Saturday, June 13, 2026

On Saturday morning, Chase had a uniform fitting session for the Columbia hockey team. Then he went to hang out with Tucker because their baseball tournament was rained out. Mama thinks the fields may still be too wet to play tomorrow, so Chase and Daddy may go to play golf. Mama put their family calendar on Chase’s phone, and he’s started putting his things on it. The first one he added was his next haircut with Brittany on Thursday, July 9 at 11 a.m. Chase had told Nanaw he liked playing on the B team even though they lost a lot. It was because he got to play all the time, and he didn’t get to do that on the A team. Mama said Chase did his laundry today. Mama taught him a while back but he wasn’t doing it regularly. Mama said he only did one load; she did his whites for him so he could go to Tuck’s house. Nanaw will find out from Mama tomorrow how long he was at Tuck’s house and what they did. The two photos below show his laundry basket with Truman and Lars and Chase with Lars in Mama and Daddy’s room, folding his laundry. 

Friday, June 12, 2026

Chase had a workout session on Friday morning, and he said it went well. He said he thinks the workout sessions are helping him get stronger. For lunch, Chase had another Ramen’s soup; he seems to like it. Nanaw put it on his grocery list for Mama, along with a pizza Lunchable, another of his favorites. Chase and Nanaw had a full school session on Friday, only their second one since summer vacation started. First, Chase did the touch-typing lesson. He seems to like it okay, and hopefully he’ll learn to touch type this summer. Nanaw thinks he’ll like it if he follows through with it. Then they did the ChatGPT Lesson 5. As usual, Chase finished before Nanaw so she put her lesson on pause and did the rest of school with Chase. He recited the names of the first five U.S. presidents; he’ll memorize five names a week. He did five algebra problems and two of the assignments in the Bridge 8th grade to 9th grade workbook – one was analogy problems and the second was answering questions on a reading assignment about Henry Ford. They also did the third lesson in the Weather Academy. For some reason, Chase didn’t like reading the lesson online, so Nanaw printed out the lesson and had Chase read it out loud to the two of them and that seemed to work for him. In the evening, Mama, Daddy and Chase went to the big park to meet his friend Tucker from his Bears baseball team and Tucker’s parents. Tucker and Chase wanted to practice baseball. Mama said the boys practiced baseball for a bit, and then they all went to Millers on Main for dinner. It was crowded, and Chase had pizza, of course.

Thursday, June 11, 2026

On Thursday, Chase had his haircut with Brittany. It went well with Chase talking to Brittany a lot. She asked him about his girlfriend (something Nanaw is forbidden to do). Chase said everything was fine even though they hadn’t hung out lately because he had hockey camp last week. Brittany told them about the new house her family had just bought; it’s on Rapp, the same street that Brady lives on. Brittany also told Chase about something she bought for the pitcher on the baseball team for 11-year-olds that she coaches. It’s called a kinetic sleeve, and it helps a pitcher improve their pitching. It cost $300, and Brittany paid for it so Nanaw hope it works. Nanaw asked Chase if he thought he would want one. Chase said he’s really not interested in pitching anymore; he likes playing shortstop or second base. Chase’s workout session was cancelled because of the hot weather. He was happy about that because he was miserable in the heat in his last session. Chase and Nanaw did their Python course with ChatGPT in the afternoon, and it went well. Chase always gets his done faster than Nanaw but eventually Nanaw gets it done.

Wednesday, June 10, 2026

Chase had an out-of-the-ordinary ortho appointment Wednesday morning. He has a tooth that’s coming in at a slant rather than straight down. So the orthodontist wanted him to have laser surgery that would help change the direction of the tooth. The procedure was supposed to take an hour but it only took about 45 minutes. On the drive home, Chase talked all the way, giving Nanaw a play-by-play account of what the two technicians did. He said they needed two people because it was so complicated. He said he had to wear goggles and the technicians wore green eyeglasses. They had to do it twice because it didn’t work correctly the first time. They numbed the tooth area with a gel (no novocaine shot, thank heavens). He said it didn’t hurt too much. After the gel wore off, he was supposed to take Tylenol but he never did because he said he didn’t need it. He brought home some vitamin E capsules that he has to apply to the tooth area, one every night before bed. He said he wasn’t too nervous about it, and Nanaw told him he was very brave. He said he didn’t want to do any school, and when Nanaw asked if they could do the Python programming session, he said yes, they could do that. As usual, he’s way ahead of Nanaw and doing really well. He finished up Lesson 3 before Nanaw even started because she had to finish Lesson 2. So Nanaw has to work on Lesson 3 tonight and try to get caught up. Nanaw is very happy Chase is doing so well with Python. She hoped he would like it, and he seems to.

Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Chase had a teeth cleaning appointment at the dentist’s office on Tuesday morning. At first Nanaw thought he wouldn’t have their friend Teresa because someone else came to get Chase. But when he was finished, Teresa came out with him and talked to Nanaw. On the way home, they stopped at Schnuck’s so Nanaw could get her newspaper and a loaf of soft French bread for Chase. He started eating the bread on the drive home. For lunch, Chase had Fettucine Al Fredo and lots of the French bread. Later in the afternoon, Chase had his first touch typing lesson. It went quickly, and he didn’t complain too much. Next they did the Python lesson with ChatGPT. Once again, Chase did really well and most importantly, he stopped complaining about it. He even helped Nanaw with her code when it wouldn’t run. Things do work out. Next, they did a couple of the small school things: reading over the information about the first five presidents of the U.S.; doing the five state capitals; doing five algebra problems; and doing one of the assignments in the Summer Bridge 8th grade to 9th grade workbook. So everything worked out well with the school activities with not too much complaining and fussing from Chase. Nanaw forgot to have them do the Weather Academy 3rd lesson so they’ll do that tomorrow and then continue on with the lessons. The second picture below is of a beautiful bouquet of flowers Mama gave to Nanaw. This is employee appreciation week where Mama works, and one of the activities was to make bouquets. Mama decided to give hers to Nanaw, which made Nanaw very happy. 

Monday, June 8, 2026

The young man who cuts down trees came by Nanaw’s house Monday morning to cut down the branch of the redbud tree in the back yard that was brushing against the house. He also used his Dingo to remove the pile of branches in the back yard. Nanaw’s plan for Chase on Monday was that they would start their computer programming project with ChatGPT after the tree guy was gone. Chase did his usual complaining about not wanting to do it but finally agreed. He did really well with it, better than Nanaw. This is a good thing for Chase to do, no matter how much he complains. It’s better for him than all the time he spends on his phone watching YouTube videos and playing games on the computer. They also started memorizing the presidents of the U.S., doing the first five, and they did another five state capitals. The one thing Chase refused to do was to start the online courses on touch typing. He said he was playing a game on the computer that he couldn’t stop. Nanaw was not happy about his refusal but told him they were going to do it on Tuesday morning when they got back from his dentist appointment. At 1 p.m., they went to his workout session. He seems to really like the sessions and seems to work hard at it. He came out afterwards soaking wet from all his activity; Nanaw had to put his clothes in the dryer. He says he likes the guy doing the workouts and likes what they do so good for him. 

Sunday, June 7, 2026

Nanaw checked with Mama about yesterday’s second game, and Chase’s team won the game 10 to 3, and Mama said it was a good game. On Sunday, Chase had two games but Nanaw isn’t sure where – St. Peters or Fenton. She’ll find out but she thinks it might be Fenton. The first game was at 3 p.m., and they won. The second game was at 5 p.m., and they lost 14 –1 but Chase had two hits and that’s good. After the game, they went to visit Wally’s with Tucker and his parents, the Pollnows. Mama said Chase enjoyed walking around Wally’s with Tucker. Wally’s is close to the ball field in Fenton so that’s why Nanaw thinks that’s where the boys played. They had Dairy Queen for dinner. Chase has a really busy week next week, and Nanaw will have a busy week driving him around to all the places he has to go. On Monday, he has a workout – called BBA, which means Building Better Athletes. On Tuesday he has a dentist appointment. On Wednesday he has an ortho appointment. On Thursday he gets a haircut and has a workout later in the day. On Friday he has a workout at 10 a.m. Nanaw had all kinds of ambitious “school” or “learning” plans for next week but maybe they won’t all happen. She wants them to get started on learning a computer programming language called Python. When Nanaw told Chase about it he didn’t seem too excited but after he thought about it he said that might be good because maybe he would need it later on. ChatGPT is going to help them learn it to that will be fun. The first photo below is a screen shot from mama’s calendar on her phone providing all of Chase’s activities next week. The second picture is a sort of goofy-looking selfie Chase took of himself and sent to Nanaw.