Monday, April 6, 2026

Chase was off from school on Monday for his Easter break, and he spent the day at Nanaw's house. He has two major school projects due tomorrow: a digital scrapbook of the Washington DC trip and the journal he kept during the trip that detailed all the things they did in DC. He worked on completing the projects in the morning and then Nanaw proofread them in the afternoon. She really enjoyed going through the projects and feeling like she was finding out the details of the trip and everything that happened. Chase did a good job on the projects, and they seemed to have him relive his trip to DC. Around lunchtime, Chase and Nanaw went on an adventure to the Des Peres Schnuck's, the fanciest Schnuck's store in the area. Nanaw wanted to spend some of her Rewards money on Chase. She thought maybe he might want a Frisbee or a bat or a Pickleball set but he didn't want any of those things. He wanted to buy the ingredients for cheese garlic bread and then make it when they got back to Nanaw's house. They bought a baguette, garlic cloves, parsley, and mozzarella cheese slices for the cheese garlic bread. Chase also wanted some Gouda cheese from Georgia ($10!!) and banana split Blue Bunny ice cream. On the drive home, Chase told Nanaw if he was rich when he grew up and still lived around here, he would shop at that Schnuck's. LOL! Nanaw had so much fun making the cheese garlic bread with Chase. It was as though she was his sous chef, taking directions from him. He said the bread turned out perfectly. Nanas put some of the topping on her gluten-free bread, and it was delicious. Chase ate one half of the baguette and saved the other half to take home to Mama, as shown in the second picture below. When Nanaw took Chase home, he took her downstairs to see his new set of golf clubs. They're absolutely awesome, and Nanaw was so impressed. She's assuming they were an Easter present from Daddy. She asked Chase to take a picture of them, and it's the third picture below. The first picture of Chase below has him holding the Washington DC spoon Mama got for him from Amazon. Chase saw it at one of the DC gift shops and wanted it but Mama didn't want to buy it because she didn't want to pay $10 for a spoon. Chase was disappointed but let it go. Later, Mama felt bad for not buying it in DC so she went on Amazon and found it and bought it. 

Happy Easter! Sunday, April 5, 2026

This morning, Truman and baby Truman helped Mama hide eggs from the Easter Bunny for Chase. The boy had a great time finding the eggs filled with candy. Mama said she bought pre-filled plastic eggs, which made things much easier. Nanaw doesn’t know if the Easter egg hunt was before or after Daddy and Chase went to church. At four, Mama, Daddy and Chase came to pick up Nanaw to go to Uncle Mike's house for Easter dinner. Mama brought Nanaw a great Easter basket with sugar-free assorted caramels, a bag of bubble gum balls for the gumball machine Uncle Mike and Aunt Becky made for Nanaw for her birthday,  and a $25 Amazon gift card. The Easter dinner food was delicious: three kinds of ham, grilled chicken with cheese and bacon, Nichole's rolls, Mama's party potatoes, fruit salad, pasta salad, corn, mac and cheese, and more. There were lots of desserts: Mama's pudding pie, Nichole's decorated Easter cookies, apple pie, Robbie's chocolate chip cookies, and lots of other things that Nanaw doesn't remember. Dinner guests included Lindsey and Dylan, Joey and Julia and Jeremy and Hudson, Kris, Robbie, Irina, Nyeal, Marcus and Beckham (Vika stayed home with the baby), and Nichole and JonJon. It was a great Easter dinner and great seeing everyone. Chase spent the evening sitting in the living room with the family and mostly playing on his phone -- which is probably his favorite thing to do.

Saturday, April 4, 2026

Mama texted Nanaw on Saturday morning that Chase's Bears baseball tournament was rained out. He was supposed to play in two games on Saturday. But it turned out that worked out well for Mama, Daddy and Chase. Usually, Aunt Becca has Easter dinner on Saturday each year but this year she decided not to have it because the weather forecast was for cool weather and rain, and she likes to have the celebration outside rather than inside. But with the dismal weather forecast she wouldn't be able to have it inside so she cancelled. Uncle Chris said they would have the Easter celebration, which made Chase very happy because he would get to see cousin Elias. It worked out well that the baseball tournament was rained out because that meant Mama, Daddy and Chase would go out to Silex.. Mama texted that Chase and Elias played video games for awhile and then went outside to play. Nanaw got a test from Chase with the selfie below. Mama texted Nanaw to see if Chase had texted a picture like she told him to, and Nanaw said he did. Tomorrow Uncle Mike and Aunt Becky are having the family Easter dinner celebration. To make up for not hosting the family holiday dinners anymore, Nanaw provides $200 to help pay for dinner. 

