Mortality...

Something most of us don’t really care to think about too often, but it is quite real and sometimes has to smack us square in the face as a reminder of just how real it is.

Unfortunately, this week has seen me get smacked not once, but twice, and HARD.

I generally view life and it’s quirkiness as a series of small events, both good and bad, that helps to prepare and train you for the “big ones”, or bigger events. This perspective has helped me quite a few times to not feel miserable when little things have gone wrong but rather to look with a sense of anticipation of what might be coming next.  While seldom easy, those times are far more manageable when viewed from that particular vantage point.

This past Monday morning, my sister Doris emailed to say that a classmate of ours had died in his sleep the previous Saturday night.  Being only 42 years old, this struck a nerve that I wasn’t even aware that I possessed. 

My friend, Al Chidester, had an undiagnosed heart ailment that caught us all by surprise a week ago.  I call him my friend even though roughly 19 years has passed since I’ve last seen/spoke to him.  Lesley and I were married less than a year at that point when we went to see a band, Hanover Fist, play at The Rush in Waterloo one Saturday night.  Al was there with Jordan (his younger brother) and a friend, Jason, I believe.  When he realized it was me, he got the smile that only Al could muster and exclaimed my name. 

Anybody can say your name… only friends can EXCLAIM it, and Al did!

We had a brief catching up and that was it.  Lesley and I went back to our table to jam torn off pieces of napkin in our ears as that band was LOUD! 

That was the last time I ever saw Al or had the chance to speak with him.  The last time I will see his smile. The last time I will hear his voice exclaim my name. He’s now gone. It’s final. It is done. 

While in China adopting our boy Caleb, we met many couples/families, all of us there for the same reason.  All of the families there shared a similar heart and that point was obvious every morning in the hotel seeing 50 or so families with little adopted kiddos sharing stories. 

One of those couples we met had been in the adoption process for 7 years.  They were finally getting the little girl that they had been dreaming about.  While we did not get to know them closely, we did get to share a bit of their story and share a few experiences with them while there.

We got news this morning that the Momma went into cardiac arrest last Sunday and is in a permanent coma. She will never recover. She will never again get to hold the little girl who was 7 years in the making.  She will never get to hug or kiss her husband again.  She never gets to tell anyone again that she loves them, much less the much cherished chance to tell them goodbye.  It’s final. It is done.

Tonight’s sermon in church, Pastor Dave was speaking of the table being set.  The table that points to heaven.  He spoke of mortality and it being not the end of our lives, but the beginning of our lives in the presence of God.

Jesus set the table for us and He has invited us to the banquet.  Do we accept the invitation while we have the chance?  Do we rejoice with the opportunity put before us to die a little to live a lot?

It's a question we all have to answer for ourselves. If you haven't answered that question yet, please think about it while you have the opportunity. 

God bless all of you. 

With a heart full of sadness, and yet a certain joy, I say good night.

China - Part 13 Puppet Palace, Changchun

Part II of the Puppet Palace tour.

Now that we're home and going through pictures, this tour in particular reminds me a little bit of high school. What do I mean by that? Well, I didn't pay attention in high school and I certainly didn't pay attention on this tour. Loose translation? I didn't learn much from either.

Here's an example of not learning much.  This building?  I believe Echo said it had something to do with a maids quarters but anything beyond that, your guess is as good as mine.

Again... I'm not really 100% sure, but I think this was a temple of sorts.  I did recall something from the Hutong tour though and that was that they used the colors red and yellow to indicate importance. So that would make sense if it were indeed a temple.



This is the/a throne room although I can't seem to find a magazine rack anywhere near that throne!

This was the orchestra room.  The thingymabob on the left side of the photo is a spindle on a half wall that the band would be behind.  I can't recall for sure if the band were prisoners or if there was some other significance to them.

This is the dining hall. Note the bright red throne towards the upper/right of center of the photo.  There were specific places for people to sit, either on the left or right side of the throne and whatnot.

This was just a big atrium type area that went up thru both levels of this particular building.  The level of detail that you see in person is nowhere near what you can see in the photo.

This is the entry way/exit of that big atrium that we just saw in the last pic.  We are, at this point, leaving the Puppet Palace and heading out thru the garden area and to the gift shops for us sucker tourists.

This is the gate that closes off the official grounds of the Puppet Palace.

Shot one of the garden area.

Shot two of the garden area.  It's much bigger than the little bit that we saw, and yet again, there was some significance to how the little bird baths and stuff are arranged throughout here.

