Catching Up

I love this time of year! The weather is pleasant and the trees are colorful. (Well, the weather changed Thursday with colder temps and .75” of rain.) It seems such a shame to me that the trees only get to show their colorful side for just a few weeks of the year.

I am glad to say mowing season is over. Once the trees drop their leaves we’ll be able to wind up our yard work for the year. We spent some time raking Saturday of last weekend, but you can’t tell it now.

I MUST BRAG. With the return to school after fall break comes report cards. All three of our kids do well, but when we struggle so much to study spelling words or to get other things in their heads I always hold my breath to when it comes time to get their report cards.

I am proud to report that this time all three of our kids made straight As! Now if we can just get through the next grading period and make it to Christmas break.

Jenna’s school participates in the Josten’s Renaissance program which rewards students for good grades, good behavior, and good attendance. Thursday night we went to a ceremony where students who met the requirements for Renaissance last spring semester were recognized. Approximately half of the students at East Robertson met these requirements and get special perks in school life this semester (e.g. they have a special lunch at school today -- food brought in from outside). Jenna was happy to have her name drawn among all the 8th graders for the $15 prize.

WINE ON CAMPUS? While we arrived at the Renaissance ceremony Ben and I needed to find the restrooms. The only ones open were in the high school wing of the building. As we were walking down the hall he was expressing his fears about going to school there next year as a 6th grader (and Nate is not looking forward to being the only one from the family left at the elementary school). This wasn’t my experience because East Robertson was a K-12 school the whole time I went there, but I understand that everything looks big and scary to him. He was excited to see a vending machine in the hallway though.

Naturally, when we got back to the gym Nate, who didn’t need to go to the restroom the first time, needed to go. Since Ben knew the way we sent the boys off. The boys came back with eyes as big as saucers and said, “They’re selling cherry wine!” We thought this was very odd, but a few moments later the words “vending machine” came out.

Turns out they had seen Cheerwine which is a cherry flavored soft drink (and I think somewhat new to our market) -- a harmless drink with an unfortunate name for the middle of the Bible Belt.

CUB AND FAMILY. We went to the Cub and Family campout at Boxwell Reservation this weekend. It was our original intention for all of us to camp out Friday night and that the boys and I would stay on for Saturday night while Vicki and Jenna would head on home to be at church today. Then the cold, rainy weather moved in Thursday and no one was too excited about camping out in the wake of that so we didn’t do Friday night.

We did get up early yesterday to take part in the day’s activities. They had several craft and activity stations set up around the campground that we participated in. The most popular were the BB gun and archery ranges, of course. They also had had some really neat air bottle rockets set up. The rockets were 2 liter soft drink bottles. These were put on a nozzle on one end of a PVC pipe assembly. The other end had a tire stem in it. The fuel for the rocket was simply air from a bicycle pump. The bottles would go quite high.

We did brave the elements last night. My tent was filled with two boys, two bears, and me. My boys were worn out from playing all day and were out by 9:30. It got pretty cool as we woke to a heavy frost and heavy fog from Old Hickory Lake. Despite our discomfort I took two sad boys home today as they didn’t want the good times to end (or to go back to school tomorrow).

GHOST STORIES. It was about 8:00 this evening when Ben started calling for Nate to come upstairs. Nate didn’t want to go upstairs and told Ben as much. Ben kept insisting and with Nate ignoring him I jumped in because it was getting a bit annoying. In self-defense Ben said, “But you told us to get ready for bed.”

Neither Vicki nor I had told the boys to go to bed that early (9:00 is the usual time) so we defended Nate saying, “You can go to bed now if you wish, but he doesn’t have to go now if he doesn’t want to. We will send him up when it’s his bedtime”

We could tell this wasn’t the answer he wanted so we asked why he wanted Nate to come upstairs right then. When Ben dodged this question it finally hit Vicki that we had been watching some shows on Tennessee ghost stories on PBS and Ben was thinking about the Bell Witch. He was a little scared that Old Kate would pay him a visit when he was up there by himself. I’m pretty sure he did not stand in front of the mirror after turning out the light and say, “I hate the Bell Witch,” three times which, as the current form of the legend has it, will summon the spirit. I noticed the boys are sleeping with several lights on tonight.

Joe