Good Friday, April 3, 2026

Yesterday, Nanaw asked Chase who were the girls who hang around with the crew. There are three L’s, an A and an E.  Lorelei, Lizzie and Lily. Amelie. Evie. Nanaw told Mama about this and she said all five were nice girls. This afternoon, one of them (Lorelei) came with her mom to deliver two beautifully decorated Easter cookies to Chase. On the DC trip, Lorelei’s mom provided delicious cookies for the kids. Chase told everyone he couldn’t have one because he gave up cookies for Lent. So Lorelei and her mom wanted him to have cookies — on Easter, when Lent is over so they brought the cookies over to Chase's house. Unfortunately he was still at Nanaw's house so he didn't get to see them. Today, Chase had a workout around noon and then Daddy brought him over to Nanaw’s house to spend the afternoon there. Mama sent Nanaw a picture of the guys Chase set up in her office this morning. She called them her co-workers. At Nanaw’s house, Chase played on his phone and the laptop. He also played pencil hockey in his room. He didn’t work on his DC projects but he promised Nanaw he’d work on them tomorrow. On the ride home, Nanaw asked if he had baseball tonight. Chase said no, but he was going to find some baseball stuff to do. Nanaw asked Mama about it, and she said he practiced hitting and pitching. Then he played with the wiffle ball.

Thursday, April 2, 2026

The 8th grade did a very special presentation to the younger students and some parents on Thursday morning. It was in the gym and was called the Stations of the Cross. It was about the crucifixion of Jesus and followed his path to his death on the cross. Owen played Jesus and Sami played Mary. Brady was a guard and wore a helmet (with his baseball hat underneath it) and carried a spear. Chase was one of the 14 students who read the 14 Stations of the Cross. He was number 10, and he did a good job, speaking clearly and reading well. After it was over, Chase came over to say hello to Nanaw, which was nice and sort of surprising. Chase had only a half day of school on Thursday, and Nanaw picked him up at noon, and they went to Taco Bell to get lunch. Chase had two cheese quesadillas and nachos with cheese. Nanaw had three crunchy tacos supreme. In the afternoon, Chase played on his phone and the laptop. Then he worked on his DC project. He‘s making an online digital scrapbook from the trip to DC. He also has to do the journal he wrote during the trip; he still has to finish it. The two assignments are due next Tuesday, and he still has a lot of work to do on them. Chase has the day off tomorrow so he’s coming over to Nanaw’s house in the afternoon after his workout.

Wednesday, April 1, 2026

Nanaw tried the "It's snowing!" April Fool's thing on Chase this morning but he's too smart for Nanaw -- he responded with a resounding "April Fool!" Nanaw tried that one on Uncle Mike and Mama when they were little, and it didn't work then either. Uncle Mike came over again today for a little while to finish up a couple of things he didn't have time enough to do yesterday. One thing he did Mama will really like: taking down the black tarp in front of Nanaw's house. Mama considered it very white trash. When Nanaw picked Chase up from school, she asked him how he felt, and he said he would answer her when he was in the car. He said his stomach didn't feel well again. Nanaw is worried about him. He hasn't had any after school snacks the past few days, and he hasn't been drinking milk at breakfast or eating much then. He has a science terms quiz tomorrow, and when Nanaw quizzed him on the words, he didn't know most of the words. Nanaw asked Mama to have him study the science terms again a couple of times that night and then to quiz him on them again. He did okay but not great on them. Mama said it would be good for him to go over them again with Nanaw in the morning before school. 

Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Chase was still having stomach problems Tuesday morning but Mama said he had to go to school. When Nanaw picked him up after school, he said he almost threw up during the Chrism Mass field trip today but he managed to not do it. Nanaw told him she was proud of him for that. He said he still didn't feel too good, and he didn't want any after-school snacks, just water. During the pick-up phone call with Mama, he told her he couldn't go to baseball practice, and Mama said he had to send a text to Coach Bernie saying he couldn't come to practice. When they got to Nanaw's house, Chase worked on his homework -- The Hobbit worksheet for chapter 9 and a Middle East Atlas geography worksheet. Nanaw should have had him do his AR reading when he was done with the worksheets but she always forgets to have him do that. He still didn't get his science and English tests back. He didn't do too well on the tests, especially the English one, and Nanaw wants to see what went wrong. She didn't study with him on the English one because he said they had studied a lot in class. But Nanaw is not going to let that happen in the future. No matter how much he says he already studied, Nanaw will insist that they study together. For the science test, Nanaw wants to see what questions he got wrong and try to figure out if there was something they should have studied that they didn't. Uncle Mike came over to Nanaw's again today to do several different things. The one he worked on most was the drain pipe in the front yard. Hopefully, he can get it working the way it should.