Volleyball, 2018-2019 Style

Sunday, December 16th saw the kick-off of the current volleyball season.  To kick things off, we had a round-robin tournament in Cedar Rapids (Hiawatha, to be truthful) where the boys would get some good playing time.

I am still amazed at how much I like watching volleyball and it's no different this year!

Don't know if you can spot the ball in the photo, but it's in the the upper right quadrant of the pic on the arms of the only dude with a red shirt on that side of the floor.  That's Caleb.

A shot from the upper seating trying to show the breadth of what's happening in male volleyball.   Pretty impressive!

A shot of the 14U's who participated on this day.

A shot of all of the boys in every age group who played on this fine day.

After the games were over it was time to head to Big Grove Brewery for some KILLER Brussels Sprouts and some beer!  

2018 Gingerbread Houses

It's that time again. Time for the annual decoration of gingerbread houses initially started by Grandma Marlene.  My sister Dianne has picked up the proverbial torch and had created the gingerbread houses that we all decorate.

I don't have much to say, so I'll just let the pictures speak for themselves.

Caleb's First Band Concert

At the end of Caleb's 4th grade year, the school hosted band tryouts.  Caleb was successful in the percussion area of things and once he got home, he let EVERYONE know it!

And that event brought us to Tuesday night, December 18th, when they had their first band concert.

The full width of the kiddos! Can you find Caleb?  He's in the back row, third from the left of the photo...  you can kinda see part of his shirt and his face, but his black hair is hidden by the dark curtain behind him.

A little better shot where you can actually see the boy.

Another wide shot while the kids are playing their rock and roll!

A shot of the moon once we got back to our house from taking Grandma home.  It's a terrible picture but kind of documents what it looked like that night.  There were about 6 distinctly colored rings around it, which you can sort of make out here.

Coat of not many colors

The lad sporting some new duds in church tonight!

Schmitz 2018 Vaca, Post 4 - I Want To Be A Part of it, New York

I hope you weren't expecting much, because we didn't experience much!!

What's even more (really, less) impressive than that is that I have no idea which road we were even on!  I was just following instructions of the map reader and therefor I can't really describe our feeble pics of New York other than to say, we'll go back at some other time and experience the true New York City.

This was not the vacation for that.

Look at that impressive skyline!

A little bit better...

...and...  the best it's going to get!  That's as close as we got to NYC and frankly, from the traffic that we experienced going around it, I'm ok with that!!!

Next up will be Boston, which is where we were trying to get to from our day in Philly.   I promise more pics and great times that we had there.

My Happy Helper!

After my neighbor helped (read: did all of the hard work and heavy lifting) replace the battery in Grandpa's Rendevous,  Caleb helped put the brace bar back in place and do some wrenching to limit my bending over as working on cars is VERY bad on my back.

Got'cha Day... and Night

The official "Got'cha day" supper which was only Dad and Caleb since Momma had to work and Robby had confirmation on this fine evening. 

As such, I let Caleb pick what we do for the night.  To the surprise of nobody, he picked eating sushi at Cool Basils!  Fine by me as we had to run to Menards to get some new filters anyway.

Before we took Robby up to confirmation, Rob had a gift for Caleb.  Turns out that during a home education course in Junior High,  Rob sewed Caleb a new pillow case in the color's of the Seattle Seahawks.  Caleb was, and still is, enamored with Rob's sweet jesture!

Caleb and I up at Cool Basil in Altoona.  Spring rolls are afoot!

Sushi has arrived!!!

Someone ate too much!!

We had to pick up Robby at Church around 8:20 so after we went to Menards, we had a few minutes to kill.   We went to Brightside Aleworks in Altoona where I had a wonderful new beer, and had high hopes to resume our Connect Four series of battles.  They did not have Connect Four available so we played Checkers instead.  This picture was after Calebber beat me and is telling me to take the "L".