monster with him, I teased, but didn't. He showed me a good number of all of his toys and cracked me up while doing it. Apparently, he had experienced a lengthy nap earlier in the day and the boy was firing on all cylinders!

Before heading to their house, we went to Applebees for supper as they weren't home from work yet.  Caleb was eating away and out of blue, asked where Robby was.  I told him at home. He looked concerned, because we obviously weren't at home and that would make big brother be home alone.  He asked again.  I told him that, "Robby is at home with grandma & grandpa". 

Whoops...

Caleb said, "OH!  Grand-a-ma & pampa?  Home? Caleb home?".  "No. Not yet", I said.  He responded and surprised me, "Why?".  Ummmmm...

Yikes.  I didn't go into the whole hospital/surgery thing with him. I told him that we were going to meet some new friends and that he could play with some new kid friends.  Thankfully, that was enough... for a little while.  On the way to Dan and Shauna's, he again asked if we could go home.

I have to say, as painful as it was for him to ask that and know what was coming in the morning, it was also very assuring that he calls our home, well... home.

Home is where we all wish to be and we'll be back there soon enough. Until then, there's a few roadblocks and hurdles for us.

Caleb's Surgery - Here we go...

The moment we've all been waiting for... or dreading... or something.

We head to Iowa City in the morning after dropping Robby off at school.  We have roughly two hours to get there, be parked and to the office we need to be at within two hours.  We can likely do that with no troubles barring any type of nonsense that may occur on the interstate roadway between here and there.

Grandma and Grandpa are coming down to pick up Robby from school and stay will him until we get back.  I feel bad for both boys as there are sacrifices that both need to make on this particular weekend (not too mention the sacrifice of G & G).

Caleb's pre-op for his palate repair is at 11am tomorrow morning.  I'm not sure how long that is supposed to take, but I would guess around 60 - 90 minutes.

His actual palate surgery is scheduled for first thing Friday morning, which has a rough starting time of around 8am.  Not sure how long the entire procedure is supposed to last but I guess we'll find that kind of stuff out at the pre-op.

Our intentions are to keep everyone posted via short posts here at the blog, so check back often and we'll hopefully have updates for you.

I would ask for your prayers and support as I'm guessing this will not be the most smooth ride that we've every been on as a family based on our previous experiences with little Mr. C. at various doctors appointments that we've had.

Hopefully we'll be able to update everyone tomorrow.
Take care,
Ted

China - Part 15 Shangri-La Hotel in Changchun

As we have pretty much finished up our time in Changchun, we're going to have a look at our hotel and it's immediate surroundings. As you can see by the photos, some of these have the fingerprint smudge that was present during the first part of our orphanage tour.  Such is life.  I guess we can use that as another excuse to go back sometime! :-)

Momma went out and took some photos of the exterior of our hotel on the same morning that the ladies went shopping and doing paperwork, leaving the boys behind in the hotel room.

Our room is up there somewhere, but I can't even recall what floor we were on at this point. 

Our room is on the slanted part of the hotel and you'll see the traffic from our window in a photo or two. I think that green "box" is construction of some sort.  It sort of seemed like every single building had some level of construction going on.  It is funny to me now that while we were in Changchun, I thought our room faced West.  I've been trying to place all of our "places of interest" on aerial maps for a future blog post and I've located the Shangri-La in one of those aerial views.  The little bowed out windows thing on the right of this photo (and better shown on the photo above), face straight South.  Whodathunk it?

This is standing in roughly the same spot as the photo above. It's looking across the street where we would play "human frogger" on our path to the Wally Mart.  The Wally Mart is the blue sign just left of center in the photo and kind of behind the lamp post. You had to enter this building thru a specific street entrance and then go up escalators to the second floor, where the Wally Mart started. WM was on the second and third floors and is where I purchased the bulk of the beers in the Beers Of China post.  The tall building down on the corner there is where the Pizza Hut was located.

Looking Southwest out of our hotel room window.

Looking about straight West from the same window.  Begin noticing in this photo that people park their vehicles on the sidewalks in front of the buildings.  That's a little heads-up from me to you if you're over there walking down the sidewalks and feeling aloof in nature.  You may well get ran over.

And here's the traffic, sadly after rush hour was over, but it's still interesting.  This past weekend, we were over at a the house of a co-worker of my sister Dianne, and I was talking to her husband (I guess he is technically a co-worker as well...) about the traffic in China. He said that when you have to make a left turn, you just do it and people look out for you and nobody gets mad about that stuff.  It's true... and a little frightening for us Americans!  Did anybody pick out the traffic cop in the middle of the intersection down there?  Whatever that dude is paid? It's not enough!