Here's the Schmitz Mobile Chaos Unit dressing up the garden as only we can.  Thing area behind us is a pond of sorts but was obviously dry because of the bitterly cold winters in Changchun.

This here is not too far from that last family photo.  To get back to our bus, we walk this big patio area to well past those pine trees up ahead.  It was much warmer than when we went into the Puppet Palace, but it's still not a nice spring day out.  What I'm saying is, it was a long walk and a good way to wear off some of the sausage and bacon a fellas had been consuming at this point.

The pine trees at the very top left of the photo are the same ones you can see in the previous photo.  We came down a very large set of stairs just to the right of the concrete doo-ka-hickey's that you can see on the right hand side of the photo.  Most of the stuff that I've forgotten about in this post didn't really bug me, however I wish I could recall what these little plants were.  They look like little trees but are literally about 8 - 10 inches tall. That was it for our tour of the Puppet Palace. We went thru a few gift shops that had the same touristy type "collectibles" as all of the other little shops of the same ilk. The only cool thing they had for sale in there was a collection of cars that were factual to the time of the Puppet Emperor.  Other than those,  I wasn't impressed and waited outside for most of it.

I recall writing something about this restaurant in an earlier post but we didn't include any photos.  This was the restaurant that had separate rooms for all of their customers.  Let's say you wanted a private dinner for two.  They had little rooms set up with just a table for two.  A party of four?  Same deal.  We had 14 in our party and had to be moved to a bigger room and that bigger room is the one you see in this photo and the next.  Our bus driver for the day is the guy standing up.  When we walked back to the bus after our lunch, I was carrying Caleb and the driver came up to me and pretty much insisted  through hand motions that I should put him down. I did.  The driver immediately put Calebs hood up and tied it under his chin, then took him by the hand after saying something to him in Mandarin. He held Calebs hand all the way back to the bus which was probably a little more than two city blocks.  When we got to the bus, he politely handed Calebs hand back to me, again after saying something to Caleb in Mandarin.  He also had a huge smile on his face for the entire walk.

Another shot of the room we were in.  Right outside of those windows was a really tight, dirty alleyway with a ton of bikes, clotheslines, and little gardens with trellis's because I'm guessing with space as tight as it was, they had to grow things 'up' as opposed to using too much ground space.

That does it for the Puppet Palace tour.  I believe our next stop will be the few photos we took of the orphanage.

As always, thanks for reading!

Random happ'nens from around Pleasant Hill

Greetings and salutations to one and all.

Lots of hits from a LOT of different countries in the past couple of days. I'm not sure why that is, but it is certainly exciting. Here's hoping and praying that it's partly because of people getting the word out about Julie.  Do not cease on forwarding, spreading the word and PRAYING for her to find a family.

I thought I'd write a post that was not specific to anything but just about what we've been up to.  This weekend saw the close of my most recent Bible study, "Winning At Work and Winning At Home".  Good stuff. We've decided as a group to keep meeting on Saturday mornings at 6am and we'll be reading and discussing the Book Of John next.  I'm excited for that!  We've also discussed some other options for meeting in the evenings some other time and we'd call the group, Beer's And Bibles.  Surprisingly enough, this was NOT my idea. :-)

We also went out to the Gusto Pizza for lunch on Saturday with Aunt Doris and Uncle "Leonard" Frank and then to the Drake women's basketball game.  A good time was had by all.  The boys were excited early on because the blimp flew over us and Daddy caught a piece of paper from it for a free McDonalds medium fries.  I'm not sure where the second one came from, possibly the older lady behind us, but both boys ended up with a coupon.

Yesterday it was snowing out and I had mentioned, merely mentioned... no promises, that we MIGHT be able to go outside and throw the football a little bit.  That turned into a raging, unquenchable burning desire for Robby to get out there and not only throw the ball around, but to "play" a full 4 quarters game of football as well.  I'm not sure that I've mentioned it on this blog before, but I have a broken foot that is healing nicely, I hope, and "playing" football was not really what I had in mind. No worries, I pulled it off without incident.

This morning (Monday), I'm at home with Caleb while Momma is up reading with Robby's class.  We're getting a new roof on the house today and Mr. Caleb is fascinated with the proceedings!

That's the bulk of our otherwise boring lives right now.  Let's get on with some pictures.

Robby on his birthday (March 1st) opening the last of his gifts. This one, the St. Louis Rams Chris Long jersey elicited a response that was best captured in photo.  Hence, the photo...

