Thursday, September 24, 2026

Uncle Mike came to visit Nanaw on Thursday and brought more laundry with him. His washer still isn’t fixed but Whirlpool has said they’ll do it on Monday. Uncle Mike is not convinced it’s going to happen. He told Nanaw how to find cousin Lindsey and Dylan’s house for their housewarming party on Saturday. Then he also wrote out the instructions for her. He said they would have a special parking space for her so she wouldn’t have to walk too far. In the afternoon, Nanaw took down her winter table and put up the Halloween table, which Mama liked. Halloween is one of her most favorite holidays. Before Nanaw left to pick up Chase, she got a text from Mama saying Chase had texted Daddy saying he was slammed with homework and didn’t think he could go to hockey and baseball practice and still get all his homework done. Daddy told him he didn’t have to go to baseball practice but he did have to go to hockey practice. On the drive home, Chase told Nanaw he had three tests on Friday: Biology, Drivers’ Ed and Civics. Nanaw took him to hockey practice, as usual, and then later in the evening, she realized that she still had his favorite pencil and the clothes bag so she delivered them to him. He said he was almost finished with his homework assignments and studying for his tests.

Wednesday, September 23, 2026

Wednesday, September 23 was a special day for three reasons. It was Pawpaw’s birthday, and Nanaw had dinner with him at the cemetery. It was also Aunt Becca’s birthday, and Mama is going to spend the day with her celebrating on Friday. And ;ast but certainly not least, it was Mama’s 35th work anniversary. Mama’s work colleagues decorated her cube and her desk for the anniversary and brought her two cookie cakes. She got to take one of the cookie cakes home to share with her family, including Nanaw. Mama took pictures of everything and sent them to Nanaw – they’re all below. In the morning, Chase’s freshman class had a field trip to the Cathedral. They had to wear their white Oxford cloth shirts, and Chase wasn’t sure whether or not he should tuck it in. So they looked at the picture from the Grandparents Day Mass, and it looked like his shirt was tucked in so that’s what he did. Brady’s mom sent a picture of Chase and his classmates at the cathedral. When Nanaw picked Chase up from school, he told her he had a really terrible Math homework assignment. There were 30 problems and all of them were graph problems, which Chase doesn’t like at all. He worked on the problems after school but only got about seven of them done. Then, he worked on them in the evening and finally finished all of them.

Tuesday, September 22, 2026

On Tuesday morning, Chase did his studying for today’s Math test, just as he promised he would. When Nanaw picked Chase up from school, it turned out that they had a nice talk about a lot of different things, something very unusual for the noncommunicative Chase. Nanaw asked him how the Math test went, and he said he didn’t think anyone finished the test because it was a really long one. He said he started working on the last problem on the test but didn’t finish. Except for that, he said he thinks he did pretty well on the test. He doesn’t have any homework that’s due tomorrow. He just has a Civics assignment and that’s due on Thursday. The Civics assignment is a list of questions that they have to answer with six sentences each, which he complained about. Nanaw said maybe the teacher was trying to keep them from giving him or her one-word answers. Next, he told Nanaw that for dinner last night Mama made chicken nuggets that were really good. Then, Chase looked at the lunch menu that’s kept in the car, and Chase was happy to see they were having Bosco Sticks tomorrow.  Those are cheese-filled bread sticks. They had them on the day Chase shadowed at Gibault, and he liked them a lot so Nanaw thinks they may have influenced him to choose Gibault. Nanaw suggested Chase look them up online to see if Schnuck’s had them. He did and they did so Nanaw and Chase went to Schnuck’s and bought a package. Chase fixed three of them, with a bit of help from Nanaw. Chase had two, and Nanaw had one. Nanaw had a jar of spaghetti sauce so she opened it for them to dip their bread sticks in, and it was really yummy. As an additional after-school snack, Chase also had some of the small round pretzels Mama bought for him.

Monday, September 21, 2026

Nanaw didn’t get to see her friend Debbie when she picked Chase up from school because Debby’s grandson Brady had golf after school. Chase remembered to bring home the spirit wear Mama had bought; spirit wear means clothes with Gibault’s name on them. On the pick-up call with Mama, Chase asked her if she could check how much money was in his lunch account. Mama said she’d checked the other day, and they were down $4 so she put $200 in the account. Chase had been getting extra food at lunch and was worried that there wasn’t enough money in the account and was happy that Mama had put money in. Chase told Nanaw that his only homework was studying for a math test tomorrow. So because it’s a test not a quiz, Nanaw gets to study with him. On his own, he came up with the idea of doing one practice problem from each of the eight chapters they were going to be tested on. Nanaw wanted him to do the same thing tonight but he proposed a compromise: He would play a game with Mama tonight and then do the math problems in the morning before school. Nanaw agreed with the compromise as long as Chase promised to play a game with Mama tonight. But that didn’t go so well. Chase suggested to Mama that they go downstairs and play one of the games on the Wii. But Mama said her back hurt and she didn’t feel 100% so the game didn’t happen. Tomorrow, Nanaw will suggest that Chase play a card or board game with Mama!

