Random Chaos...

I'm sitting around waiting for football games to start so I thought I would dump photos off of the camera.  That's when I found out that Caleb had an "outing" with camera recently and took various photos of Robby doing things such as folding laundry, going down the steps to the basement, and simply running away from the small Chinese boy with the electronic device.

Here's the sassy little camera man on a photo I took of him while he was busy watching Peppa Pig on the computer and I went in to grab the camera for whatever reason it was that I saw fit.

Robby, doing laundry as captured by a small Chinese camera man.  What a photo to capture life in America as experienced by a small white American boy who is somewhat spoiled due to circumstances that are out of his control yet quarantined by the daily rigors of life!

Caleb's first "selfie".  A close-up, no doubt.

A much better selfie!  That's a dang good photo he took of himself!

Nice!  A great selfie!!  He captured himself in all his own glory!

Enough silliness.  Today after worship and Sunday school, I had promised to Caleb that I would read his library book from this past week to him. I was on the first page of it, when Robby approached, hair buff and Peyton Manning jersey in tow, asking if he could read the book to Caleb instead of me.  Heck yeah!  It was sweet as we stood back in the kitchen and enjoyed the show.  Rob did great and Caleb enjoyed it immensely.

Small Chinese boy has been doing puzzles on the Kindle like a madman lately.  Today, we got him a new box of puzzles contain four seperate glow in the dark puzzles.  He tore into the first one with reckless abandon and knocked it out in a little over an hour with minimal help. This is him asking Daddy to help him open the second the one..

So that's about it.  It's now after the football games and both of the teams that I wanted to advance, did.  The Seahawks and the Bronco's are in the "Supper Bowl" and I'll have to start game planning what I'm going to eat during the game to curb my boredom during long commercial breaks and a ridiculous half time.

GO BRONCS!!!

Vacation 2013 - Post #8, The Museums

There's not a ton of museum pics here, although I could have certainly included them!  Especially when it came to the National Air & Space Smithsonian!!  Robby and Dear old Dad were at home in that bad boy!

Otherwise, it's a lot of photos, mostly of kiddos, which is by far the coolest!

Let's get started.

A happy and fresh Liena & Robby on the train for Downtown D.C.  To think back to these two becoming friends in the Forbidden City in Beijing, is almost too cool!  Hopefully, they'll be friends where ever life leads them.

This is in the National Museum of the American Indian where we had a wonderful ethnic lunch at the Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe.  There were different food stations for different ethnicities where you could order food based on your current fancy.  The photo is a big pavilion type area where they have prism windows to reflect the sunlight.  I'm a dork so I've been fascinated by prism's ever since this record came out in 1977.

Another shot just inside of the entry way...  Note the space capsule.  Note the Missile on the right side of the picture.  Note the satellite in the upper middle/left.  Need I go on?

Inside the entry way of the Air & Space Museum.  I was hooked and we weren't more than 50' inside the door.  Oh sure, I'm fat... it's hot outside... it's wonderfully air conditioned inside...  BUT I PROMISE that didn't have anything to do with my fascination.

Liena, Robby and Caleb outside of the Air & Space museum.  They do not realize the walk we have ahead of us to get back to the train, which is a considerable ride back to the car, which is a small drive back home.  Oh to be young again!

Robby, Momma chaos, Ethan, Liena and Marylynn on the train ride back to Gaithersburg.   The end of a long day for the kiddos, but absolutely fascinating, to me at least.

So that's about it for this post.  I wanted to caption the pics better, but they're giving me fits for whatever reason and I'm not about to put up with that kind of behavior from a silly machine!  :-)

Vacation 2013 - Post #7, Downtown DC, the 2nd time.

The previous post dealt with our first visit to downtown, which we did under the close supervision of our host family/tour guide/slapper-arounder Marylynn. 

That was so the chaos unit could get schooled on all things appropriate such as how to get downtown, and how to navigate when you're down there. So the first post was mainly photos about the architecture and such of the D.C. area, this is the other post of the architecture of the D.C. area and I'm sure if we'd had more time in the area, I'd do about 8 more posts about buildings! 

I do not apologize...  I was fascinated with the buildings!

There will be more posts that overlap these because of our walk thru the mall with the monuments, the Arlington Cemetary, and what not.

Until we get there, try to enjoy the same pictures that I do.

This was on our walk to find the White House where President Obama has the staff brew the first beer at that location: Ale To The Chief.  I will not lie.  I am not fond of most of the carryings-on of our current commander in chief, but I do admire the fact that he seems to recognize a good beer when he sees one.  Sadly, I did not run across one of the White House ales in our time out there, but I would have gladly enjoyed one with the Big O over a discussion about the big 3: football, religion and politics.

I apologize in advance for forgetting what all of these buildings represent, but this was a medical building with the inscription (under the big red +)  "In Memory Of The Heroic Women Of The Civil War".

What building is this?  I dunno...  I just liked it.

OOOoooh...  Oooooh!!!  I believe it is the museum of the...  place that has stuff that museums have...  I'm just kidding, it's the Corcoran Gallery Of Art.  We didn't go in.  I'm not kidding when I say that I had no idea what it was, but that I just looked it up.

This is the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.  It was IMMENSE!!  There's no way to take a photo of it as it's just simply too big to be had by a regular camera.  If you were to look this up on Google/Bing maps, it's the building immediately West of the White House which sort of looks like a square'ish figure 8.