This is Birthday boy attempting to blow up one of the balloons that his Aunt Karen sent him.  He couldn't do it but the facial expressions were gold!

Caleb getting ride on Momma's shoulders as we're heading to the Drake women's basketball game.

The boys inside the game.

Here's the boys taking in a Phineas And Ferb cartoon together.

Daddy playing Quarterback, Robby as Running back and Caleb wondering what the heck he is doing running up and down the yard when it's cold outside.

Here's Robby, aka, Steven Jackson on the big run!

"Brandon Lloyd"  (Robby) trying to catch a very well thrown ball from Sam Bradford (daddy).

Marvin McNutt watching the roofers.

The crazy roofers!  These dudes not only go up onto roofs, they stand right on the edges of those same roofs!!  I suppose somebody has to do it, and it's better it be somebody else than me!

This is the two little monkey's and how they were when I went in to wake them up this morning.

That's about it from our end of the world... for now...

China - Part 12 Puppet Palace in Changchun - Part 1

Roughly -6 degrees (farenheit) when we left the confines of our lovely hotel that morning, bellies full of eggs, sausages and bacon... and fruits and and other crap that nobody cares about. It's the sausage and bacon that brings everything home and somehow makes it real. We're not hiding anything from anyone at this point.

So, it's cold. Real cold.  To be perfectfully honest, I'm not all that excited to go on another tour at this point in our trip. I'm not sure that the excitement of adopting Mr. RongBo has fully defrosted my toes from the tour of the of the Hutong from several days prior.  It's COLD here!!

Mr. Caleb is probably a little more excited to go on a tour than the rest of us at this point but we're in China, let's pile onto the bus and go.  As I look back into my journal of that particular day, I was not much more impressed then as I am now recollecting the experience.

So be it, here we go...

The Puppet Manchuria Palace Museum (also known as the Puppet Emperor's Palace and Exhibition Hall), is the imperial palace of the former puppet Emperor PuYi, who resided here from 1932 to 1945. Emperor PuYi, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, was installed here by the Japanese and was commandeered as the 'puppet emperor' of Manchukuo in 1934. The  movie The Last Emperor was directed based on Emperor Pu Yi's life. The Puppet Emperor Palace has become a famous landmark in Changchun, Jilin province and quite frankly, one of the only big attractions that Changchun has.

 

The imperial palace mainly consists of a group of two-storey buildings roofed with golden enamel tiles including the Qinmin Building, Jixi Building and Tongde Palace. Until today, the architecturally distinctive and East-West fusion style still remains as fairly unique from the surrounding area.

B.S. aside, let's get to the photos...

I think Robby's face in this photo pretty much represents the entire attitude of the family for this tour.  Truthfully, it's two days after you've received your little dude (or dudette, if that's the case) and you just kind of want to spend time with them in a private setting.  Nothing against Holt, Lotus Tours or anybody else, but that's just the way I felt at that point.

Here's the boys on the walk from the bus til the entrance gate of the Puppet Palace.  We had just witnessed the community exercising equipment outside of the gates where you purchase tickets, so I figure if they can exercise in -6 degree weather, we can probably go on a tour.  The boys were doing pretty good at this point.  Playing together on the bus, teasing, harrassing and whatever else that brothers do. Regardless, they were being sweet here walking hand in hand with each other.   I'm not sure if I've mentioned the fact that it was COLD!!! 

Here's the entry way.  That's our guide Echo, going up to present our tickets and get us through the gates without any woes.

Here we are on the other side of that entry way.  I believe that there are 13 rows of thingymabobs on the doors here.  Quite honestly, it's too cold to truly care about that.  The clock is also stuck at about 9:10am and there's a good reason or significance for that. What is it?  I can't recall...  Echo told us but I don't have a clue anymore.

Yet another courtyard on our tour of greater China.

Another doorway of some sort.  I have no idea...  Get used to this level of descripton because I was less than enthralled at this point of the so-called "hub-bub".

Most of these photos are just going to go by without a comment because I have no idea how to comment on them.

This here was the music room according to the tour.  Unfortunately, there were no fantastic electric guitars here or anything of that nature, but we did see a sweet old crank style turntable with a single record on it.  No additional Beatles, Zeppelin, or KISS albums were in site.

This is another shot of the music room. I do not know the brand of this particular organ, but it appeared to be in fantastic shape. I doubt we'll see it on Craigslist or EBAY anytime soon.

These wax figures would sort of freak me out when we'd encounter a room with them in it.  Thankfully they were not real and did not haunt us...

