On to the next big step in life for Chayce!! Kim took him out to Tempe while I stayed home to shuttle Brandon back and forth to daily doubles (more on that in a moment). Kim and Chayce flew out on Saturday the 14th. His move in day was Monday the 16th, so they spent the 15th shopping for supplies and visiting with Uncle Thayne and the Higgins family.
I won’t attempt to try and describe the mixture of emotions Kim and I have been going through with Chayce going off to school, but let me just tell all you parents with kids still at home, brace yourself, it is a doozey. If you want to talk about it, give me a call. I like to torture myself.
Enough of that… He has been in classes now for almost 3 weeks and is doing great. He now understands what we tried to warn him about regarding the volume of homework he will have in college vs high school. I’ve tried to encourage him to start a “Chayce at ASU” blog, but he claims he is too busy. So I guess I’ll try and pass along info as I get it until enough people pressure him into starting his own blog :)
He has joined a couple of school clubs. The first is Racquetball, they play a couple of times a week and he sounds like he is getting pretty good. I can’t wait to take him on and see how good he really is. The second is Arizona Outdoors, it is a club that does various outdoor activities around Phoenix. Rock climbing, hikes, bungee jumping, that kind of stuff. Sounds like a lot of fun and both clubs will be great ways for him to meet new people.
Each room has it’s own sink area and they share a shower and toilet with their next door neighbor. I don’t know about you, but that is a lot nicer than what I had when I went to college.
Chayce participated in the annual whitewashing “A” mountain. If you look real close and fast you can pick him out, he is the one in a “Gold” shirt. It’s important to note the colors are Maroon and Gold…not yellow. I’ve been corrected several times.
Whitewashing "A" mountain from ASU News on Vimeo.
Brandon has been practicing football all summer and finished August with three weeks of two-a-day practices. 8AM – 11AM in the morning and 1PM – 4PM for the afternoon practice.
He has also had a couple of scrimmages. They bring in two teams from other conferences and alternate running through offence, defense and special teams. Here are a couple of pictures from these scrimmages. His practice jersey # is 23. He is playing both offence and defense as an end and a corner back. We can’t wait for the games to begin so we can see if all this hard work over the summer pays off in the form of a bunch of wins [games start this weekend]. Go Rams!
The weekend before Chayce left for School he and Rob went for their Advanced Open Water Scuba certification. The certification requires some classroom pre-work and a series of 5 dives, each focusing on different skills. The advanced certification prepares us to go on more complex and deeper dives. It was a great weekend of diving and we had a blast. Brandon couldn’t make this trip, but we are making alternative arrangements to get his advanced certification in September.
Chayce decided that we needed a fire pit in place of the old trampoline off in one corner of the yard, that no one has used for years. So he tore down the tramp and with some assistance from the family he built us a very nice fire pit. His friends joined him for several farewell bonfires in the evenings leading up to his departure to ASU. It turned out really cool and is a nice addition to our backyard. I’m sure we will enjoy it in our beautiful summer and fall NJ evenings. If nothing else we had a lot of fun building it.
Okay so not everyone helped! Shelby decided it was too hot to work.
Brandon’s girlfriend’s family is raising a Seeing Eye puppy. They went on vacation so he and I babysat Anthony while Mom was away in AZ. Anthony is a great dog and he was a lot of fun to have around. Shelby wasn’t so pleased at first, but very quickly got into the flow and I think actually enjoyed having company around. The only issue is Anthony is so big and is still very much a puppy and liked to play, which for older and smaller Shelby could at times get a little overwhelming.
We didn’t get out on the boat in August as much as I would have liked. Chayce leaving for school and Brandon busy with football all the time didn’t leave much time for it. But we did enjoy a few water ski and wakeboard days.
Kim and I are practicing for our “empty nest”. We took a day trip to Coney Island, just the two of us. I went there once many years ago in the off season, but the rest of the family had never been. So Kim and I took a drive. It was a fun day with lots of “interesting” stuff to see. Grandma, if you thought the Jersey Shore is crowded, you should see this place.
Kim found us another aquarium to visit. One of the highlights was this baby seal. Very cute!
We finished our trip with a famous Nathan’s Hotdog. This is the original location and is the site of the annual hotdog eating contest.
August was a crazy month, but we had a lot of fun. Hope September is full of good stuff too. Have a great month.
4 comments:
Hey the fire pit looks great. I sure feel sad to see these kids all growing old, but happy to see them going on to great things. Love Mom
Wow! What a month for you guys! It sounds like Chayce will have the time of his life at ASU and will do great things, I'm sure. Love the fire pit!
OK, I just got a little teary eyed and SICK. Chayce looks like he should be in college! How does that happen? I'm voting for the Arizona Blog.
I wish I had been there to see the fire pit. He could do nothing but talk about it whan we were there. Proud of him going ahead and doing it.
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