To fine young lads who have made their way all the way from Iowa (and China) to stand at the front steps of the White House.  Can you see Obama back there?!?  He's in the window just to the right of the 7th iron rail in the fence... if you're counting from the left.  Or was it the right?  Get it?  Left, or the right?  Oh man, I crack myself up!!! 

If you do a 180 from where the photo immediately above this was taken, you see this.  It's the Washington monument of course.  You'll see a few photos from now why it looks a bit different from what you're used to.

This is a VERY SMALL portion of the building that is the U.S. Department of Commerce.

The Washington Monument up close and as personal as they would allow at this time.  That is some fantastic scaffolding they had built and I would have been honored to help set it up!!

This was outside the building where Momma misplace her purse, albeit temporarily.  It was hot as hades out there and really cold inside the air conditioned book/memorabilia store.   I went back outside because it was small and crowded in there, as well as cold and I knew that we had a long walk ahead of us yet.  These fellas rode past shortly after I went back outside.

This is the U.S. Department Of Agriculture where our own Tom Vilsack went to put his wares on display.  You can take that however you want... 

I don't remember what this is, but I seem to think it was taken on our walk to retrace steps as we went to look for lost belongings.  It was a nice photo of what I think was the...  oh, Freer Gallery Of Art, where Robby used ever bathroom in the place.  Twice.

And that about does it!  It was a full day. By the time the Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit had figured out the trains, read maps, walked forever, and so on, it was time to go back to the Gonsalves to regroup for another adventure.

Vacation 2013 - Post #6, Downtown DC, the 1st time.

After our train ride to downtown, we had a bit of a walk to get to the museums, which will be covered in future posts.

The walk was cool.  Marylynn was well researched and also knew that Robby is a bit of a history buff, so she had us get off of the train where our walk would take us by a bit of history.  We'll come to that after a few photos.

I have no idea what the order of these should be anymore so they're kinda random.

Hard to spot it but straight down that road is the Capitol building.  I didn't have much time to fire off a photo, so I was a little off center when I realized it was down the road.

Don't know what this building is, but it was enormous and I like pillars.

I've also come to realize after seeing pictures from China and Washington D.C., that I not only like to photograph buildings with pillars, but I'm quite fond of arches as well.  This one was cool.

Ah, the bit of history that Marylynn had planned for us to walk by.  Fords Theatre where President Abraham Lincoln was shot.  They hauled him out of there and across the street where we're standing to take this photo...

Into this building where he eventually died from his wounds.

Obviously, this is a close-up of the sign immediately above Robby's head in the above photo.

Here's the museum that we toured.  There are roughly 42 bathrooms throughout this place and I think Robby used every one of them... twice!  He'll thank me for that comment someday...  or not.

This is one of the Smithsonian buildings but I couldn't tell you which one.  We are standing on the steps outside of one of the museums that we had walked thru and looking out across the mall.

And here it is from the base of the building!  I don't know what else to say, but I do have a shot of that archway that you can see at the bottom left.

The Mobile Chaos Unit in front of the Capitol.  I like this picture for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that Caleb had to pee, REALLY BAD, and you can see the obvious anguish on his little Chinese face!

Again, not sure what the building is, but it was enormous as well!

I'm going off memory here, so I'm most likely horribly wrong, but I think this may be the Bill Clinton whatever building.  All I know is that it had pillars and arches!

To put the size of the building in perspective, the tiny little people up there by the arches are, from left to right, Robby, Liena, Caleb and Ethan in the stroller, Marylynn, and Momma.

No pillars on this one, but arches with scaffolding!  mmmmmm... construction sites...

That's about all for that post.  Nothing too exciting to look at, unless you were there.  

I kinda wish we would have had a week to just spend in the D.C. area proper.  So much that we just saw, without doing.  I guess that gives us a fantastic reason to go back someday!

Vacation 2013 - Post #5, At The Gonsalves

So after spending the better part of the day at Gettysburg and driving on to Maryland and the Catoctin Mountain park, we finally arrived at our friends house.

It seems odd that I'm posting some photos from somebody else's house (hopefully they don't mind) but there's some good photos there and for whatever reason, Caleb got the giggles this morning looking at them.  They don't appear to be funny to me, but kids are kids...  what can you say?

This was shortly after we had first arrived.  It didn't take long for the kids to "catch-up" and get over any shy tendencies that time may have borne.

Robby is attempting to do his homework that he had to have done by the end of summer while Caleb "helps" and I'm sure, makes things easier for Rob.  Robby looks delighted, does he not!?

That's Ethan in the Superman pj's.  He and Caleb hit it off pretty good although Caleb declares no memory of him from China.  That's really not surprising since both boys were probably in a bit of distress at that point.  Caleb and Ethan share "Got'cha Day" dates!

And here is the lad in all of his glory.  I was happy to get to spend more time with their family because I eventually got to the point with Lil' E where he sat on my lap for the train ride into DC proper where we teased each other and giggled relentlessly.

This is how we spent each early morning;  drinking Steve's wonderful coffee!  He makes coffee that is nearly perfect for how I like mine.  I miss it...

This photo has been on here before, but it's worth repeating when you consider how terrified Caleb was of any and all animals when we brought him to America.  It took him nearly 3 days to warm up to sweet Nala, but he got there!  I also miss taking Nala on her afternoon walks.