Vacation 2014 Post 6 - Corn Palace, Mitchell, South Dakota

The corn palace. What can you say?

It's silly and amazing all rolled up into one.  This particular year, it was more under construction than it was anything else, but it was still somewhat amazing.  The boys got a kick out out of it.

The outdoor, South wall.

The front of the building, facing West, with the advertisements for the up and coming greatness that they project and predict.

One of many murals inside...

another mural inside...

and yet another...

Robby with his first pocket knife.  I got my first pocket knife as my dad visited the Badlands and so it was fitting that Robby got his here as well.  He's since lost it...

Robby Crockett.

Caleb, completely enamored with snow globes!

The mobile chaos unit in more...   I don't know...  hairy, times.

Vacation 2014 Post 5 - Travelling, and a Little More

Vacation. A time of wonder, excitement, exploration and extreme exhaustion.

We made a plan to get Robby into all 50 states by the time he was 18 and then, probably foolishly, accepted the same challenge with Calebber when we adopted him.  So we do a lot of driving on vacations, which I personally enjoy.

That leads to some funny moments in cars, not to mention some dull ones.

Where were we at this point?  Who knows...  this could have been taken on any one of the days of excessive driving.

Which is not much different than a typical Friday/Saturday night at home with dear ol' Dad downstairs playing guitar and the fam upstairs "watching" tv.  This is what I came upstairs to find last Friday night.

Vacation 2014 Post 4 - Mall Of America

The Mall Of America... what more can you say?  

The mere mention of those first four words is enough to strike fear in the hearts of men everywhere. 

While I quite enjoy watching the boys, and truly, other kids as well, playing and tearing up life in places like this, I was also perfectly happy to stay behind and keep company at the hospital with G'ma & G'pa.

That being said, Grandpa and I did end up at the mall later that night for supper and a few games of pool in a very loud arcade within the mall.

We were playing pool after dinner when some fella from a large office gathering approached me and asked if it was okay if the boys could have two of the game cards that they were not going to be using.  I said sure, we thanked him profusely and the boys went off (usually within eye sight of me) to spend as much of those cards on various games as they could before we were done shooting pool.

Sadly, both of us essentially exhausted by that point, we didn't play for very long like we would in our own basement.  

I told the boys they had to find somebody to give the remainder of their cards to, and they did.  We had a good time and the boys got to do something they rarely every do; playing video games in a real arcade.

While G'pa and I held court at the hospital with G'ma, the other four (Molly is missing from all of the pictures...  the weasel) were doing things like this:

Robby doesn't find these much fun anymore, but in order to ride some rides where Caleb can't/won't and has to wait, he has to participate in rides for the Chinaman.

Can't go wrong with bumper cars.  That's Robby in the foreground with Caleb in the upper right.

I'm not sure who Calebber is gunning for here, but I wouldn't want to be them with that look of craziness on his face.  I have a suspiscion that that is the top of Robby's furry little head at the very bottom of the pic.

The haunted house ride...

The boy appears to be afflicted by something.

It's fuzzy but I had to include it because of how Caleb is ducking.  That's his general way of letting those of us safe on the ground, that he's not having the time of his life.

Is it truly a "selfie" if there's two people in the photo?

LET'S GO! Or not... the 2014 NFL season...

I don't know who to credit for this fine photo that properly represents the 2014 St. Louis Rams season, but whoever it is, they captured it perfectly. That's the fantastic Sam Bradford in the road/under the truck.

I weep for the future of our team...

Should I? Or Should I Not?

Not much time here, but I figured I'd post this nearly forgotten about photo I took when Robby, Caleb and myself were looking for the Como Park Zoo in Minneapolis last June.

It's for all of those "Brett Favre"/undecided types in our lives...

Vacation 2014 Post 3 - Como Park, the 2nd time around...

Here we go with the third post from our summer vacation... the one we started back in late June and finished early July. I'm getting a little more settled in to the new job and schedule so I find a bit of time to post here and there. 

That's my excuse anyway... 

 So in this post, my varmints, Larger American Boy and Smaller Chinese Boy, and myself find our family unit minus 1 at the Como Park Zoo in Minneapolis. A delightful place and park that is mostly free, as you can see from my first post, and we went back a second day to find the zoo that we were actually very close to but didn't know it on the first day.

So as we parked and walked in, we find some volunteers with various creepy-crawly thing-a-ma-bobs in their hands and around their necks.

Here's the backs of the heads of both boys looking at two nasty ol' snakes they had on display.  Why anyone would want to look at such a thing is beyond me...

This was a little better.  It's a giraffe skull and tiny model of the trees that the very same beast eats from.  The girl in the picture gives some info on the subject at hand and then turns it around for the boys to ask questions.  Very cool.

This also had various degrees of nastiness about it. Frogs and other such gross creatures.  The boys were beginning to lose interest at this point and that was fine by dear ol' dad!!!

That's a big ol' gorilla sitting up against the glass.  He sat there for quite a while and was generally unimpressed that folks like me were there looking at him and trying to photograph him.

Caleb's hand on the polar bear model.

Robbys hand on the polar bear model.

And my hand on the same.  

This was a shot of the boys trying to find a similar polar bear as to the track models above.  We found the big beast, but he was napping in a very hard to find doorway.

We ran across a dad entering with his kids as we were walking out so we traded photo ops.  We didn't go into the botanical side of the zoo (behind us), but I bet it was just as impressive.

A wide shot of the whole building.  Free building associated with the free zoo!

I only mention that because in this day and age, when you can't go to the grocery store for the week and spend less than $200, it's impressive to me that anything can be "free".  This was a great example of a very impressive FREE!

The Schmitz Family Reunion, 2014

The Schmitz Family Christmas! At some point, we decided that it was easier trying to get together in the summertime than during the Christmas holiday as everyone's families branched out and expanded to the next generation. 

One look at the first three photos will give you an idea why.

I believe we had roughly 110 people in attendance this year, which is probably quite close to the average thru the years.

One of the most enjoyable things about this reunion is the volley ball game that breaks out at some undetermined time after dinner each year.  The problem this year was that it was VERY hot and we had zero breeze after dinner, so the one game that took place was short, and final.  

Robby was anguished over this as he looks forward to the reunion and the volley ball game every single year.
He was a little reluctant to leave without ample game time, but he did as he met a little buddy this year that he had not really played with in years past.  

He also learned the "joy" of wearing glasses when he got jacked in the side of the head with a ball, driving his glasses into soft tissue that was not meant for such activity.

All in all, a good time was had again this year, and I look forward to next.

My aunts and uncles.  A motley looking crew, to be sure!  :-)

My age group...  my cousins on my dads side.  Well, roughly half of them.

And the nieces and nephews.  Missing a few of those as well!!

My sister, Dianne, looking quite radiant!  I believe Calebber took this picture.

The larger American boy in a moment of non-jacking around.

And so it is, until next year.  Hopefully, next August will see everybody as healthy next year year at this time.