So here we are, finally inside the hotel.  We had the son of one of the ladies in our group (they adopted little Kai) take some photos by the Christmas tree so we could get our Christmas cards ordered thru Snapfish.com while we were still in China.  This was in the main lobby.  I believe the area back behind us was the lobby bar/seating area where the ladies played the piano and zither duets that fascinated me to no end.  The boys are sporting their matching Holt International t-shirts that we purchased last year in La Grand Iowa at the annual adoption picnic.  They look smashing!

Down these steps was some type of night club/bar/lounge.  I went down to see it, but that was about the extent of my curiosity.  That gold leaf display of 3 panels in the stairway, you will most likely see in several other photos.  It's in the background of the Christmas tree photo above, it's on all of the pillars throughout the Shangri-La and so on.  It's carved out of a metal and then the wall they place them on is recessed 3 or 4 inches with lights behind the carvings. Very pretty but I'm sure that was part of the cost of our rooms!

I believe this is taken from nearly the same vantage point as the photo immediately above it. Most likely because of the little ham in the photo...

This is another shot from roughly the same area as the two photos above it.  If you were to proceed all the way down to the end, there was a little hotel store that sold clocks, maps, coffee mugs and stuff like that. There was also a restroom way the heck down there which was annoying at breakfast because you had to walk the length of the hotel midway thru enjoying a plate or three of sausage and bacon.

I would have no idea how to get back to this particular area of the hotel if we were ever back there, but I know it was around the ballrooms and big meeting/banquet rooms.  You can see one of the escalators back by the black area of the wall going up to...  whatever the heck was upstairs.  I think it was more rooms.

And here are my peeps going up those escalators.  The steps in between the decorative hand rails were really pretty but I didn't seem to take a better picture than this one.

When we got upstairs, we walked around a bit and found this huge expanse, dimly lit by four huge chandeliers, with nothing but a lone Christmas tree in it. It was a good reminder that Jesus' birthday was only two weeks away, regardless of how far away it seemed to us at that time.  The  picture didn't turn out all that good but it captured the feeling of seeing it there all alone and provides me a good smile every time I see it.

Again, I would have no idea how to find this stairway again but this area was really cool too. It occurred to me while going through the photos that I should have taken a walk by myself at some point with the sole purpose of snapping pix of the hotel and nothing else.

The little man working it going up those steps.

When you get to the top of the steps, there was a dead-end turn into a big conference room, or you could turn the other way and go down this hallway.  Follow it far enough and you would go past the "health club" or the swimming hole as we knew it, and eventually the elevators.  The woodwork pretty elaborate through-out the hotel but this second floor area probably had the most detail.

This must be when we purchased the swimming hats because both boys are holding them.  As I recall, we were getting a little cabin fever at this point, with Robby's head nearly exploding from the lack of swimming, and we went on this tour of the hotel with the idea of taking photos and finding swimming hats if it was the last thing we ever did.

So we finally make it back to the actual hotel room itself.  Fond memories of this bathroom... no, not for those reasons!  This is the first place we brushed Calebs teeth, gave him a bath, earned his confidence to use the pot, teach him how to wash his hands properly and so on.  Seems like a strange set of memories, but that's immediately what I thought of when I saw this photo.

This is looking down the hallway towards the door.  The first door on the left there is the bathroom. The door on the right hand side (up by the main door) was the closet where the safe was.

The little bar area.  The top two shelves are stuff that comes with the room and is ridiculously expensive.  The main shelf is our box of bottled water and various snacks for the boys for in between the BIG meals (I don't believe we had been to Wally Mart yet though as I had that counter top ORGANIZED!  It was beautiful thing!).

The three acre bed where all four of us slept.

We humored the hotel for the first night and left the baby crib in the room.  We asked them to remove it early the next day when they came to clean.  Calebber is 4.5 years old for Pete's sake!  I did a LOT of journaling sitting on that couch in the back corner there.

This is taken from back by that couch.  It appears as if mom is writing a blogpost about arriving in Changchun, and I have no idea what happened to Robby when these photos were being taken...  I'm sure he was near...

So that's pretty much it for our time in Changchun, sad to say. That is one fantastic buffet that we will be leaving and it was really nice to have 3 families together getting their new family members so we got to know them a little closer than we would have in the big group of people, although that has merit as well.

Hopefully it won't take me as long to get the next "Photo Blog" post up as it did this one (it's been 15 days since the "Caleb's finding spot" post).

As always, thanks for reading and God bless!