Man's Best Friend... When Man Has A Sammich!

Everybody likes Jimmy Johns!

The End... Of Basketball, anyways

Caleb's basketball season has come to a close today. 

The team started out as most kids teams do, slow. They seemed to gel as the season moved along and the last two games were fantastic!

Last week, G'ma & G'pa were down for Calebbers baptism and they attended his game, along with all of the other sporting events of the weekend.  

Caleb scored the first 6 points of the game for his team and ended with 14 overall points.  I asked him after the game if he was showing off for his visitors, and he simply replied, "yes".

Before today's game, I told him to play like G'ma & G'pa were at the game again.

He did.  And so did the rest of his team!
 

That's Calebber with the ball, by the referee.  He scored 12 points today and had several rebounds as well as two great ball saves from going out of bounds.  Fun stuff to watch!

The team that rocked! That's Caleb in front of his coach (with the IOWA sweatshirt) and our friend Max is to Caleb's left.

The score, even though "we don't keep score"...  63 to 26!!  Every kid contributed today and they were truly a team to be proud of.  Our score keepers?  Robby and Max's brother, Jack.

Caleb then proceeded to beat Robby and myself and a game of p.i.g. once we got home.  Yes, I was trying...

Sadly, he declared that he does not want to play basketball again...  I'm hoping that its just the end of the season excitement and he'll feel differently after a little time passes.

We'll see...  But his 26 points on the last two weekends were FUN!

Happy 11th Birthday To Robby!!!

This fella right here, he rocks my world!  He turned 11 on Tuesday. 

He's a smart, clever, funny boy who has a big, compassionate heart.  He's one of the loves of my life & is a piece of the puzzle that makes me whole! 

Love you Robby, hope your birthday was everything you wanted it to be!

The Baptism Of Caleb Rongbo Schmitz

Sunday, February 28th, 2016 will go down in history as not much of anything, unless you were part of the Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit! 

You see, we baptized a wonderful gift from God on this day;  his name is Caleb Rongbo Schmitz.

Not a day goes by that I don't thank God for giving me Robby & Caleb.  They make life full and beyond worth living!  They are the essence of life and they remind me of that fact every. single. day.  

Just earlier today, I looked out the front window and there were, to the best of my counting abilities, 10 kids out in the front yard. Now, I can account for a good percentage of them; Robby & Caleb, the two lads that I pick up from school on Tuesday and Thursday, Max & Jack, and the two brothers from across the road, Titus and Tobin. Oh, and our little neighbor dude, Ryan.  The other 3?  Dunno...

But, cool non-the-less!  Turns out one of them was Titus and Tobin's little sister Trista.  She was a delight to have around and as Robby put it, "I love that she came over too! Dad, she's LEGIT!".

Can't beat that!

Anyway...  back to baptism Sunday.  It was a great day that was a LONG time in the making.  Let's have a look at some pics, shall we?

Two gorgeous characters before we left for services.

Photobomb by DAAAAAAAAADDDDDDD!!!!!!

The eldest.

The younger....

A nervous Chinaman awaiting services to begin!

The ever lens-pleasant Robby, giving a nice pre-service grin.

Speaking of lens-pleasant....  the often imitated but never duplicated, JB!  Grandpa Jim in his regal splendor!

Cuteness personified!!!

Nervous boy with his daddy.

The mobile chaos unit with some questionable characters in the background!

Getting ready for the big moment.

That's MY BOY, right there!!!!

Apprehensive Caleb and his supportive family.

The big moment! The bigger thing about the moment itself is that I got to baptize the lad!  I wanted too.  He wanted me to do it as well, and Noah, the other fella in the photos, had requested to do the baptism as he and I had played guitar together in a previous worship based band.  I asked if I could do the baptism myself and no worries, done deal.  I would describe that as a powerful moment and was imagining the moment of John the baptist in the Jordan river with Jesus...   JESUS!  Yes, that one!!! 

The big moment from some friends' camera.

Calebber getting the mark of the cross with Holy water from my friend Noah Ruppert!

Caleb with Grandma Elaine, Grandpa Jim & Grandma Marlene in one of my favorite photos... possibly ever!

On top of all of that, it was the kids weekend to sing!  Calebber is in the bottom left and Rob is one striped shirt away from the upper right.