Saturday, September 19, and Sunday, September 20, 2026

Chase had two baseball games on Saturday, and unfortunately, they lost both of them. But Mama said Chase had a nice double so that made up for it. After the game, Mama, Daddy and Chase went to Wally’s with Tucker and his parents, sort of a weekly tradition for them after baseball. They had Wally’s stuff for dinner – Chase and Mama had pizza, and Chase had some junk food snacks. On Sunday, the Bears lost again, (Mama said they lost pretty badly) and all Chase had was just a walk. Nanaw has a theory that they may be playing baseball teams who are a level above them because they lose so many of their games. But Chase doesn’t seem to mind and seems to still really enjoy playing baseball, and that’s really all that matters.) Mama said that after they got home from baseball, Chase hadn’t done much. She said they talked about playing a card game later but that didn’t happen. For some reason, Chase didn’t want to play a game after dinner. 

Thursday, September 17, and Friday, September 18, 2026

On Thursday, Chase had a special adventure at Gibault. His friend Hunter was going to shadow Chase at school. Shadowing is a program at Gibault where prospective students shadow existing students to get an idea of what the school is like. Last year when Chase was in 8th grade, he shadowed Dante, a Gibault student he’s known from ICS. From Chase’s shadowing experience, he decided he wanted to attend Gibault. Hunter is currently a student at Columbia High School, and no one seems to know if he’s interested in attending Gibault. Brady, Chase and Hunter’s friend from ICS, suggested that Hunter was doing the shadowing just to get out of a day at school, and chase and Brady laughed about that. Nanaw gave Hunter and Brady rides home from school Thursday with Chase. Hunter’s dad couldn’t come to pick him up, and Brady’s grandma wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t take him to the Columbia library. So Nanaw dropped Brady off at the library, then took Hunter and Chase to Chase’s house. Mama took Hunter home, then Nanaw took Chase to hockey practice. He also had baseball practice on Thursday. Nanaw dropped off his Minecraft clothes backpack just as he and Mama were leaving for baseball practice so Nanaw got to see him in his baseball uniform. Friday was an Enrichment Friday for Chase, and he didn’t have school. He and Daddy went golfing around 9:30 at River Lakes Golf Club. At about 11, Chase texted Nanaw asking her to come pick him up. She texted back that she wasn’t dressed yet and didn’t know where the golf course was. She said maybe Mama could come pick him up and then Nanaw would come to his house and get him. So that’s what they did. He told Nanaw that after 9 holes, he didn’t feel well, and that’s why he wanted to come home. On the the way back to Nanaw’s house, Chase showed her where River Lakes is so next time she’ll know where to go. It’s right across from Garden Place. Chase said he’d changed his mind about going to Taco Bell and then doing Pizza Bread because he still didn’t feel well. He just wanted to go back to Nanaw’s house and have something else for lunch. He had Ramen’s and then a snack later. He did his homework as Mama had instructed. He had a Math assignment where he had to turn formulas into equations. He also had to study an English assignment about nouns and also appositives; Nanaw learned about appositives, a new word and concept to her. Chase then helped Nanaw solve a set of algebra equations from his Math assignments. He played on the laptop and on his phone and did some pretend practice golf in his room with the plastic golf clubs from when he was little and his hockey net.

Wednesday, September 16, 2025

Today was Grandparents Day at Chase’s high school. Nanaw got a hug from Mr. G when she went into the gymnasium. Chase and his friend Brady came into the gym to find Brady’s grandparents and Chase’s Nanaw to sit with them during the mass. After the mass, Chase and Nanaw went out into the lobby for yummy donuts. Then they went back into the gym to have their picture taken. Gibault is going to mail the pictures to the grandparents as a special memento. Next, Chase took Nanaw on a tour of his classrooms, locker and also the library. Nanaw enjoyed seeing where Chase goes to class. On Nanaw’s way out of the school, she met up with Darlene, a friend she’d worked with at A. G Edwards. Darlene now volunteers as a math tutor at Gibault two days a week. Chase told Nanaw that his friend Hunter, who goes to Columbia High School, was coming to Gibault tomorrow to shadow Chase. That means that Hunter goes to class with Chase and learns how things work at Gibault. Chase doesn’t know if that means Hunter is interested in going to Gibault. Chase says he’s looking forward to seeing Hunter and doing the shadowing thing. After school, Chase studied for his Drivers’ Ed test by himself, and then he and Nanaw studied together for his Biology test. He promised to read over the Biology packet again in the evening. Chase and Nanaw’s plans for Enrichment Friday are changing because Chase and Daddy are going to play golf but they can do their lunch and pizza bread plans some other Enrichment Friday.