HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BEN! Can he really be 14 years old? I guess he is. He’s practically looking me in the eye now. His voice has grown deeper. He has leg hair (which is fun to pull when he’s not looking). All this adds up to my son being 14.
What Ben wanted to do most for his birthday was invite his friends, Jake and Luke, over to spend the night. This happened Friday night and between the Nerf bullets flying around the house and the chirping of all sorts of electronic games the four boys had an excellent time. They were after midnight going to bed and back up playing before 6:00. Ben may be 14, but there’s still a kid in there somewhere.
Sunday afternoon Vicki and Jenna fixed a nice supper for Ben and we took it over to Mom’s to share the meal with her. They found a new recipe for a cake that they tried out. It was essentially brownie with chocolate chips covered by a layer of cheesecake topped with chocolate icing. It was really good but so rich even Mom couldn’t do seconds.
BACK TO SCHOOL. The kids are back in school now. Yesterday was registration day and today is the first full day of classes. We went to open house last night. It was all very odd not to have to rush over to the elementary school. Nate was a little nervous about his first day, but he did fine.
I won’t go into the boys’ schedules as they have the standard fare of middle school classes, but Jenna does have an interesting lineup this fall. Her first two classes are Advanced Algebra II and ACT Prep. After that she takes a bus to Springfield High for Medical Therapeutics. When that is over she returns to East Robertson for Psychology. This last class is a dual enrollment course with Volunteer State Community College so she will earn three hours of college credit as well as high school credit.
Her Psychology class follows the Vol State schedule so it doesn’t start for three more weeks. This allows her to have an ongoing early dismissal from school every day. And when this class does start it only meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays so she’ll be able to continue leaving early most days. I would have loved that thirty years ago.
This is a good thing for Mom who has been lamenting her luck now that Jenna has her license and a car. Jenna takes the boys to school but the boys still ride the bus home to Mom’s house so she will have them to look forward to most days.
BACK TO SCHOOL SHOPPING. Of course, with the start of the school year comes all the Back to School shopping. Vicki took the boys out shopping a week ago yesterday (the 28th) and she made sure to do plenty of fun things with them (like take them to Game Stop).
She texted me at one point in the day from a try on area in a clothing store (I’ve corrected the spelling and punctuation for readability):
So, I’m at Opry Mills with the boys and a lady asks Nate how many items he has to try on. He replies, “Too many!” The boy had to count all the way up to three!!!IN THE NEWS! One thing to check out on the Internet is a news story that RFD-TV did on the Threshermen’s Show this year. The story features an interview with Jackie and Charlie. You can find it here on the RFD-TV site.
Joe