Vacation 2015, #11 - Oregon, Fort Stevens State Park, Ship Wreck

On the same day as the Military Base visit, we visited the shipwreck of what I believe to be the Peter Iredale wreck of 1906 (read down just a bit at this page to see a little history).  What is cool about this is that it is technically a part of the Fort Stevens State Park that I wrote the last post about.  The men rescued from this ship were taken there for food, clothing and shelter.

No matter to us really at the time, because it was another reason to get us out of the vehicle and a little exercise under our newly expanding "vacation belts".

A picture of a wonderful day of weather that just happens to have a (former) ship in it!

All that was left of her after 109 years stuck in the sand and salty winds of the Pacific.  I would imagine in another 109, that it will no longer be an attraction at all.  Oh, and those two boys in the photo?  They were not the two stowaways that had found their way onto the doomed vessel.

Mama and Caleb getting up close to the remains for some forensic science.

Amazing to see all of the age to the steel and the sea "stuff" that attached itself to it!

That's mom that you can see almost dead center in the photo.  She was taking a picture of me taking a picture of her.  Not really, but it sounds romantic...

Mama and Robby with the waves they crave in the background.

The steel that's been eaten away was astonishing. 

And so it was...   back into the car to discover sand in parts of your clothes that you would think was NOT possible!

Vacation 2015, #10 - Oregon, Fort Stevens State Park

This post has us in the very upper Northwest corner of the fine state of Oregon.  We visited the old military base Fort Stevens which was built around the tail end of the civil war and is the only military base in the continental U.S. that was attacked during WWII.

Along with Mt. St. Helens, I probably could have spent a full day here but you never know that in advance so our planning wouldn't allow it.  

It was beyond cool but so large that we really didn't hike thru much of it to see the coolest stuff.  This is a place that I wouldn't mind visiting again, should I get the chance before they plant my carcass.

So you can sort of see Fort Stevens in Yellow (I couldn't figure out how to change the font color...) labeled in the ocean.  That green area to the right is Fort Stevens State Park.  It was built to guard the mouth of the Columbia river.

Some of the old buildings built into the seaside to hide any nighttime lights with the hill.  The Pacific ocean is just a good hop, skip and jump behind these.  Well, maybe 3 jumps...  as I said, we didn't go up there.

This is another shot, just left of the pic above but standing in roughly the same spot.  These buildings appeared to have been built for the entire distance of the hill.

And another shot to the left of the one above it.  The little white sign above the door says, "Steam Room".

A fine looking young Chinese boy with a cool back drop!

That was all of the pictures I apparently took.  We spent considerable time in the attached museum building looking at the uniforms, weapons and various supplies of the soldiers, as well as watching a movie about the place.

Very interesting stuff and I would recommend a visit, should you get the chance.  And if you do go, I would also recommend planning to stay a few hours to take it all in!

Vacation 2015, #9 - Mount St. Helens

Continuing on with our vacation post from last summer (I WILL get thru all of these!) with a stop at Mount St. Helens. I have been wanting to visit this place since I was a wee lad toting newspapers around the neighborhood when this thing was lighting up the press!

And so, we stopped on our way from the Seattle area to the Portland area.

Two fine looking young specimens adorning the marker of the National Monument.

Calebber on the wall overlooking the North side of Mount St. Helens, or if you'd rather, the side that got the snot blown out of it back in 1980.

Robby, same wall, same mountain...

Aunt Molly doing the same!  Smiling willingly for a photo, I might add.

And finally a shot of mountain itself with all foreign bodies removed from its foreground. Much more impressive in person as you could really tell how much of the mountainside had been displaced.

The "mud river" from the eruptions is where I probably could have spent a LOT of time.  To think that there were mature pine and other trees completely covered is stunning.   Something else that was stunning was how far that muddiness went down stream as you can sort of tell in the next shot.

This is merely a satellite shot from google maps showing the road we were on (hwy 504) and that mud extended for over thirty miles alongside of that highway.

More mud a bit closer up.

The Mobile Chaos Unit in their splendor.

I look a lot better from a little distance so I included this shot as well.  I believe we stopped at a lookout point called Eagle Rock or Eagle something-very-similar-to-that.  We had a ways to go to get all the way down to the nearest lookout point and time was beginning to be of the essence.

And that about does that...  Next up on the list?  I dunno...  somewhere South of here!