That is me and two fantastic little boys standing in the entry way of this building... whatever it is.

That's it for for part 1 of this tour. That's right, I'm dividing it into two because we've still got a few more pictures to go.  We had our favorite dinner of the whole trip on this day and hopefully I can include a photo or two of the restaurant that we were in to show you part of the reason why it was our favorite.

Until then, take care of one another, it's all we truly have.

God bless.

Help Wanted!

This is a quick post that has basically nothing to do with the Schmitz clan proper, but rather a young girl, "Julie", in China who is running out of time.

Julie has somehow made it to within a year of her 14th birthday without being adopted.  You see, if these orphans turn 14, they "graduate" out of the orphanage system in China. The stories that I've read of those kids hardly ever come to a happy ending.

Julie has until her birthday in the middle of November to find her forever home.

All I'm asking is that if you've ever had the heart for adoption or know somebody or some family that does, to please point out Julie and the situation she is in.

When we went to China late last year, Caleb, at 4.5 years old, was the oldest child adopted out of our entire group. Most families want kids with a mindset of "the younger the better", and I'm certainly not judging. That being said, the older the kiddos, sadly, become less desirable to "the masses".

Holt International is trying to get Julie's case to go viral.  This blog is small time compared to many of the others out there, but there are some different readers from around the world.  All I'm asking is that you forward the link to a few friends and families and ask them to do the same. Facebook it.  Tweet it. Whatever.

If one of the many links above do not work, you can copy n' paste this into your browser or send it in email:
http://www.holtinternational.org/waitingchild/photolisting/
Go to that page and click on the picture of Julie.

Thanks in advance and say a prayer for Julie to find her forever family!

Happy Birthday to our "eldest", Mr. Robby Schmitz!

Happy Birthday Robby!

I put eldest in quotes in the title of the post because Robby uses that to refer to himself since we've adopted Caleb.  He cracks us up on a regular basis and for that, plus about 831,485,220,198 other reasons, we LOVE him.

March 1st, 2005.  From my perspective, one of the more glorious days in the entire history of the world!  I became a daddy for the first time.  There is no similar feeling.  It is a high honor to have bestowed on you; Daddy. 

Enough of me waxing psuedo-poetic, on to the photos...

Here's the birthday boy in all his regal splendor!  Pizza? Check.  Cake? Check. Football jersey?  Check. Over stimulated for several hours straight? Check.

Here's the master bowler watching a ball travel down the lanes at approximately 4.1 MPH.

Here's cousin Samuel bowling under the expert guidance of his Mom.

The lovely and talented Mrs. Schmitz with the lovely and surely talented Zoe.

Grandma Elaine keeping a keen eye on the proceedings.

Birthday boy trying to pick up a technique or two from G'pa Jim.

Note the follow through after release of the ball.  Perhaps this is some of the technique learned from G'pa in the above photo?  Hard to tell...

Both boys wait approximately 2.13 minutes for their balls to reach the pins.

Cousin Jonah steps up to launch what will no doubt be a strike.

Another master at work!  Caleb RongBo Schmitz, after carefully aiming the launch apparatus, pushes the ball with a technique that can only be described as "the right-leg-twist-barrel-chest-surrender".  It's a Chinese thing...

Getting sung to and preparing to blow out his candles. Much thanks to G'ma Marlene for making the cake.

Aunt Kristie (and cousin Michael plotting something nefarious in the background) with the inimitable cousin Zoe.

Uncle Vince with the baby of the moment!  Ya gotta wonder what a baby thinks when they're getting passed around.  She was delightful with it all so it obviously didn't bother her too much.

I figured one wide view shot of the overall atmosphere couldn't hurt anything.

Birthday boy opening some presents.

Alright, I confess.  I put this one in for purely selfish reasons.  We managed to get Caleb a spare while using the launching mechanism, and he jumped into my arms with joy.  I believe it was Aunt Molly who somehow captured the moment on the camera with the worst delay in the world.  And speaking of Aunt Molly, she's crafty, that one.  She "volunteered" to go around snapping photos for us so that she was behind the camera, greatly reducing the chance that she end up in front of one.

Aunt Doris with what appears to be a little doll.

This is a bowling pin, with Happy Birthday on it, that the Premiere Bowling peeps give out to the Birthday kiddo so all who are attending the party can sign their names on it.  Cool idea, I thought, and he's quite proud of it.

Birthday boy playing one of his buddies in air hockey.